Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope your holiday shopping is going well and you are looking forward to your respective celebrations! David and I love Christmas, and we especially love the family time and how the holidays always bring everyone together. David has been working from the office lately, so we've had even more time together to enjoy the festivities. Even Ash looks ready for Christmas with his holiday collar! Here is he looking confused/unhappy because I told him to "stay" while I snapped a photo.

Our upstairs tenants hung a wreathe, and so on his way home David picked up one for our door as well. In hindsight, we should have chosen the bright red bow for visibility. Still, our very first wreath! 

When I went up to Vermont for Pepper's vet appointment I enlisted my dad to help me find a Christmas tree that was fresh, beautiful, and smelled great. We tried one place first and weren't super happy with what we found, but at the second place we found the beauty pictured below! David begrudgingly strung the lights (I like a lot of lights, this tree could have even used a third strand!) and then we decorated it together while Ash watched hesitatingly from afar. Since then we've been slowly adding presents! 

 

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. We will be beginning our celebrations on Saturday with my baby brother's wedding (crazy!) and then splitting our time between each of our families. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The roof, the roof, the roof is..... gone?

For those of you who know the Bloodhound Gang song that the title of this post refers to, nothing is actually on fire. But, for some reason, that song came to mind while I watched the drycleaner across the street being demolished this morning. We have known for awhile now that the very unsightly drycleaner across the street from our house would eventually be torn down and converted into 6 condos, but we didn't know when. This morning I wake up to a backhoe tearing into the roof of the building with a vengeance  Woopee! We are really excited to have this eye sore out of our lives. We are a bit concerned that with 6 condos on the lot instead of a small little business, we may lose some of the sunlight in our dining room. Not much we can do about that though, so for now I'm enjoying my front seat view of this demo process while working at my desk. Here are a few pictures! 

And one video titled "backhoe vs. steel beam". I think the beam is winning... 

Katie and her colleagues make "Submit It Maybe (Call Me Maybe)"

Katie's research lab (Katie = David's sister) does a holiday talent show with their Italian cohorts (her lab has members both in Italy and at Harvard). This year, she and her lab mates remade the popular song "Call Me Maybe" to reflect relevant research themes in the lab. I'm posting about this video here because a) the video is awesome and entertaining and b) Ash is a guest star in the video! If you are short on time skip ahead to minute 2:55 to see Ash. To watch the music video, click here.