So You Think We Can Blog?

Cali take two

2011-12-06T13:36:00.000-05:00

While in CA Ender, Jacob and I were able to visit my grandma Shane. It had been a long time since I had seen her and it was her first time seeing Jacob. It was really good to see her.

Grandma Shane was very proud of her great-grandson

The second half of our visit was spent with Ender's oldest (time not age) best friend, Jeffy, and his lovely family. We always love spending time with them. They took us to a cool park in the area. Jacob had his first carousel ride and the kids had so much fun playing on the playground.

I love this pic of the dads with the kiddos

Jacob and dad

first stamp (yes I care about lame stuff like this)

Me and the kids

Dads with kids

Jacob flying high

I'm going back to Cali

2011-12-06T13:20:00.000-05:00

I am so far behind on this blog but I really wanted to get everything pre-Mexico in so I think these next couple of blogs will be mostly pictures with a simple explaination. I hadn't been back to CA since I moved from there, a little over 5 years ago. I had so many people I wanted to see and so little time to see them. We had a couple of get-togethers that realy helped me be able to see more people. I'm thankful to everyone who came to them. I had so much fun catching up with friends. The first gathering was at Cortez park with friends from high school and church. We were there for hours hanging out, eating Capri Deli (at least Katie and I were) and watching all of our kids play together, which was really cool seeing the next generation of friendships growing. I didn't get as many pictures with everyone as I would have liked but here are a couple I did get.

Jacob's first Capri Deli pickle

Swings

So happy we got to see Brenda. It had been too long!

Beki and her cutie pie girls

After the park we went to La Tolteca cuz you can't visit without going there. We met up with Cesar, Sasha, and Kelli. We used to go there all the time when we went to Citrus so it was very appropriate and delicous. We had so much fun. I really miss my Citrus peeps.

Cesar, Sash, and Kelli

Another pic of the girls plus Jacob and Tyty

I stayed with Katie most of the time while Ender got to hang with his friend Kyle. Katie was the best. She drove all over the place taking us to all the fun things we did. I wouldn't have been able to see anyone if it weren't for her. I really wanted to go to the beach cuz Jacob had never been and I wasn't sure when we'd get another chance.

This picture cracks me up. If you look closely you can see all the sand flying into Ender's face. Jacob loved the sand.

He did not like the water however. The waves were a bit scary.

Katie and Kayla

Tyler managed to stay still for two seconds to let me take this picture

Shane Gang

2011-09-27T15:10:00.000-04:00

While in SLC we were able to visit with my brother and his family for a night. I know, we were there for almost 3 weeks and only stayed a night, that should tell you how busy we were. In the last post I said how much help Scott was with the condo renovation. He was the best. On the night we stayed at there house Scott was helping us with the condo so he took Jacob back with him so Ender and I could stay and work on the condo a bit more and Jacob got to have fun playing in the pool with cousins. That night we stayed up way too late talking, as we always do when we stay at their house. Plus we had tons of yummy Mexican food from La Fuente, an awesome restaurant right off the freeway by Scott and Lauren's. The next day Jen, Jacob's birth mom, came over to hang out one last time before we left. Her mom lives about 5 mins from Scott and Lauren, I know small world. It was a short visit but a lot of fun. It will be nice to spend more time with them on our next visit.

Jacob had a chance to play in the sandbox in the backyard. It was his first time in the sand and he wasn't to sure about it.

I love the blue sand

Jacob had so much fun playing with his cousins

This picture cracks me up. Jacob decided to help himself to his cousin's toes and Seth being the sweet, go with the flow guy he is let him.

Jacob loves his cousin Bradlie. She was cracking him up in this picture.

Ender, Jacob (with his messy bed head) and Jen

SLC Vacation?

