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My friend Gretchen, who also is a blogger, expressed her frustration last week that she could not comment on the blog without being a member of Google. I had no idea! So I've changed the setting so that ANYONE can comment on our blog entries. Now there are no excuses. Comment away.

Bristol -- Day 3

Another beautiful day at Bristol. Blue skies and temperatures in the low 80s. Couldn't have asked for a better weather day. Although I have to say that I'm glad that our seats were in the shade. I can only imagine how much redder my neck would have gotten. This is right after the National Anthem and the flyover.

504 laps and many cautions later, Kyle Busch won the race. It was an exciting finish. Kyle wouldn't have been my first choice for the win (Jeff Burton would have been better), but it definitely was better than Jeff Gordon.

Signing off for now from Bristol. Tomorrow is the long ride home. We'll be posting more when we get back home and I have a faster Internet connection. Thanks for reading.

Bristol -- Day 2

This is pretty much what we saw all day at the Busch race. Spin after spin. This one was pretty early on in the race. Kyle Busch (the spinner pictured above) spun a couple of times but managed to come back and finish third. But that's OK because ...

my favorite driver, Carl Edwards, won! And we got to see his trademark back flip. Never thought I'd get to see that in person.

Hate to cut this short, but it's time to get ready for race day. The big Cup race is in a few hours. More later!

Bristol -- Day 1

After making a good portion of the trip on Thursday, we hit the road from Christianburg, VA. It's always nice when the signs point to your ultimate destination.

Here is our faithful pilot. Thanks to Matt for doing ALL the driving (not that I didn't offer).

When we pulled into the driveway of the house that we're renting, we looked into the backyard, and this is what we found. Cows!

I know what you're thinking. It's Abe Froman -- the sausage king of Bristol (if you don't get that joke, you need to watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off again). No, it's Jim, enjoying a sausage sandwich. No pictures of his elusive wife, Diana. But we're working on that.

That's their daughter Emily with her finger up Junior's nose. And Kirsten there for moral support.

Sharpie set up an autograph wall for the fans to sign this weekend. If you look between our heads, Matt signed us in.

Can't believe that we're actually at Bristol. The weather was amazing yesterday for qualifying. We're expecting more good weather today and tomorrow. The only thing that spoiled the day was that Jeff Gordon won the pole. After watching qualifying, we did some shopping, got autographs from Dave Blaney and, oh yeah, Kasey Kahne, and then watched Carl Edwards at the Speed TV stage.

Matt and Jim went out last night to take some pictures. Here's the result.

Check back later. We'll hopefully have some photos from today's Busch race.

Let's go sledding!

Matt and I went to New Hampshire last weekend to go snowmobiling. This a group shot from our ride on Sunday. That's me and Matt on the right. In the middle is Dennis, our host, and his girlfriend Deb. On the left is Dennis' brother Patrick and his girlfriend Rachel. Dennis lives right near the lake, so it's a quick ride out his backyard onto the lakes and trails. The trails were in great condition, and the weather was perfect for our ride on Sunday. Blue skies!

Matt has snowmobiled for years, but I have never been before. I look pretty comfortable on the sled, but then again it's not moving. :) I was pretty sore when I got home, but it was worth it. Saturday was trial by fire -- we went out Dennis' back door and rode on the frozen lake. I quickly got used to the speed -- it was fun. Sunday we basically rode the trails. Some of the trails were narrower and twistier (is that a word) than others, so it was nervewracking at times. I had to remind myself that I was riding through the beautiful snow-covered woods. We covered more than 40 miles on Sunday!

Matt bought himself a new (well, new-to-him) snowmobile while he was up there. It's a 1998 Ski-Doo MXZ 670. Apparently it's quite fast (over 150 horsepower), and I think it's pretty. Now Matt just needs some spare time and snow to ride it!

