Fine and Full - What’s up with Jay and Anastasia

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We had a great time in Palm Springs and at our first time at the Coachella Festival! We saw lots of good bands and had fun with our friends.

Here are some photos from the festival:

On our recent trip to Palm Springs, we visited Tahquitz Canyon, just at the end of Palm Springs. Tahquitz Canyonis owned by the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians and there’s a couple mile hike you can take through the rocks and desert landscape. We (Jay, Lee, & Sachi) hiked to the 60 foot waterfall - and it was a coolish day for April in the desert, but still hot! More photos from the Coachella festival coming soon….

Here are some photos from the hike:

Blackcomb Mountain, BC

For the first time ever, Jay and I went on a winter “snow” vacation instead of a winter “sun” vacation. We just got home from a long weekend at Whistler. While not entirely injury free (we are both trying to learn to snowboard, and both had some falls on Saturday), we did have a lot of fun. This set of photos are from the day we went up the mountains on the lifts for some tourist activity. They just built a “peak to peak” gondola for the Olympics that goes between Blackcomb and Whistler mountains — it was quite a view.

We were joined on the trip with Jen, John, Colin, and our friend Jesse (who was John’s snowboard friend, since the rest of us are still beginners).

A little late, but over the holidays, my friend Curtis sent me this video of the gingerbread house he made this year. And, by gingerbread house, I of course mean: intricate recreation of a famous architectural wonder in gingerbread. This year’s is the beautiful Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, which Anastasia and I had the great fortune to visit when we were there in 2000:

You may recall that, last year, Curtis’ gingerbread house was a similarly stunning recreation of l’Opéra national de Paris - in gingerbread!

OK, extra bonus feature this year: after visiting his family in Salt Lake City, Curtis also made this video called “Holiday Horrors!” It’s super awesomely holiday horror hilarious! A perfect way to say goodbye to the 2008 holidays.