The Brooklyn Phase: December 2008

One last underwater post:

The biggest porcupine fist ever!

2 of the endemic Hawaiian cleaner wrasse (specializes in cleaning turtles and fish) and one Christmas tree wrasse - how appropriate.

the camouflaged flying canard

and the infamous green sea turtle. We've been participating in identifying and tracking these turtles on a database built by our friends at the ocean project.

Here are just a few pictures from Christmas Day in Austin.

The lovely Christmas Tree.

Cinnamon Rolls pre-icing

Mia and Me.

Jennifer and Thumper and the traditional Christmas Strata

Mom and Mike wearing the Christmas Cracker crowns

Jennifer, Tom and Thumper

Mia looking very cute in her special Christmas outfit.

Mel cam over for fresh-challah french toast, ham and fruit for breakfast x-mas morning with me and the fam. After, I shared some 'irreverent' internet videos with them... they loved it. After exchanging food and ideas we headed north for a series of short hikes. The wind coming over the cliffs was over 20 mph on the ridges!

Sorry, the food was too good to take pictures of... meaning it got eaten before I thought of it :-)

I promised some diving pictures so here they are

Also here is a movie shot by Mel. If anyone reading this ever wants to learn more about Hawaiian biology or do one of their family oriented educational projects with these guys on Maui I have to give them props. They are the absolute best.

Aloha friends and loved ones. I thought I'd blog the latest from maui:

rainbows! The rainy season means rainbows every day... actually several different rainbows every day... sometimes several different double-rainbows every!!! day!!!!!

So, yes it was a long flight getting here from nyc so I had to lay over in LA to see the lovely Liz (and good thing I did since no flights were leaving the northwest for several days there) Here's liz lookin' all gangsta... in a painterly-photoshop kinda way.

and here's how I felt after emailing in my unfinished processing project from LA after taking a long flight and generally being exhausted at having classes and projects last till Sunday night PLUS a good dose of Californication.

So the trip to LA was wonderful and lightning fast. Much love to Liz and her family. Thoughts and prayers for your dad's fast recovery. And thanks for taking me around some of the best places.

And I finally made it to maui after another long flight

We've been doing lots of diving-perhaps some underwater photos soon... also a challah-brunch Hanukkah/Christmas update shortly. How can anyone not like this?

I've been spending this Christmas in Austin with my family. The weather has been wonderful, temperatures past 70 degrees on several days. This is the first Christmas to be spent in my parents new house. The house is lovely, and much to my liking closer to town. Christmas eve was spent preparing for our Christmas feast.

Their new home.

The mess from my making Christmas Crackers for the first time.

The beautiful crackers- filled with the traditional paper crown, jokes, and prizes.

My mom and dad and I had a tamale making contest. I'm convinced mine were the best- they were filled with corn, onions, peppers, green sauce, and mexican cheese.

We prepped or made many more dishes for Christmas that were not photographed including traditional egg strata, cinnamon rolls, and enchiladas.

Labels: Christmas Eve

I re-used the branch used for our Thanksgiving decorations for hanging my Christmas ornaments this year. A few pictures of our not-so-traditional Christmas Tree.

We had a beautiful snow cover today. I was working at the Brooklyn Museum, so I skipped over to the botanic garden with a few of the education interns to enjoy the freshly fallen snow.

This year for Thanksgiving we had people over for a fried Jive Turkey and lots of delicious food made by us and our friends. Here are pictures from the wonderful festivities.