Big Bear

I couldn't let the snowboarding skills get rusty.

Anna Loves Ben

LordhaveMERCY! There are engagement parties and then there are engagement parties involving the Samahas.... while both require heels and suit coats, the former conjures staid images tea sandwiches and string quartets while the latter involves to-die-for Caribbean food and a steel drum guy named "Mellow" (seriously.. his name was Mellow - could I possibly make that up?) A grand time was had by all! Congratulations to Anna Samaha and Ben Streufert!
"May your life together be full of love, and your love be full of life."

The Kingkiller Chronicles

Over summer, Paige and I were on the lake at Dad's house with Sheldon when Paige started talking about a book. She asked us if we knew a book about a boy who is orphaned, who discovers that magic is real and goes away to a school to learn about it... why does this sound so familiar?

As it turns out, she wasn't talking about Harry Potter (which Sheldon helpfully suggested), and it was driving Paige nuts trying to figure out the name of the book. Eventually she ended up posting a question about it on some forum and figured out it was "The Name of the Wind." I finally got around to reading it yesterday and it's really good! I can't wait for the sequel, The Wise Man's Fear, which is due out sometime mid-2009.

Mammoth

L to R: Brandon, Steve, Gary, Paige, Ashley, Aliza

This past weekend I headed up to Mammoth for some skiing and snowboarding with a couple people from work. We left around three Friday morning and arrived just in time to sit down and have some breakfast before renting gear and cramming in three full days on the mountain! I decided to take some beginner ski lessons Friday (after getting my toes wet last winter with Julie) and officially became hooked. We rented a cabin within walking distance from the slopes and had an amazing (and injury free!) weekend.

New Years in Santa Barbara

Dad and Julie spent Christmas in San Francisco with Julie's brother's family (Steve, Brenda, Marshall and Isabelle) and then flew down to meet me in LA for a couple days. Julie used to live about a mile from my current apartment, so she knows her way around which turned out to be a lifesaver because I worked the first day they were here, left dinner that night to go on the harvest and then spent the entire next day sleeping! The following morning we drove up to Santa Barbara for the remainder of their visit which included a New Year's Eve party thrown by their friends, James and Aaron. We planned to take a New Year's Day hike in the mountains behind Julie's parent's old house... but some hang-overs got in the way ;) so we ended up hiking on the 2nd before I had to drive back home. What a visit!

2008 Christmas Photo

This one is pretty self explanatory... it has been a bit delayed in getting sent out this year (cough*mom*cough) so I figured I would just post it, we took the picture when mom and Katie visited over Thanksgiving.

Santa Hats and Soup Dumplings and Shows, Oh My!

This year our holidays have been a little different than usual. Normally, we spend Thanksgiving in Tampa drinking pompanes and eating chocolate nipple cookies and setting up Christmas lights - all of which we still did, but at Paige's home in LA. Since flights to California are expensive and we'd already used up a lot of Paige's holiday vacation time, and there were no Christmas lighting festivities in Tampa over Thanksgiving, Mom and I decided to spend the holiday in NYC with my boyfriend Sheldon.

Sheldon had to work most of the week, so Mom and I decided to take one for the team and do all the Broadway-show-watching/Rockefeller-Tree-ogling on our own.
We landed some FABULOUS seats to see Wicked (only the best show ever), by haggling with a guy scalping tickets outside (not only did we get to see the sold-out show, we saved $100 doing it!) while Sheldon cooked us dinner one night.

On Christmas Day we donned some festive holiday hats and tried our luck again, this time we scored with Spamalot, which is a Monty Python spoof on King Arthur's court. We shared a celebratory pre-show drink at Sardi's (in full hat splendor) - a famous restaurant in the theater district known for the hundreds of caricatures of celebrities on its walls (which you can see in the background of the picture).

The day before Mom left we all grabbed lunch in China Town, where we ate the most delicious food in the universe, also known as soup dumplings. Soup dumplings are like pot stickers filled with meat and broth and joy. They were so good that we went back for more the morning of Mom's flight, and even might have grabbed a "real" Gucci bag or two while we were there. It was a blast!

After Mom left I hopped on a train to Little Silver, NJ to spend some time with Sheldon's family. The highlight of this trip was finally meeting Brendan, who is Sheldon's nephew. I know all the Seligson babies are pretty cute, so you all will be less impressed than the rest of the world would be, but this little guy still gives everyone a run for their money. I also managed to finish Twilight on this trip, since Sheldon's whole family are big readers I felt right at home (can you say floor-to-ceiling book shelves? I am jealous).

We headed back to the city on the 30th and spent New Years in the city hosting a pot luck dinner. I found a great new Cheesecake recipe which was a big hit and really easy to do, it was especially nice with this chocolate sauce drizzled over it, YUM! After everyone left for their respective midnight shenanigans, Sheldon and I hunkered down on the couch and watched the ball drop with a mini bottle of champagne. At midnight on the dot, he turned, looked me in the eyes and said, "Rabbit rabbit!" Damn, foiled again...