Even the novice that I am knew that the trail conditions were really good. They had a lot of snow up there, so there were a minimal number of rocks on the trail. At times it was hard for me to comprehend the trail system and how it wound through the woods. At one point, we actually rode on the perimeter of someone's farm. We used the farm as a rest stop. Patrick enjoyed the two ostriches (or were they emus) that they kept at the farm. And we all enjoyed the old John Deere tractor and 1925 Ford. On the way home, we passed right by the Seventh Day Adventists Church. Snow apparently is not an excuse to miss church.

Got to start 'em when they're young

Many of the bigger NASCAR teams have developmental programs. They start working with the NASCAR drivers of the future at a young age.

Well, Matt and I have the same philosophy. We need to build NASCAR fans at a young age. So we started today with Mac and Cailyn. I think we've done a pretty good job so far. High fives all around!

Happy Valentine's Day from the both of us!

Final product

And here's how it came out...

We're pretty pleased with how it came out. We love the colors! You never know what it's going to look like until you get the color on the wall. A definite improvement from the floral wallpaper that was there when we moved in. We still have some touch up work to do, and the trim needs to get finished.

And yes, painting left me very sleepy!

New coat of paint

Just an update on what we're been up to this weekend. Yup, we've been sanding and painting the living room and dining room. But we did have enough time to take a minute and pose for this one -- Matt likes to call it Garwood Gothic.

Special thanks to Barry for coming over today to help us out. We got a lot more done today than we expected thank to him! By the end of the day, everything was sanded, the ceiling was painted, and there was primer on all the walls!

Sanding came first. Thanks to the magic of photography, I look like I'm sanding faster than I really was.

We did have to remind Matt that the paint goes on the wall and not on his face.

We're excited to get actual color on the wall tomorrow! We've had the paint colors selected for almost a year. Keep checking in on the blog for updates.

Coincidence?!? I think not!

New car turned 77.7 miles today. In the parking lot of Crate and Barrel. Where we were going to do our WEDDING REGISTRY! Coincidence?!? I think not.

(And oh yeah, it's pretty cold here too.)

Speaking of wedding registries, we are registered at Macy's and Crate and Barrel. But here's the cool thing -- if our registries are accessed through weddingchannel.com and purchases are made online, weddingchannel.com will make a donation to the National MS Society. Pretty cool!

New addition to the family

This is the new addition to the family! A 2006 Explorer. Picked it up at the dealer this morning. The color is mineral gray. It was a little sad to see the Honda go, but I'm very excited about my new vehicle! I keep wanting to call it a car, but I know that it's not a car. But I refuse to call it a truck. I guess I'll have to settle on SUV!

Unknown to me, Matt took this picture of me on his cellphone as I was pulling out of the dealer parking lot. This is pretty much how I drove home. See the white knuckles? Between the fact that it's a new vehicle and it's bigger than my old one, I was a little nervous.

But you'll be glad to see that I made it home safe and sound!

And when we went out later, I relaxed a little bit more.

Believe it or not, this is the top of the gear shifter. We were sitting at a stop light, and Matt saw our reflection. This was the result.

OK, I'm done with the pictures!

Sorry it's been so quiet around here lately. Matt was traveling in Texas, and he was on the last plane out before San Antonio essentially shut down because of an ice storm. Then he came home, and he's been teaching photographers all over the tri-state area about how to use their SLRs.

Of course, we did have enough time to watch the Patriots lose to the Colts. We were in mourning for a couple of days. We also headed over to the New Jersey Auto Show (not quite the event that the New York Auto Show is) yesterday and got an autograph from Derrike Cope -- he won the Daytona 500 way back in the day.

So keep tuning in here. You never know when we'll have something to say.

A postcard from the road from Matt. He's in San Antonio for work. This photo of the Alamo was taken last night on his way from work to Pat O'Briens to watch the New England Patriots defeat the San Diego Chargers.

Matt told me that it's kind of weird -- you're walking along the street by restaurants and the like and then you come up on the Alamo.

Of course, this is all a little strange. I'm sitting here in New Jersey writing about Matt's trip to San Antonio. Although we are having the same weather (cold and rainy). If we're lucky, we might hear from Matt himself.

Seems as though someone else is planning big news for our wedding day.

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.