Christmas 2006: The Curse of The Rubix Cube

Stocking Stuffer: We'll keep working on it.

Christmas 2006: Top 8 Most Fascinating Things I learned about Brendan

1. When Brendan was little he decided he wanted to be a monkey when he grew up (not so strange considering one of Brendan's co-workers daughter decided she wants to be a traffic light!)

2. Brendan refuses to decorate the Christmas tree - especially when everyone is watching.

3. Brendan was the most beautiful baby boy in the whole world (according to mama Madeline)

4. Brendan is the best present wraper I have ever seen. He has perfected the exercise.

5. Brendan actually can sleep past 7AM! (I guess it helped that 10AM in New York is like 7AM in Vancouver)

6. Brendan is very well known in the dry cleaning world. Both the dry cleaner down the street in Staten Island and the one we used in Denver know Brendan by name and think I am the luckiest girl in the whole world. The dry cleaner on Staten Island always asks Brendan's family members: "how is brother? how is mother? how is sister? HOW is Brendan?". The one in Denver always would say: "Oh, Mr. Gill. He's so quiet, so nice, so tall...so handsome."

7. Brendan can sing along to and know's the lyrics to Billy Joels "We Didn't Start The Fire" by heart. He demonstrated for me and his dad, Liam.

8. When around family Brendan is strongly influenced and speaks in a standard New York accent using standard vocabulary. Examples: the use of "axed" rather than "asked" and "colld" rather than "called."

Christmas 2006: The Big Apple

Population New York City: 1.5 million

Population Vancouver: 0.5 million

Christmas 2006: The Lady and The Staten Island Ferry

Brendan, The Bridge and The Wind Tunnel

A few weeks ago Brendan left Meredith alone and spent the day in Toronto to see how the bridge - during construction conditions - performed under various maximum wind conditions. According to Brendan, the bridge performed "as expected"...

New Mountain, Same Old Ways...

Saturday we realized that it didn't matter what mountain we skied...Meredith still rocked and Brendan couldn't keep up (we found the steep stuff)! Whistler is great (even with the rain and slush) - we can't wait for you all to visit!

What's this?

We returned from the hot and dry Colorado mountains (Estes Park) to an unexpected wintery Vancouver snow storm that lasted all week.

Winter in Vancouver

A rare sighting: The Mountains in winter time. Usually covered with fog.
Trees in Stanley Park + snow

We went to Denver for Thanksgiving and all we got were these lousy pictures.

And lots of good time visiting with friends and family...and our favorite dogs and babies

Pottery Barn Anyone?