Ok sorry, just one more to make your mouth water...fried chicken noodle soup; nothing better than Men Tei on a snowy day :)

This was the Guinness-soaked Christmas pudding I saw at Cardullo's (bloody brilliant), and this guy was outside The Burren dressed as a pint of Guinness! How incredible is that?!

Some more from the archives of CFS. This was me baking Ben's birthday cake this year at the Cates' house. Big thumbs up.

More from Christmas dinner...Opening up the dirtiest oysters I've ever seen (with Ben in awe), then searing up some scallops - look pretty good, eh?

Christmas morning! My new Peaches N' Cream Barbie and Benny's Vick jersey. Will send more pics once I get 'em up on snapfish. Thank you so much for the family pics...I loved them!

MERRY XMAS!!! So nice to come home and have Christmas morning here. We cooked up a big breakfast, then I took a nap, then made a seafood FEAST for dinner: shrimp cocktail, oysters on the half-shell, seafood bisque, seared scallops (almost as good as yours!) and lobster-kinda-thermadore. YUM.

Merry Xmas Eve! Boston misses you and so do I. I found this snowman family on my way home from Alex's the other night. Can't wait to talk to you tomorrow.

I finally figured out how to download the pictures off my phone - yay! This was the donut hole croquembouche I made for family last Sunday and these were the christmas cookies Rachel and Mary made on their day off. Adorable.

How pretty is my ring? You're the best. I love love love you. xx

How much do you miss this sandwich?....

And how about those pastries!

Finally saw Alex tonight. Got out of work early and went over there and watched some of the Pats game. Almost fell asleep on his couch so I left but we're gonna go to breakfast/brunch/lunch tmrw. He's still alive and kicking.

Cook any tarts with Brandon lately?

Happy 17th!!! Only a month to my birthday and a WEEK to Christmas...this may be the best day of the year! Oh the anticipation!!!

More Christmas presents! I went a little crazy with Christmas shopping this year, but I kept finding good stuff. So the calendar is all these really cool old posters of fruits and vegetables from different states, and I'm going to give that to my mom and dad (I think for their anniversary present - their anniv is on the 30th), I got Rachel Julia Child's autobiography, eat/shop boston, and the Best of Broadway (she loves to listen to it at work and I always give her crap about it), the Smurfette lunchbox for Nadja (inside joke), and I'm going to fill the Hello Kitty one with cookies and bring them to L'Espalier, then let Louie and Jiho fight over who gets to keep it.

Look at all my Christmas presents! The golf stuff's for dad (obviously), the shirt's for Ben (you like it? I love the inside of the cuffs!), and the little scottie dogs are magnets that I found that I'm sending to Molly and I'm going to sneak one into my mom's stocking (she needs a little surprise from Santa too).

So I got chinese takeout the other night and the lady gave me two fortune cookies which made me kinda sad. Luckily the scallion pancakes made me very happy! I opened your fortune, but it wasn't a keeper. Oh well.

Kind of a random pic. Always liked this one. Miss you.

I really love this picture. Maybe you can fly to Boston by balloons...

More baby pics! This little cutie is my other new cousin (so many of them, hard to keep track)...Miles Paul Rubenstein, son of my cousin Eric and his wife Carly (I'm going to have to draw you a family tree one of these days). Max likes the sunbathing pose too, strange...

It's snowing!!! FINALLY. First snow of the season, nice reward after a week's worth of sub-freezing temps. Guess we'll have to wait a little longer to get this result, but for now I'm liking the flakes. Reminds me of our first magical kiss...

A couple more pics from TG. My Aunt Jackie brought my dad this hat and wants him to wear it out on the golf course or the boat..."anywhere there are rich classy people." Man, you're gonna love her when you meet her. Then of course we had to try it on Wrigley :)

Can you believe Max got a Stanford t-shirt before you did?? He's only a week old! Pretty darn cute though. I'm going over there tomorrow to hang out/do laundry/cook/clean/hold Max while Jess can nap/shower/brush her teeth. Aren't I a good friend? :)

Today you get a picture and a video to go with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HNY0rx2fw4&feature=related. This song has really stuck on me and it's because the lyrics make me think of you. Home is wherever I'm with you.

Berge's birthday festivities...we all wore the buttons that we used to wear to his football games in college. It was pretty awesome - you could pick out everyone in the bar who was with us. Fun times. (That was a random guy in the back who ninja-bombed the picture - but he actually makes it!)

Internet's back! Woohoo! We picked Secret Santas today at work!!! I got Rachel, one of my assistants who I adore. I'm really excited. I already have a bunch of ideas what to get her. Hope you had a lovely relaxing day off today. Talk to you tomorrow.

THIS is the famous pinch-me-cake (also known as monkey bread...like you!).  My aunt Wanda makes the best one ever. Every time my mom tries to make it she ruins it. It's a running joke. It's basically store-bought biscuits tossed in cinnamon sugar and doused in an ooey-gooey sticky sauce. It's AMAZING. You have to serve it with chocolate milk and it's called pinch-me-cake because you can just pinch off the little pieces with your hands!