2011-09-14T00:02:00.000-04:00

OK so I'm going back a couple of months in the next couple of blogs cuz I really wanted to write all about our last month in the states. We got a lot done during that month and had tons of fun with so many people I didn't want to skip it all. While we were able to visit with a lot of friends and family before we left, with everything going on, we didn't have near enough time to visit everyone we wanted. We officially moved out of our St. George place at the beginning of July and were off to stay with Ender's parents in SLC. Our main goal while there was to visit everyone we hadn't seen in our last couple of short visits, with a side goal of getting our condo fixed up. We have a condo we purchased as a rental property about 6 years ago. Our renter moved out just in time for our visit up north so we thought we'd fix a couple of things before renting it out again. We figured it would take a week and since we would be there for two we'd have plenty of time to visit with people. Wow! We were wrong. The place was worse than we remembered. Every room had ugly wall paper in it. We remembered one room having it but was told our first renter had taken it down, which was not the case. We knew we needed a new tub but once we were there we decided to update the whole bathroom so that was pretty much gutted. We replaced all the fixtures, door knobs, kitchen cabinet knobs, outlets and covers, and light fixtures. The worst, by far, was the wall paper. I can't even guess as to how long the stuff had been up and underneath were more layers of wall paper that had been painted over. Ender found a small piece of shiny gold wall paper that, at one point, must have covered the hall/entrance. The wall paper came down pretty easily in one bedroom and the living room, although the walls still needed some work before painting. The master bedroom wall paper had other plans. The paper itself came off fairly easily but the glue stayed put. Days were spent wetting the walls and then scraping the glue off. It was such a slow, messy, irritating process. Luckily we had some help with the entire project. Thankfully my brother was unemployed and able to help us. (Sarcasm people but we did appreciate the help and he went back to work soon after all the scraping and painting was done.) Scott and Ender spent one whole day in that room scraping glue as I had done the day before and it still wasn't done. We did eventually get all walls, trim, and doors painted, the bathroom re-done, new fireplace mantel put on, and a new backsplash for the kitchen. We love the way it all turned out and what's really important is our new renter loves the place. We had lots of help from Ender's dad and mom, his sister and my brother. Even Jen, Jacob's birth mom, came one Sat and watched Jacob for us while we worked. So now for some before and after pictures. We didn't get as many before pictures as we wanted. We kept forgetting to bring the camera.

Before of the 2nd bedroom (all that grey is wallpaper )

After of 2nd room

Bathroom before

Bathroom gutted

Bathroom Finished

Old fireplace mantel

Mantel and living room mid renovation

Ender warming his hands to show off the new mantel

Before Kitchen (that border was a pain to get down)

After kitchen (I loved the way the kitchen came out!)

Our little helper

In all it took three weeks of long days working on the place. We got to see only a couple of the many friends we wanted to. Because everyone was working during the day we had Jacob with us almost everyday we were there. He had just started crawling and wanted to get into everything; paint, screws, nails, hardware, outlets, you know all baby friendly things. He hated most of the loud noises we made and had a hard time taking naps while we tried to work. To say he slowed us down would be a huge understatement. At the same time it became a huge family project that Ender and I will always remember. On a side note we found an amazing fast food Mexican place around the corner that we had for lunch as often as I could get Ender to eat there and we reintroduced ourselves to slurplees which we had many of.

More House

2011-08-22T17:08:00.003-04:00

To show you all of this house in pictures could take a while. There are some fun and random things going on here. The random will have to wait a bit or you'll just have to come visit to see it all.

I had to post another picture of our shaky, spiral staircase

Here's the living room

The dining area

I love the arches and the door leading to the kitchen

laundry on the line

This place actually has a washing machine which is so helpful, plus the laundry room is right outside our door. The washer has an air button which I haven't tried yet. So far I actually like line drying everything. It's nice to be outside even if it's just hanging and taking down laundry. We got Jacob a little blow up pool so he can splash around while I'm out there.

No Longer Homeless

2011-08-21T14:31:00.010-04:00

Well after a month or so of being homeless we finally have a place to call our own. I'm skipping the homeless months in the hope that I will come back to them soon. We found a house in a family area called Roma Sur. We are actually renting a room on the roof of the house. We have two roommates who each rent out their own room. The rest of the house is shared. One roommate is a 19 year old guy who goes to school in the city. He's from a town in Mexico that shares the border of Arizona so he knows a bit of English. He mostly keeps to himself. He comes home from school and goes strait to his room for the remainder of the night. The second guy is somewhere between 60 and 70 depending on who's telling us, the land lady or the owner. He's from Chile and works as an engineer. He gets home between 9 and 10 pm most nights. We've been here for a week now and met him for the first time yesterday morning. He's super nice. Basically we get the house to ourselves during the day which is great because Ender's classes, once they start, will be at night. Everything is included in the rent including internet and cable, although our TV doesn't really work so we'll see how cable is once we get a working TV. I know some of you have been waiting for pictures of the place so here they are.

