Moritz and Tiffany visit

Enough said? Perhaps... But for those of you who don't know them (there may be 1 or 2 of you) Moritz and Tiffany both worked in Seattle with Casie, Lori and Carisa. Moritz recently returned to his native Switzerland, and Tiffany is now working at a tech startup that sells complex software which I don't understand. Mortiz came to visit us to celebrate his birthday (and life in general), and Tiffany was here for a whirlwind 5 day vacation. A good time was had by all! We saw the musical 'Buddy', drank at London's best Mexican place past closing, ate huge pancakes, and consumed quite a bit of Swiss chocolate. My favorite moment was of course finding a restaurant named 'Christopher's'... It must be pretty classy...

The 5th of November

Apparently we Americans are not the only ones who enjoy blowing things up to celebrate national independence. We have recently discovered that every November the British not only hold massive fireworks displays, but they also burn effigies of Guy Fawkes on huge bonfires. For those of you who haven't recently watched 'V for Vendetta', Guy Fawkes was the one caught in the basement of the Houses of Parliment ready to ignite a few hundred barrels of gunpowder. Needless to say he's not well regarded in this country! The logical way to celebrate the anniversary of his being caught is obviously to pretend to burn him while drinking lots of mulled wine and shooting off a ton of fireworks.

We were joined for this event by our friends Lori Mitchell and Carisa Richardson (soon to be Osvaldik) who worked with Casie in Seattle. They were just as confused as us about what we were celebrating, but we all agreed that it was the most kick-ass fireworks show we'd ever seen (sorry America). We also walked through 4 parks, went to a church service at Westminster Abbey, and checked out Buckingham Palace. Not too shabby for one day! The rest of the week we hit up a bunch of restaurants all across this fine city and spent most of our working hours hung over. Can't wait for Lori and Carisa to come out again next year!

Amster-hot-damn

Viva la Netherlands! After laying low in England for a while, we decided it was high time to go visit our good friends Aaron and Sara Pocklington in Amsterdam (also Erika and Rob who are doing their part to introduce the American tradition of barbeques to the Dutch). It was a great weekend. We got in on Friday and did some hanging out with the Pocklingtons before going to a great 3 course Italian dinner and a walking tour of the Red Light district (don't worry Mom, we were just casual observers...).

Saturday was devoted mostly to recovery but also an extensive search for pancakes. We also toured the Heineken brewery which was really cool - mostly because it included 3 free Heinekens! Sara was nice enough to let us drink her beers... I guess in Amsterdam pregnant women aren't allowed to drink. Weird! Saturday night we went to a BBQ baby shower for the Pocklingtons at Erika and Rob's place which was great.

A big congratulations go out to the Pocklington family which now includes a little guy named Andrew! We're hoping he'll make the trip across the channel soon to visit Casie and Chris (who gave him his first abacus) here in London. See a link to their blog on the right.