more Belgium pictures

Your second visit to the motherland

Supportive. Patient. Caring. Amazing. The list goes on when I think about how wonderful you were when we went back to Belgium. I have so many memories from growing up that I associate with being back in Belgium that to now have so many amazing memories of being with you in Belgium with me puts a huge smile on my face. Thank you so much for listening to my grandma ramble on, I can tell that she loves you so much and I am so glad that you’ve gotten to know her a little bit. My grandpa, while usually a bit tougher to crack also thinks the world of you. We had some really fun times on this trip didn’t we? I’m not sure why I go back to my translating English into English for you every time I think about the Belgium part of that trip. You were finally able to buy some ‘discount’ shoes which I know you’ve been dying to do for a long time since you went to Belgium for the first time. We also managed to consume more French fries with curry ketchup in a span 5 days than I’ve done in the last 5 visits to Belgium. Thank goodness that you were able to sneak in the contraband. I’m talking about the, ugh, mustard of course. The walk with my mom and seeing the both of you smoke that cigar was classic. I’m already anxious for us to go back to Europe and explore more parts of Belgium and see more family.

Bazaarvoice Holiday Party Festivities

What’s really great about you is that I can take you out in public. Hehe, ok it’s obviously much better than that. You are so awesome about engaging with anyone that you’re around. That’s such a good trait to have and in office party setting it sure is helpful. Your dance moves that you display when the beat goes on is something to be admire as well…

Flex-time wedding fun

Dancing machines. That’s what we were on that super fun night. Funny how we ended up getting pizza after a wedding once again. I’m going to be sad when all our friends are married off, I think we will have to seriously throw an awesome 5-year (give or take a few) anniversary party. I’ll let some of the pictures tell the rest of this story.

Turkey Trot, Dallas style

Lots of trotting going on here...

Most relaxing day ever – Lake Austin Spa, meet your new regular clients

What will become a quarterly event to reward our hard work will perhaps go down as the most relaxing day I’ve ever had in my life. Every aspect of that day was just fantastic. I was so relaxed for that matter that I didn’t even take many pictures (which for me not to think about doing that is a big deal). Look out acupuncture session, that’s my next treatment.

I said Brrrr, it’s cold in here (please reference Chicago in January)

Talk about an almost epic shift in our lives. I am so proud of us for how we handled this situation. In the end I know that both situations would have been amazing for us and we would be happy either in Austin or Chicago or anywhere else for that matter as long as we’re able to be together and experience new things side by side. I have to admit I was nervous, really nervous. Talking through all the different aspects of the move with you reassured me so much that no matter what, we would make the most of it. Cold or no cold. Maybe some other time in our lives we’ll evaluate the situation that we’re in and decide that it is time to make that jump. If and when that happens, I’ll be jumping in together with you. I look forward to that day.

Bartender, I’d like a double Jublita please

Party of the year! Happy Birthday to Bita-ta and Julie Dear.

Is it really time for another ACL?

Ok, if we forget the fact that Bob Dylan sounded like he was trying to be Linus in a Charlie Brown cartoon the show was again a great weekend. We managed to travel in style on the cruise ship known as the Texas Lonestar something-or-other. Look how cute you are in the picture. I sure hope you’re blowing that kiss to me.

How do you spell Epenada?

That certainly can’t be right. Either way, I don’t really care, Tania makes a mean one. What was the first dinner party in what has become a really fun bonding even for our friends. As usual the Julie Salad was a big hit. That’s something else I have to thank you for, helping me find my love of salads. I think if we didn’t eat the salads that we do I’d be rolling in at about 220 and I’d squish you. That’d be no fun.

Tim-Bop is 3-0

We probably shouldn’t write too much about this party seeing as a certain cousin of yours decided to try and take flip cup matters into his own hands. He should know better than to challenge the grand master.

Goodbye Mr. Aabir

Hello Arun and little Elijah

Our loop of NoCal ended with a trip to see Arun and his Costco-filled living arrangements and to see Holly and the Stones and to meet Jeff.

Where in the world is Angel’s Camp?

We certainly didn’t know when we booked but we loved it once we got there. Another trip with my baby and another hundred really awesome memories that we got to share together. I think we did have river rafting, although I do have to say that I’d like to kick up the next class river we go to up a notch or two. I promise to not spin the raft like I did with Yoshi. Down in front, lapids, lapids. I jest, I jest. Loved that guy.

