Happy Halloween!

We only got a couple dozen trick-or-treaters this year, which actually isn't too bad considering the kinda busy street (traffic-wise) we live on. I don't like getting the older kids--c'mon, should you really be trick-or-treating when you're over 15?--so we turned the light off a little after 8pm to avoid that. Thank goodness I only bought one medium-sized bag of candy though cuz we still have a bunch left.

Check out the pumpkins we carved last week. So fun :) We didn't really put them out until tonight because my sisters had me so paranoid that someone would come through and smash them if we put them out earlier. Nice thought, huh? Carving was fun, I think we'll have to make a tradition of it.

Happy Birthday to Me :)

I love birthdays...mine or anyone else's, I just love celebrating them! WC did an amazing job surprising me tonight. The plan was that he was taking me out for a nice, simple dinner to commemorate the event. We got to the restaurant and the hostess pointed us to a table--where three of our friends were waiting! We haven't met many new people out here yet, at least not people we'd celebrate our birthdays with so I wasn't expecting a party involving others. But these were old college friends who still live in Boston and it was such a nice surprise! I hadn't seen IT in particular for about a year now; he's been too busy with work as a consultant and it was so good to finally catch up with him. I guess a few more people were supposed to show up, but they had to bail at the last minute unfortunately. Yay for my amazing (and sneaky) husband! It was a wonderful dinner at Tuscan Grill, made much more special by the addition of old friends.

My family celebrated with me last weekend because they have to go to a wedding in upstate NY this weekend. We started the afternoon off with some pumpkin carving, which was a ton of fun. Then it was present time. I got a waffle maker from my mom, which I've been wanting because we love hosting brunch and Belgian waffles are so yummmmmmy. And my sisters got me DDR (aka Dance Dance Revolution), also by request :) Heehee...I'm so bad at it right now, but I plan to practice lots and get better! I even got my mom to try it out, haha! My present to myself is sleeping in as late as I want tomorrow. With the Red Sox in the World Series I've been going to bed really late and it's definitely wearing me down. Not setting the alarm is such a luxurious indulgence....

Happy Birthday to Me! Thanks, WC and the rest of my family, for making it special!

Autumn has arrived

In the last week or two, the transition from summer to fall has been pretty obvious. It's now about 50-something degrees in the house when I wake up in the morning (40s outside), but we're holding out on turning on the heat as long as we can. It does warm up during the day to mid-60s or so, which is almost a relief from the high-80s we were having for a while. I forgot about how it's kind of fun to switch wardrobes season to season--from tanks and shorts to jeans and warm sweaters.

The leaves are just starting to change colors, though I bet it's been beautiful up north in New Hampshire and Maine for a couple of weeks now.

I can't believe it's almost time to fly out to S.F. again for the final wedding of the year. Once the November wedding is done, I think we're off the hook until next July. So far the lineup is:
1) July 2008: EH & GH - S.F.
2) August 2008: EC & TC - S.F.
3) September 2008: MH & BW - S.D.

Maybe one of these days we'll actually start traveling to places other than California again :P

Happy Anniversaries

I've been super lazy about blogging lately. Couple of big things:

(1) Happy 1-month Anniversary to S&R! I had the pleasure of being a bridesmaid in their wedding last month and WC and I spent a week and a half hanging out with the happy couple as well as other friends. I had been waiting for the hubby to upload pics to our shared drive before posting a congrats on the wedding to S&R, but seeing as that still hasn't happened I'll just wish 'em a happy anniversary, sans pic.

(2) Happy 1-Year House Anniversary to Us! September 14, 2007 marked our first year of being in this house. Still loving it....

I managed to overcome the mom guilt trip and decided not to go to a distant relative's wedding later this month. I'm not close to my cousin's dad's kid (told you it was a distant relative), I'm a little wedding'd out (still have one more to go in S.F. in November), plus the wedding is on my birthday weekend. Who wants to be in upstate New York on her birthday?!

How many weddings is that this year that we were invited to?
(1) LB & RC - S.F.
(2) SC & RL - S.F.
(3) RS & LG - S.F.
(4) PY & CC - S.F.
(5) MY & MK - Victoria, Canada
(6) HT & IK - Bali (wish we could've gone to that one!)
(7) LL & LB - NY

We only attended three of the seven above (well, two so far plus the one in Nov.), but it still feels like a lot because of all the travel required. And we've already got 3 lined up in California next year--it's fun, but let's hope it slows down soon!

I hate getting old

Grrr...a day after our double's tournament and my whole body is sore, even after remembering to stretch at the end of the day (which I never usually do). Plus my knees have been bugging me a bit. And I'm tired even though I got 8 hours of sleep. Blah, Mondays....

Housewarming Party! 11 Months Late :P

We finally hosted our official housewarming party for my family last weekend. Most of my extended clan of 17 have been over to the house at some point or other, but many of them haven't seen it since we actually got furniture. It also happened to be hubby's mom's birthday and she was in town visiting us so it was fun turning it into a birthday party for her as well. I don't think she's used to having so much family around, and I think she enjoyed it.