This is one view of our room.

our working fireplace

There's no closet so right now we just have messy shelves

the front door of our room and laundry room

These are the stairs that lead up to the roof and our room. Also the nice terrace.

There are more pictures of the rest of the house that will have to come in another blog since blogger would only let me upload these five. We plan on getting some things to help us organize the small space and make things a bit cuter so when that happens I'll post new pictures.

Amelie

2010-10-27T04:02:00.002-04:00

I rented a car so I could go to a ferret shelter in Yonkers; I would have taken a train but ferrets are illegal in the five boroughs so I would have been too nervous smuggling it all the way back to Brooklyn, pretending it was a cat.

The shelter turned out to be some woman's house whose garage had been converted into a 20+ ferret apartment. The plan had been to get a dark grey one with a black mask because, as superficial as we were, we thought those were the cutest. Besides, our last pets, the rats, had been completely white and we wanted to get a little diversity into the family.

When I got there, she (ferret-lady) opened all of the cages and let me interact with them a little. The youngest ferret in the room was a male, grey, with a black mask. In hind sight I probably should have picked that one. I know now that young ferrets will never give you adequate attention, especially when they first wake up to play; I'm sure we would have bonded with him sooner than later.

This was the first time I had been able to touch a live ferret, so I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. I knelt down in the middle of the room and picked a few up, pet a few as they tiptoed around and played with each other. All of a sudden, there was Amelie. She had approached without my noticing, probably because she was white which was of course the wrong color. She did have a faint mask of light brown but certainly nothing like the bandit that we hoped for.

She put her front paws on my leg, the only one in the room to actually approach me on its own. I lifted her up and she immediately sniffed at my face and clothes and started to burrow her tiny face under my jacket. I knew she was mine.

Over the next year she grew more and more affectionate; Kim and I fell in love with her. She potty trained almost immediately, and didn't have any of the undesirable scent we had heard so much about. She was adorable and even Kim said she couldn't imagine ever not having a ferret ever again. We would find her sleeping in the most bizarre places and positions. When she was awake she dug in our boots and stole the soles from our shoes. She pilfered Chapstick, chewing gum, and tampons from purses, rummaged through gym bags and suit cases, and fixated on trying to drag the guitar for the Guitar Hero games under the couch. Then there were my favorite moments with her: I would roll her on her back and scratch the back of her neck and she would lick the tip of my nose. She didn't like to be held for very long, but eventually when I picked her up she would lick my nose and face and ears for several minutes before she was ready to be put back down. Perhaps I was just salty, but it sure seemed like affection to me.

Something was missing.

She needed someone else to play with. She did the most adorable moping technique where she would come into a room and as soon as we looked at her she would squash herself onto the ground looking bored and pathetic. If we left the room she would follow us and repeat. Eventually we broke down and went back to Yonkers where we adopted her two younger sisters: Yubaba and Zaniba.

It took a little while for her to acclimate to the new invaders, but before long they were all sleeping together in an adorable ferret ball. The new girls played a bit too rough for Amelie who we estimated to be around 5 years old by then, but eventually they all learned what was appropriate and got along great.

Not long before we moved from New York, she started to get sick. One day Kim found her clawing and scratching at the roof of her mouth. Not being familiar with ferret illnesses it was quite alarming, but the vet let us know that it was normal behavior after vomiting. Unfortunately she never quite got well again.

The long road trip across the country wasn't the easiest on her either. Because we were smuggling them into hotel rooms that didn't accept pets, we had to keep them in the bathrooms overnight. Though she normally slept in a locked cage, Amelie did not handle this banishment to the bathroom well, and scratched frantically at the door in the middle of the night until finally we let her out. We put her in the bed with us and she immediately curled up and went to sleep.

