And the rain in Florida continues...

For those of you who were jealous of us spending Christmas in Florida, this picture pretty much sums up the day. That's the storm coming over the horizon.

And that's pretty much what the rest of the day will look like. But that's OK. We have great plans of eating too much ham and pie.

We arrived in Florida safe and sound! OK, after we waited in the long lines at Newark Airport and almost missed our plane! The weather is warm, and the margaritas are cold (definitely better than the other way around!).

Today is Matt's mom's birthday (Happy Birthday Nancy!) So we just finished an awesome dinner prepared by Matt. Waaaay tooo muuch to eat!

OK, you all should be getting to bed because Santa is coming soon!

Merry Christmas Eve!

I guess we haven't posted in a while. Possibly because we're still recovering from Matt's birthday? Probably not, but it sounds like a good excuse. We celebrated Matt's birthday by going to Atlantic City. It was his first trip down there. Matt commemorated the day with this shot of his artwork in the sand. Here's a little rundown on how the trip was.

We arrived on Sunday night and started wandering immediately. We ended up at the Tropicana. This picture is in The Quarter, which is Tropicana's mall. It's supposed to look like Havana (or what we think Havana looks like). Cool part was every few minutes they made it snow in there. Christmastime is cool!

While we were in the Quarter, we stopped at Cuba Libre for a drink. Caipirinihas, to be exact. Come to think of it, we had caipirinihas for Matt's birthday last year. Maybe this should become a tradition. Because that would be terrible.

Next, we headed to the buffet at the Tropicana. Because, you know, when in Rome... That's me looking forward to the buffet line. I quickly learned that I am an amateur at the buffet game. We were in the presence of some definite professionals. We had our share of crab legs, Beef Wellington, fried chicken, and some other interesting entrees.

The next day, it was time to walk off some of that buffet. It ended up being a beautiful day, especially for the second week in December. By noon, it was in the 60s.

Here's a picture of the Convention Hall, former home of Miss America. Matt used the black & white setting and customized it by using the built-in yellow filter on the D80 to enhance the sky. He did all of this while standing on the Boardwalk. I always wondered what he's doing when he pushes those buttons on the camera.

This is empty amphitheater across from the Convention Hall. I think we decided that December is probably the best time to go down there. No snow (usually), and it's fairly quiet down there.

They have signs up on the Boardwalk, warning people not to feed the "boardwalk cats." Who knew? Just like Key West (and other places), there are stray cats. Even though it was almost winter, we did see some. Including the one that "caught" a seagull. My guess, this seagull was trying to make his getaway from the cats.

Oh yeah, and we gambled while we were down there. We left "donations" in the slot machines in just about every casino on the Boardwalk. I won a little on Sunday night, and we both managed to lose as we worked our way down the Boardwalk on Monday. The last casino we went to was the Showboat. We decided that we each would play $20 and whatever happened, happened. I left with about $65, and Matt left with about $120. It was a nice way to end the day, and we quit while we were ahead. By the way, we both won on Triple 7 machines.

The fun didn't end just because were in the car on the way home. The search for 777 never ends. Here's the mile marker from the northbound Garden State Parkway. Of course, the sign is right on an entrance ramp, making it a little more difficult to get a picture. Matt pulled over, and I hung out the window. I'm not the photographer that Matt is, but I think I did alright.

Happy Birthday Carl! Because we know you love your pop culture, here's a list of famous people who share your birthday: Jonathan Knight of New Kids on the Block fame, Kim Delaney, Gary Shandling, Chuck Mangione, Howie Mandel, Diane Ladd, and Vin Scully. Here's hoping you enjoy your birthday week!

Here's a photo that was taken in our travels on Black Friday. One of our stops was in downtown Westfield, and the number of the parking spot caught Matt's eye. So we (or our shadows) posed, and Matt snapped the photo.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was pretty quiet -- watched the parade, surveyed the ads for good deals, had a great dinner at Heidi's parents' house (thanks Bill and Kathy)! Here's a picture of us from Thursday.

Jimmie Johnson won the Nextel Cup. Definitely not a popular win in our house.

If I remember correctly, as we were walking out of the Daytona 500 this year and being showered by the confetti from Jimmie Johnson's victory celebration, Matt predicted that Jimmie would win the Cup this year. Unfortunately, he was right.

But look at the bright side -- only 90 more days until next year's Daytona 500.

So this is the photo that we used for our save the date card. A little background on it.

It was taken at a Red Sox game against the Orioles at Camden Yards this past April. The game was scheduled to start at 4, but it had poured all day. It finally stopped raining by game time, but everything was delayed until about 6. It was cold and damp.

The thing you can't tell about the photo is that I was just getting over a stomach virus. I was completely miserable. But thank God I stopped to smile for this photo.

So when we picked this photo out, I realized that the people in the background were really distracting. One of the women was wearing an orange poncho that she had bought at the gift shop. So, leave it to Matt to solve my problem. Literally five minutes with the photo and Capture NX, he had the result you see above. Pretty awesome.

I know I'm going to get some crap from my relatives (and others) about me wearing Red Sox stuff. But here's the thing -- I never really liked the Yankees. Did it hurt that Matt and I started dating during their run for the World Series in 2004? Probably not.

So welcome to our blog.

Just so your expectations aren't too high ....

We make no promise that we will post every day.

We make no promise that our blogs will be profound statements about the world today.

But we do promise that they will give you an insight into what's going on in our world. Most of the time Matt will provide the photos, and I'll provide the words. Maybe we'll switch it up from time to time.

We hope that you check in often to see what's going on (or not going on for that matter.)