Thank goodness my mom brought 75% of the food for the party because I seriously don't know how I would have pulled the event off otherwise. I mean, I cook OK but for 18 people? Yikes. And when my family gets together, it's an all day eating- and hangout-fest. So the party started at noon and everyone went home probably around 10pm or so. Lots of fun; good practice for when we host Christmas this year. Good thing my sisters brought their Wii over too to keep everyone entertained--Grand Theft Auto on our PS2 is probably not the best choice for the 6 and 4 year old cousins :P

As for WC's mom's visit, that was really nice too. She spent about a week and a half with us, and it all went really well. The guest room was a little loud for her at first since we're on a semi-busy street and she lives in a retirement community, but after the first night she adjusted pretty quickly. It probably also helps that she did things like working on our yard for four hours to tire herself out. Who knew our tiny yard could require that much work? We really didn't mean to put her to so much hard labor on her vacation, but she claims to enjoy it and I'm not going to say no to free yard help (esp. given my black thumb...OK maybe not so much "black" as "lazy :P).

Yay for successful parties and mother-in-law visits!

More Visits & Visitors

We had a great weekend hanging out with my old college friend NS who came to visit from Colorado on his way over to a week-long photography workshop in Maine. He stayed with us on Friday and Saturday and we ate our way through the weekend. First up was dinner at a Szechuan restaurant near where NS and his friend CM were dropped off by the airport shuttle. Luckily everyone at dinner was into spicy food and CM's sister, who is also a local, enjoyed it so much she planned on bringing her family back later this week. I love knowing good restaurants and being able to introduce others to them! We're still learning our way through the Boston restaurant scene; unfortunately we still feel like we know the S.F. eateries better.

On Saturday morning we went to dim sum in Chinatown, at NS's special request. I can't imagine living in a place without good dim sum (or sushi, or Korean, or Vietnamese.... ;)). Because we went early we had our pick of dishes as the carts cruised by our table and amazingly all our favorite stuff showed up right away. NS said it was like Harry Potter where the food just magically appears on the table all at once. Mmm...I'm making myself hungry for more dim sum as I type this!

After dim sum we braved the intense heat (99 degrees according to my car thermostat!) and walked over to Boston Common where there was supposed to be a photo exhibit. The "exhibit" turned out to be a dozen or so photographers acting as human easels with big photo posterboards hanging around their necks. OK....

We found a Starbucks to cool off in for about a half hour, then hit Harvard Square as NS hasn't been back to the old alma mater in about five years. Science Center is as ugly as ever, I still couldn't remember where the Pooh door is in the Yard, Sanders Theater still has lovely stained glass windows, and people are still rubbing that nasty left foot of the John Harvard statue for good luck. If only they knew....

After NS and CM left for Maine on Sunday morning, we made some food and headed over to MH and NH's place for dinner. They recently had an adorable baby boy and we thought it'd be nice to bring them some home-cooked food. Little did we realize that NH's parents were still living with them to help with the baby so they were getting plenty of home cooking. Oh well; we all had a great time catching up and the baby received his visitors very graciously, full of smiles and babbles for all of us.

Finally, WC's mom is coming from Arizona to stay with us for a couple of weeks starting on Wednesday. I hope we can get the house clean enough in time!

HP Update #2 (still no spoilers)

Yaaay! I finished it last night, even with volleyball (on a side note, playing doubles outdoor in 90-degree weather is not fun, especially when you're supposed to be a team of four and everyone on your opponents' teams do show up like they're supposed to). Soooo good...I can't believe how action-packed the whole book was. Now I'll have to keep an eye out for a good deal on the whole series so I can start all over from the beginning :)

I'm so relieved not to have to worry about spoilers anymore! I was so afraid someone would slip and tell me something before I'd read the whole thing.

HP Update (no spoilers)

Got to page 585 last night before finally forcing myself to stop reading and go to bed. WC, meanwhile, worked all night on some project for work. Poor WC.

So about 175 pages to go...I am so finishing...wait!...we have our volleyball league tonight! Grrr...must...finish...reading...Harry Potter!

On the Harry Potter Bandwagon (no spoilers)

Woohoo! Got my hands on Harry Potter 7 last night. I was surprised it was available so quickly at my local library. I had pre-requested it several weeks ago and assumed I was around #1000-something on the request list and would never actually get it (that's how the Palo Alto library seemed to work for popular titles). But lo and behold, only a week and a half after its release, I got an e-mail from the library that the book was mine for pickup. Impressive. Apparently they got lots of copies and people have just been devouring the book and returning it quickly.

I got through about 280 pages over 4 hours or so of reading last night. Action-packed! Do I really have to work today??? I considered calling in sick so I could spend the day reading instead, but I'd already told my assistant yesterday that I was picking up the book so I thought she might get suspicious :P

I definitely plan on buying the whole series now that it's complete and re-reading from beginning to end. I've forgotten some things since reading #6 (shocker), but that's OK. More good reading to look forward to.