Weeks later we found her having trouble walking. she seemed drunk and unable to keep her balance, yet frantically tried to run around. The vet diagnosed her with an insulin tumor which caused her sugar levels to be out of whack, and she had some related intestinal problems. The medicine he prescribed would have to be administered to her every other day for a few weeks, and eventually less frequently, but she would have to take it forever. The problem was, Amelie hated it. Giving her the medicine was wildly traumatizing for her, and every administration became an ordeal. Afterward she would mope around and ignore us, pawing again at her mouth.

The medicine worked well enough and she was able to regain a little of her former personality at times, but not often. She still had her sisters, but I'm afraid we had become the people who kept force feeding her the medicine she hated so much.

We kept it up for almost a year, but she got worse. She wouldn't sleep with her sisters any more. She slept longer and longer and eventually only got up to go to the bathroom. She wasn't able to play or steal or investigate new things. By the end I suspect she was completely blind. Soon, the only time she really would let us touch her was if she was already laying down and then she would accept some scratching. She would rarely let me roll her onto her back anymore and scratch her neck, but when she did, she would still lick the tip of my nose. Eventually that stopped too. She didn't even seemed to recognize us anymore.

Then the seizures started. She would make a terrible hissing noise, would bare her fangs, and drool would run out of her mouth. It was terrible to see her that way. We knew it was time to say goodbye to our little Amelie. When it was time to go to the vet, I found her lazing in her hammock, fast asleep. I reached in and scratched the back of her neck as I had so many times before. Whether because she was dreaming, sleeping, or having a moment of clarity I don't know, but she gave me a gift. She pressed into my hand and began to lick like she used to when she was well.

The euthanasia was to be administered in two parts. First a mild sedative would be injected painlessly into her belly. Once sedated, an intravenous injection would stop her heart. Lying on Kim's lap, Amelie drifted to sleep and died from the sedative alone.

I write this because I loved her and I want to remember her.

- Ender

"I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. Please tame me! One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. -- The Little Prince

Thank You Western Idaho Cabinets!

2010-06-16T14:31:00.007-04:00

So I got this random check in the mail the other day (who doesn't love that) from Western Idaho Cabinets. Since I had never heard of them, Ender suggested contacting them before cashing it. I looked them up online and wrote a quick email to customer service. I got a lovely email back saying it's a commission check for a photo I sold. Sweet!

Ok so here's the back story: Since moving to St. George I have been on Craigslist a lot looking at both the job and furniture section. I saw a posting for photographers I thought I'd check it out. They wanted people to send in St. George pictures of interest, one being the St. George Temple. They were looking for new pictures for an expo they would be doing in town and to have on their website. If they liked your picture they would contact you and put it on a 3-4 month trial period to see if any sold. They chose one of the pictures I sent in but then I didn't hear a thing from them until the check came in the mail. I'm not sure how many of my pictures sold because they didn't say and the commission ranges by size of picture but from the amount of the check I had to have sold at least 8. How cool is that?! At least 8 people have a photo I took in their house. I know it's not a lot and really not that big of a deal but it's a first for me. If you want to look up the website it is www.framedlegacy.com. I love their temple pictures.

Here is the photo I sent in of the St. George Temple.

And here is what they did with it.

Now that the expo is over and people can only order online we'll see if anymore commission checks come. Either way it has been an exciting experience.

Patio Play

2010-04-19T13:09:00.005-04:00

One of the things I missed most while living in Brooklyn was not having my own out door area. I have a great BBQ Ender bought me when we lived in CA that has been packed in his parents basement the 3 years we lived in New York. I couldn't wait to have a space to put it when we moved. Our new place has a patio that I have been very excited to put together. The BBQ was the first thing I put out there. I love that thing. I got some birthday money from my in-laws and decided it was all gonna go towards making the patio a fun place to hang out. I bought an old picnic table on KSL for 20 bucks that I plan on sanding and painting. I bought some cute pots and flowers at Walmart and cute lights and pillows at Target. My in-laws came to visit and we went to Tai Pan. They bought me a cute planter and a great fountain. Ender was helping someone move and they had an old patio set they were getting rid of. Ender brought it home and I was very excited. My mother-in-law suggested using rust-oleum on it to refresh it. So three spray cans later and it looks awesome. It was seriously a pain to do. Lots of taping and newspaper covering so I didn't spray the chair material but it was well worth it.
lThe pictures make the paint look shinier than it is. I still have things to do out on the patio before it's finished but I love the space so far. Ender and I have enjoyed a number of meals out there already. I can't wait until the whole thing is done. It's so nice to have a place you can enjoy with family and friends or to spend a quiet moment alone.

