Thursday, December 2, 2010

Thanksgiving Weekend...New York Style

So, for Thanksgiving weekend Jake's parents treated us to a family trip to New York City.  It was great to show them around Buffalo and to visit Jake's sister and brother-in-law in New York City.  It was my first visit to NYC and I was astounded by the sheer magnitude of the city!  We had a great time visiting the Natural History Museum, having dinner at the Marriot Marquis in Time Square, touring the Statue of Liberty and seeing Phantom of the Opera.  Thank you Wildings for such a wonderful trip!  I hope that Jake and I can make it back to NYC soon while we are out here.
 When Jake's family flew into town we had an ultimate wing-off and taste tested wings from Duff's and Anchor.  Still no consensus on which one is better.

 Some of the fam at Niagara falls.  I think it was a little rainy...too bad I had to work that day.

 Our niece Makena at the visitor center at Palmyra.  (Jake took the picture.)

The perfect Time's Square shot of me and Mandi ;-).  (Jake took the picture.)

The Wildings table

 Thanksgiving dinner

 Malia and Shane got a leash for Makena so we could keep track of her in the crowds.  I think she actually liked it so that she could walk around freely.  She was so cute running from exhibit to exhibit in the museum.

 Walking around staten island.  It was freezing!! (Jake didn't take this picture)

 There she is...I took the picture.

So, this is all of us girls trying on hats at this cute shop somewhere in NYC and yes...I bought one.

THE "Lafamilia."  I would assume this place is THE place for New York style pizza.  I have to say...it was pretty dang good.

...And lastly...a public service announcement from Jake to all of you.

Monday, November 29, 2010

I guess I am a book nerd...

                                                      BBC Top 100
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses...

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen


2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible JSB

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy


13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller MJB


14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald


23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen


35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini


38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere JSB

39
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
 
57 A
Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov MJB

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83
The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Or maybe I am not really that much of a book nerd...I haven't really read that many of them, but I would like to.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Fall Semi-Formal and Ben Folds

The post title has a nice ring to it doesn't it?  Jake and I have been up to some fun things lately.  Last week we got all prettied up and danced it up at the dental school fall formal and last night we went to see Ben Folds at the Town Ballroom.  I am so glad we discovered this venue in Buffalo...just another reason why Buffalo ain't bad and Ben Folds wasn't bad either.  In fact, I thought he was pretty amazing.

 There he is!  Playing the piano!

We do have a picture without a crazy stranger behind my head, but this was too good to resist.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Best Husband...

I have the best husband. We had company over on Sunday and before our friends came over Jake said to me something like...maybe I should give you part of your birthday present early.  I was just like...uh...ok.  Then he said, "Yes, I think that's the right thing to do."  When he pulled out an Anthropologie bag I knew it was gonna be good.  I love my husband.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Halloween and....

So, I actually got Jake to dress up for Halloween with me but I didn't manage to get any pictures.  Maybe that's because I was so upset that nobody knew that I was Lucille Ball for Halloween.  I did manage to get some pictures of the pumpkins we carved and the dinner I made for us on Halloween night.  On an unrelated note...we finally got the new couch we ordered!  I have been so used to using our little love seat since we have been married that having a full-sized sofa makes me feel like I am living in luxery!  I love it and the apartment feels so cozy.

So, every year I try to make a scary looking pumpkin and it just always turns out to look "cute."  This year I forwent trying to be scary altogether and made a princess...much more up my ally.  Jake's pumpkin looks somewhat like a mean bulldog.

 Stuffed pepper jack-o-laterns.  A little cheesy?  Yes.

The couch!

The complete living room set.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Halloween Decorations

Jake is new to my love of Halloween, but I have to admit that it's not quite the same without being able to share it with our families and with so little storage space in our apartment I am reluctant to buy decorations, but thanks to both of our mothers I managed to do a little decorating.


 And lastly, the only picture I got of some of the autumn leaves.  It doesn't do it justice...


Sunday, September 26, 2010

A Visitor in Town

Last week my sister came out to visit.  It was great to have her here for a week to catch up and keep me company especially because Jake has been pretty busy with dental school this semester!  We didn't have time to do all of the things I wanted to do with her, but we did have a chance to go to Palmyra, Niagara Falls, and do a little sight-seeing around town.  Thanks again for coming Marette.  It was great to see you!

One of my favorite things that we did while Marette was out here was go apple picking!  We had to switch off carrrying the apple "pickin'" bag since it was a little heavy after we filled it with 11 pounds of apples!  Oh...and this is Marette...not to be confused with me.

I thought the orchards were so pretty, so I took a ton of pictures.  I am sure the the workers at the orchards thought we were crazy since they see this stuff everyday...

The loot...

 The Niagara Falls.

 Marette and Jake. Not to be confused with a pic of me and Jake.

 We love you Marette!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Labor Day Weekend at the Thousand Islands

Jake and I had heard so much about the Thousand Islands of New York, so we planned a little trip there for Labor Day weekend to finish off the summer with what we hoped was with a flourish.  I felt a little bit like a spectator of the rich and fabulous.  The Thousand Islands are apart of the St. Lawrence River where the well to-do build fabulous mansions on the islands that dot the river and drive around their fabulous boats.  Jake and I took a tourist boat cruise and looked at all of the fabulous houses and boats and toured the famous Bolt Castle.  On our trip I tried lobster for the first time and we couldn't leave without trying the original Thousand Island dressing.  We had a great time getting away, but to be honest, after two nights in our hotel room I was glad to be back to my own bed!

The door to our fabulous hotel room.

Jake is so excited about the lobster tail and filet mignon.

I am contemplating my first bite of lobster ever.

The very authentic knight's armor at the restaurant.  Western NY has endless oddities.


The ceiling inside the Bolt Castle.  Can you spot the hearts?  There were never-ending hearts throughout all of the architecture.  The story goes that Bolt was building this home for his wife, however, during construction she died of consumption.  The house was never completed and Bolt never lived in it.

Hearts...

Hearts...


More hearts...

The restaurant of the famous original Thousand Island dressing.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Buffalo Appreciation Day

Last weekend my sweet husband surprised me by taking me on an open air bus archeology tour of downtown Buffalo.  (*note: we were most definitely the youngest two people on the tour).  It surprised Jake and myself just how much I enjoyed the two and half hour tour of Buffalo's significant archeological highlights.  It gave me a new appreciation for the city and what it has to offer.  We didn't get a great view of the bus to take pictures, so we went on a little bike ride afterwards and did our best to get some decent shots.


Sunday, August 29, 2010

Toronto Day Trip

Before the start of school Jake treated me to a day trip to Toronto a couple of weekends ago.  It was nice to get away and spend the day together. We spent the morning at the historic Lawrence Market and then took a ferry to the Toronto Islands and just walked around and had a good time.  We finished the day off with dinner at the Old Spagheti Factory.  Normally, I am a supporter of local fare, but sometimes, it's just nice to go to a place that is predictably good and finished off with Spumoni.