Egyptian Panda are invading the Bay area…

It’s nice knowing that we just have to go attend weddings from now on. Danny and Nada put together a remarkable wedding that had all the elements of a fairy tale. We also managed to combine it with a pretty kick-butt trip around Northern California. Granted the trip almost didn’t happen but thanks to your quick thinking and convincing voice we managed to actually leave San Francisco and start our trip. Without that we wouldn’t have gotten to experience and buy the worlds biggest and cheapest (per lbs) peppers I’ve ever seen to date. Look at those things. Your love of the pepper has crept over to me and boy I sure do like that it did. While it sounds cheesy, I felt like we really bonded on this trip. We had hours in the car to just sit back and talk and not talk and find out things that we never knew about each other. We expanded our love of wine at Artesa and even managed to get some freebies out of it. From Napa we rode your favorite car ever, the PT Cruiser convertible with the top down into Caleveras County to see evidence of what I would have to imagine is the world record for leaping frogs.

Happy Belgian Independence

Yes, I know that the 21^st is when most Belgian’s celebrate but we had to be creative. What a night this was. You made some snacks and decorations that you can’t even find in Belgium! We’ll forget the fact that I permanently scared my arm due to ‘the meatball incident’. Rule #1 of the meatball incident, you don’t talk about the meatball incident. I wish I had better pictures of this night but someone stole my camera and just took pictures of themselves the entire night. Thank you for marrying me so that I could enjoy living in this country and not being deported, that’s really sweet of you.

Canada, eh?

It’s funny as I sit back and remember all our trips I keep thinking that each one is the best one ever. It’s so hard to determine which one is the best. In the end, it doesn’t really matter as long as we keep having fun with each other. We still owe OYM a thank you for having you in NYC when I was in Toronto. The day walking around and going to the Toronto beach was so relaxing. Not quite as relaxing as the wine and snacks we had at Niagara on the Lake at the little bistro that we managed to escape the rain in. Getting to experience one of the old wonders of the world was pretty unreal. Riding the boat almost into Niagara Falls was surreal. I think now that we’ve seen this we have to take a trip to South Africa to see the falls there and do some comparison.

We’re totally in the Austin music scene

Aren’t we? Probably not. We did go see some of the best Austin musicians rock out at Auditorium shores for a free concert celebrating one of the reasons we love our city. I still think that Ferris Buhler’s friend was totally the guy we saw there after he perhaps took a few steroids. Let’s keep going to these kinds of events Ok?

My attempt at a green thumb

Look how good you are at watering! I will blame Chadleigh-Binkens on the fact that this grass has not held up the standard that was set out for it from the beginning. I will share this picture with potential renters and home buyers so that they can see what it could be like if you didn’t have the world’s largest golden retriever roaming around back there. I can’t believe how much your mom and dad helped with this little project as well.

Julie and her green thumb

Ok, I’ll go ahead and take the blame for not doing my research when building this little small herb garden and then having it just not work out as well as we had hoped. It started out with such promise and then wilted away into not even a single useable pepper…there’s always next year!

Wait, maybe we are part of the Austin music scene

Snow Patrol rocked this show. The energy at Stubbs was sweet. The liquor was also flowing as there were some memorable guests that made the night all that much more entertaining.

Baggage Claim

How our bags ever made it to us I shall never, ever know. The Bahamas were everything that I expected. The dinners were so good, our talks about our futures was even better. Do you remember the napkin. I think you still have that somewhere. That’ll be fun to look at years from now and see if we’ve been able to do and not do the things that we talked about while eating some lobster bisque. One of the things that I loved the most about that trip was your willingness to eventually overcome your fear and take a dive (literally) into something that you knew I really wanted to try. Talk about give and take…I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what you take in return for going scuba diving with sharks. Our journey to the natural preserve and almost-abandoned beach while hoping that we’d not run out of gas on the scooter was pretty fantastic. I wonder what people thought when they say about 20 “Thank you ____” scribbled all over the sand.

Mercury Hall has never had a party like this!

Sure the DJ almost forced me to strangle her and Whitney was nowhere to be found but in the end – Magical! If I start really writing about what this night meant to me I think that I’d still be writing a year later. I wished it could have lasted another 12 hours so that I could have seen more people, eaten some food and danced just one more song with my wife. You were so beautiful that night. Your smile lit up the room even brighter than it usually does. We capped off the night with what turned out to be a rather interesting late night “I want some PIZZA”-run but at the end of the night, we were married and we’d spend our first night together knowing that the commitment we just made would last us a lifetime.