Adoption

2010-04-09T13:07:00.003-04:00

For those of you who don't know, over the past few months, Kim and I have been going through the adoption process. As of yesterday, we've finished all of the legal requirements and we're finally eligible to adopt!

We don't find it awkward to talk about at all, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I want to thank those who participated in the process with recommendation letters, advice, and support. Without you this wouldn't be possible! (well, we would have found someone else to do it, but... thanks anyway).

Some FAQ's you might be interested in:

Q: Why are you adopting? Can't you get pregnant?

A: We actually don't know if we are unable to get pregnant or not. We just know that it hasn't happened. We have not attempted artificial insemination, or in-vitro. Adoption is not our last resort, but our first. It's something we are very excited about and feel that there is a baby out there meant for our family.

Q: How long will it take?

A: The part that we have any control over is now finished. Now all we can do is wait for a birth-mother to choose us. Adoption is not a first-come, first-serve situation and agencies have very little control over which families are picked. It's all up to the birth mother who chooses us. It could happen today, it could happen 4 years from now, it could happen never.

Q: Any news on the adoption?

A: No. Please see above answer. Trust me, I'll be handing out cigars if there's news.

Q: What age are you trying to adopt?

A: We would like to adopt an infant.

Q: Do you want a boy or a girl?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you want an asian baby?

A: Sure.

Q: Do you want a black baby?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you want a (insert ethnicity here) baby?

A: Yes.

Q: You are going to make amazing parents!!!

A: That's not a question. But yes. ;)

The Van-ity of driving across the country.

2009-11-25T02:42:00.003-05:00

Moving is such a pain. Days of packing, throwing away tons of stuff I can’t believe we kept in such a small apartment, and lots of cleaning. We had lots of friends to visit with before leaving. Trying to fit them all in around all the packing and stuff became a little difficult and stressful. It led to some very long nights of only a couple hours of sleep. The night before we moved we went out with friends and then came home and stayed up until 3 am making sure everything was ready to be packed the next day. We shipped 11 boxes of clothes and shoes. That was after getting rid of tons of pairs. Fedx screwed up the pick-up so Ender had to deliver the packages to their warehouse early that morning before we could pack the van. (Right...the van. So we bought a van for the trip. We figured it would be cheaper than renting a uhaul and we could turn around and sell it once we finished the trip.)

So Ender’s back now and our friends came by to help us pack the van. All went well and we were on our way. We drove thru China town (which was a bad idea) but soon we were out of NYC and really on our way. Woo hoo! We had driven about 2 hours and we blow out a tire on the freeway. We were in Pennsylvania which we were supposed to drive right through. Ender meant to get a AAA type roadside assistance thing but we were so busy he forgot. So we’re on the side of this super dark, two lane highway and the van is so packed we can barely reach the spare, let alone get it out.

Now this is what I was worried about the most with driving across country. I’ve watched enough horror movies to know that breaking down in a small town gets you tortured and killed. We were lucky enough to not be killed by anyone. We got towed by a very nice guy who changed our tire and told us to get the other tires at Walmart. That is when the rest of our troubles began. The next morning we went to Walmart where they relaced 2 tires but didn’t have a third in stock. We ate at a yummy chinese buffet and were once again on our way. We drove about an hour this time before we started having problems and had to get off the freeway again. We found another Walmart and told them we needed one last tire and for them to check the front two that the last Walmart had replaced. He said they were really busy but should be able to get to it in about 1 1/2 hours. During this time we ate, really stressed out that it could be something else making the van drive bad, and looked at everything possible in Walmart. 4 hours later our van was done. The guy said the first guy who replaced the tires did a horrible job and everything should be fine now. We get in and drive and the van is still making a horrible noise. By then it was too late to find a place to fix it, so we had to get a hotel in Pennsylvania again. The next day the mechanic couldn’t see the car until 1, so we had to pay for another night in the hotel. Ender took it over and it was still the tires. They were falling off of the car. So he replaced the bearings and everything ran smooth. We finally made it out of Pennsylvania with a big cheer.

