merry christmas!

meet my family...

for my aunt's 50th birthday (on christmas eve), my dad bought her depends (don't all families buy depends for their relatives?). so my aunt thought it would be funny to put the depends on to surprise my dad.

here we are preparing for the big reveal.

and, in case you were wondering, it is possible to do everyday tasks with diapers on. you can cook, pour coffee, have conversations, read a newspaper, and take pictures!

here's my dad's surprise...

these are my two youngest brothers. i think they are the cutest!

rory...
nick...
my dad with my grandparents

my aunt holly and uncle joe
cousin ashley
the birthday boy. my brother's birthday is christmas day and my aunt's is christmas eve. lucky them with all the presents they get at christmas!

hunting apartments

the day after i returned from london, mom, joel and i went in search of the perfect apartment. of course the criteria was tough and only the fittest of the fit survived. here are some pictures of the contenders. vote on which one you think we chose!


contestant #1 - mike's place











contestant #2 - joe's place














contestant #3 - doug's place














contestant #4 - amos' place














contestant #5 - fat guy's place

last dinner for six

the house of love cast...

john
ben
corey (current foosball champ)
rachel

vanessa


playing with fire
after a delicious italian dinner, we came home and had a round robin foosball tourney. john and ben won. i think they cheated.

its been a blast here in london. i'm going to miss these kids dearly. i believe this is what life is made of...little memories that become the whitewash of all other memories. i hope you've enjoyed reading about my trip. i pray there will be more adventures for you to share in.

love,
me.

last hoorah

for our last hoorah we went to the two chairman in picadilly circus. we had the whole second floor and it was great. food came out of the kitchen in perfectly timed intervals and no one was without a drink. by the end of the night there were a LOT of drunk people.

these pictures were all taken with john's camera...hence the reason he's in EVERY shot.

me, aaron, and missyglyn....our fearless program coordinator
hammer...he's from a different law school. every now and then this would don on me and i would get very sad. we will all be amiss when our london group is torn apart
sarah...also from another law school. sniff sniff
jeremy...our european union law professor and britain's most eligible jewish bachelor
chris and mitchell

budapest

words cannot describe this trip...so, i'll post pictures instead.

on the train...john and ben
mark...he's an undergrad. we took pity on him and allowed him into our presence.


some budapest buildings. i love the old style architecture

the christmas market! we spent many hours here...shopping, eating, listening to music and drinking mulled wine.
delicious circular pastries.

boys and their toys...they never grow up. and yes, ben did buy that sword.

more streets. we walked a loooong ways to hero square.

large basilica
cool street design

i like the pastel paint for the buildings. houses in other countries are so cool looking and so boring in america.

house of terror. where the communists and soviets tortured and killed people during their reign in hungary (which has been independent since 1991)
continuing our journey along andrassey to hero's square.
we finally made it - tired and hungry. grrr.
this was our view at the restaurant we ate at.


back at the market for more mulled wine and sausage after a wonderful visit to the baths. the best thing in budapest is their turkish hot springs that are a gazillion years old. we had a fantastic time swimming and relaxing in the outdoors pools at hero square. in fact, it was so wonderful that people were having sex right next to us. john enjoying his wine...
buda castle. budapest is broken down into three main areas. we stayed on the pest side and all the pictures above are from the pest side. this castle is on the buda side.

the danube (this is from the buda side looking at the pest side)






more houses on the buda side in the castle district
a cool old church that was being refurbished
not sure what this was..but it was cool.
the parliament building
reflection of the cool castle building

parliament up close
back at the market again....this time there were musicians and they complemented the mulled wine perfectly