We drove forever to make up the day we lost and made it to Chicago. We checked into our hotel at about 2 am. We had breakfast with friends the next morning. It was nice to have something other than fast food and snacks. We had a fun time visiting with them and were once again on the road making our way to Lincoln, Nebraska. Before getting on the freeway we stopped to get gas. Ender didn’t notice it was 7 eleven gas and as we pulled away said I hope we didn’t get bad gas. Of course with our luck we did. We drove for a while and then started having trouble again. Bythis time we were in Nebraska. We pulled off the freeway and Ender called a mechanic to see if he could look at it. The mechanic said they were closed for the football game and then wouldn’t open again until Monday. We had some lunch and put new gas in and the van started right up. We had no more problems with the van after that. We made it to Colorado just as it started snowing but nothing really stuck. We made it to Utah on Monday night. It was a stressful trip with van troubles, ferret smuggling, and long hours of driving but we still manged to have fun and make it in one piece. We’re happy it’s over and are ready to start our lives in St. George. Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes as we drove.

It's Business Time

2009-08-25T23:03:00.010-04:00

I just turned 31.

I want to be a guy who can take pride in not being obsessed with his birthday. Unfortunately, at times I think my fixation on avoiding such an obsession has at times been an obsession in and of itself. One in which I've tried to be so nonchalant about a birthday celebration that I find myself preoccupied by who has and has not contacted me to do any birthday well-wishing. This of course has not gone unnoticed by those nearest to me.

This year, I think I finally reached that Nirvana of apathy.

One of my best friends, Neal, came to stay with us for 12 days to celebrate. I haven't seen him in over 3 years, so it was a long overdue reconnection. Because he was here for a week before my birthday, and several days after, it felt as though half the month was an elaborate birthday extravaganza!

The list of activities included:

Roof Top Party in the Financial District
Animal Collective Concert in Prospect Park
Prospect Park Drum Circle
Played in a broken Fire Hydrant
Conservatory Garden in Central Park
Off Broadway Cabaret near Lincoln Center
Staten Island Ferry, and White Castle
Dinner with Cote
Rumikub with Francesco and Evelyn
Skydiving over Long Island!!
Driving a Mini Cooper to Yonkers to adopt 2 more Ferrets
Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipity
The epic meeting of my friends: Neal & Cote
Strand Bookstore (18 Miles of Books!)
Visiting the Bethesda Fountain and the Alice and Wonderland Statue
Stand up Comedy and Dancing with Neal, Cote & Sameet
Junior's World Famous Cheesecake

Spending so much time with Kim and my good friends, exploring the city that I love, was such great fun that actually turning 31 seemed to have an extremely displaced importance in my mind.

I'm sure Kim is going to blog about a few of these events individually, but I wanted to at least touch on a few of the highlights:

Animal Collective was SO cool. I really didn't know what to expect because I have never listened to this type of music, but I really enjoyed it. I guess what they do is a sort of experimental techno sounding indie pop. As strange as it may sound, I think I enjoyed it on the same level that I liked the opera I went to a few weeks earlier. In the opera, simple phrases were often recited and repeated over and over in varying musical arrangements and speeds. Animal Collective did something similar with a techno sound, undeniably manipulating the mood of the crowd as there were several moments when everyone in the audience seemed to be feeling the same impulse to jump and scream in unison during some of the more thrilling moments. I was also really taken with the way the bass sound vibrated my rib cage, and realizing that every person in the audience was experiencing it simultaneously. I've been to very few live concerts.

Skydiving did not scare me nearly as much as I thought it would. I had been worried all week that the weather wouldn't be good enough to jump, which is what happened last year when I tried to do it. Our luck held out. Neal and I jumped from 14,000 feet, did a free fall for a little over a minute. I was so high up that I realized I couldn't even see the ground rushing up at me. I really did feel like I was floating. I also had time to reflect on all the Looney Tunes cartoons I had watched as a kid. As Kim put it, when Neal was trying to conjugate Skydiving into the past tense ('I sky dove? I sky dived?"), "You Sky Lived."

A Business of Ferrets is the actual name for a group of 3 or more ferrets. You know, just like a gaggle of geese, a pack of wolves, or a pod of wales. We wanted to get one more ferret so that Amelie would have a friend to play with. When we arrived the two ferrets from which we were choosing were sisters that had been together since birth. Not wanting to split them up, we took them both and named them after the twin witches from "Spirited Away:" Zaniba and Yubaba.

Here's a short video of them playing together.

--Ender

Circus Comes to Town

2009-07-30T18:30:00.006-04:00

So this is something I told everyone I would post about months ago (obviously not on here since we didn't have this months ago but elsewhere) and never did. I'm really bad at stuff like this which is why Ender and I are only now starting a blog after living in NYC for almost 3 years now. Anyway the Elephant Walk is something Ender and I thought would be a fun thing to see that only happens in NYC. I heard about it when we first moved here but never seemed to think of it until after the event occurred. This year I was happy I remembered. So what is the Elephant Walk? When the Ringling Brothers come to town they hold their show at Madison Square Garden. Well they have a problem getting the elephants from the rail yard in Queens to Madison Square Garden so the elephant walk began. After midnight the elephants, some horses and ponies and of course the trainers all start their walk through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. They continue their walk down 34th St until they reach the Garden. Ender and I went down a little early to get a spot close to the tunnel. Around 2 am the elephants were finally here. It's the strangest thing to see elephants walking down 34th street at 2 am. Even though they look like they are walking slow they zoomed past us and before we knew it they were gone. Tons of people started running after them trying to keep up all the way down 34th St. We were no exception. We ran as fast as we could down the avenues to catch up and take a couple more pictures. I mean, we had waited for about 3 hours in the cold to have these elephants blow right past us so we felt the need to run with everyone else. It was a really unusual and fun night. After recently viewing some of the new footage of the way the trainers have been treating the elephants it ruined the experience a little, but still a great NYC memory.

Sectumsempra!

2009-07-24T22:17:00.008-04:00

The other night while waiting in line for the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, my friend Chris and I met this little girl. She cut into the line like Hermione Granger barging into Harry and Ron's train car on the Hogwarts Express, but looking like Ginnie Weasley.

Ignoring the people she had cut in front of, she launched into conversational praise at Chris's robes and our wands, asked us philosophical questions about the books, and called us fascinating as we answered. We found out she was 12 years old. Her dad is a banker and her mother is an accountant of some kind. She definitely fit the profile of a Manhattan Baby. She had come with her brother (who was 14) but they had different show times so she was in line alone. Well, not alone. She had made new friends.

Since it was opening night, we had arrived early, and so we spent the next hour or two discussing Everything from snogging to Horcruxes with the most tenacious 12 year old I had ever met. She went on to the theater where she thought her movie was playing, but after it started realized that she was sitting in "Bruno" and left. (Good job ticket takers. Way to keep a 12 year old out of the biggest envelope pusher ever to be on the big screen).

We were later joined by a few more friends, guys and girls, and then once again, little Hermione. She helped herself to seats right next to ours so that the conversation could continue. I have to say, this was more memorable than the time we saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with the band, Nickel Creek.

-Ender

Brooklyn Blog

2009-07-18T15:33:00.005-04:00

We've been living in New York for nearly 3 years, and decided it was time to document some of our experiences.

Ender had a blog a few years ago when Myspace was new, and when that came to an end, so did anything that resembled a journal. We hope that this will be an easy and fun way to share our day-to-day lives with our friends and family who live so far away.

Living in New York has been unbelievable. It has given us the opportunity to experience food, culture, transportation, and a lifestyle completely different from anything we had before, which has helped us to grow tremendously.

New York has an amazing way of attracting some of the most creative and interesting people we've ever known. It's as if the eccentric oddballs from every family wound up here together. There always seems to be something percolating.

Since we've been here we've been able to visit Washington DC, Palmyra NY, The Niagara Falls, Sleepy Hollow, and Ender has even been all the way up through New England into Canada. Every day has seemed an adventure, one we will never forget.

Happy Reading!