Christmas Morning at The Benson's

Favorite Christmas Presents 2008

Arctic Blast 2008- Our Back Yard

Initially I made the bad decision to not wear a hat... I love being downtown in the snow. Everything is all lit up like a Christmastree.

Eventually I found my hat.

O Christmas Tree

DREAM CHRISTMAS TREE DAY

Daren and I wake to a crisp clear day. We talk animatedly about our up coming adventure over a morning up of coffee before we load up the dogs in the truck and head out in search of this years perfect tree. After a nice 45 minute drive with Christmas music playing in the background we find the ideal trail and head out into the woods to cut down our own tree.

With the dogs running and leaping in the snow, Daren and I tromp hand in hand with big smiles on our faces in direction of our tree.

We find it! Daren cuts it down in a few swift easy motions and we pull our new found piece of Christmas perfection and load it into our truck.

Arriving home, we stand the tree up in our house in the corner that seems to be made for a Christmas tree. As we decorate the tree together between sips of Eggnog and Rum we laugh and share stories of our favorite Christmas' past. Between choruses of Joy to The World and Here Comes Santa Claus we sneak kisses and endearing looks each knowing in our hearts that we will remember this moment forever....

ACTUAL CHRISTMAS TREE DAY

Daren and I wake up to his pager going off and a rain storm outside. Instead of the lively conversation over a cup of coffee the words "Let's get moving this morning, I've got to get to the hospital and get all of the Christmas shopping done today" are what ring throughout our house.

Daren hurries out the door to get the his patients at the hospital while I stay at home and try to move nearly every piece of furniture we have trying to find just one square foot of space to put our tree.

By the time Daren gets home it is a freezing down pour outside and I've made my choice on the tree placement to which I heard "Thats weird." I responded with a chipper "I can't find another place in here...and its freezing and wet out there so let's just go to a lot"

We drove up the road about 10 minutes while Daren returned messages and I sang Christmas songs to myself. Once at the lot we saw this.....nothing says Merry Christmas quite like a flock of plastic pink flamingos.

We found in our tree in 3 minutes flat.

We found our wreath in about 8 minutes.

We came home and made our eggnog and rum. And let's just say it didn't sit well on any ones stomach....

Daren began to put the lights on the tree and slowly but surely I overtook him with what Daren very diplomatically called my "process" for decorating a tree. He then had to head out to shop since this was his only free weekend and I decorated the tree alone while watching a sappy love story on TV.

There was a brief interlude of romance in the day. This is Daren dancing to the Christmas music with Burl by the tree.

Ladies and Gentleman and I now present you with.....with....For the first time in 6 years my tree doesn't have a solid name. I think her name is Daphne, but Daren claims he peaked under its branches and its a boy named Jimbo. Regardless, here is our Christmas Tree from our unexpected albeit perfect Christmas Tree Day. We will remember this random day filled with unexpected events and lots of laughs for the rest of our lives. It was perfect.

Merry Christmas.

Who loves his Christmas Sweater?

Its that time again. Time for the Annual Benson Boys Christmas Sweater Picture Montage

Boomer: YES!! I'll meet you at the tree.

Burl ( in low whisper): Daren please help me.

Boomer ( in high trill voice): I'm ready for my close up!

Burl: I can't watch this.

Boomer: And a Happy New Yeeaaar!

Burl: I hate this tradition.

Boomer: Too much eggnog...

Bitten by the Big Apple

The Top of the Rock was freakin beautiful!

The Bull. Daren put a lot of pressure on me to "touch them". I tried to remind him of my life's pracitce of not doing everything all of the other girls do. But... I caved and here is the picture of me touching the Bull Balls for good luck.
We found a little something for everone in New York and here is Daren in heaven, known to the locals as the ESPN Bar.

Up next was the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular! It was incredible and very impressive.

We went to the 10:00pm show on Saturday night and this was the crush of people in the lobby.
Cartier all wrapped up for Christmas. Merry Christmas from New York City!!


So content and headed home

Connie's Double Dog Dare

The Red Nose made its debut appearance the Friday after Thanksgiving 2008. The cousins always gather around for a rousing game of whatever the girls plead for and we play games, watch movies and create endless inside jokes for hours. This year the game was Apples to Apples and the random feat of stupid human tricks performed by myself and my brother Ryan was the Human Bagpipes. (Yes is was as awesome and you can imagine and yes our parents are so proud)

Yesterday just before 7:00am I got an message from my cousin Connie that said this " I double dog dare you to wear the red nose all around town today". We all know you can't refuse a double dog dare so Connie, this is for you ...

This is my Mother and I at breakfast.

Here we are at the theater for the matinee of "The Christmas Carol"
Here I am at Happy Hour.

Here I am with my new friend Aimee the Magneto Ad Agencies Christmas Party.

Here is my new friend Zach from Phoogoo Web Design and my old friend Ryan Wagner of George Brand Marketing.

Here I am at the Someday Lounge dance club gettin jiggy with it in the red nose.And finally back home and ready for a late late bedtime.
Connie, I double dog dare you to put your tongue on the flag pole!

New York, New York

Day 1 began with a 4:00 am alarm and a 4:45 ride to the airport. We were both so excited we were nearly chipper talking to each other through blurry eyes in the car ride to catch our flight. It was a nice and easy flight...save for that one issue. We sat in the very back row of the plane, which means we were inundated by the smell of what Daren named "Poop Popsicles" the entire flight. Sometimes it got so bad and smelly that I couldn't help but laugh hysterically.

We landed at JFK and hailed our first New York cab and were off. Arriving at our "luxury" hotel about 45 minutes later. We stayed at the oh so lovely Courtyard Marriott on 3rd and 57th where there was no room service, the bar had been shut down, it took 3 servers to bring out two eggs at breakfast in the restaurant and, to really make it feel fancy, the laundry room was located dircetly across the hall from our room on the 31st floor. Meaning that if we didn't wake up at a decent hour all on our own, the laundry room sounds would be sure to take care of that for us. It became the running joke that we will stay here everytime we come to NYC since its to nice!

Our first order of business was the eat. As soon as we got our bags set in our room Daren said "Now, let's get you some food. Because generally speaking, if I'm the happy one we are on trouble." So we walked to the nearest Irish pub and sat down. O'Neil's became our weekend home away from home. Out of our four days there, we stopped by O'Neil's on three of them.
After some food and a few martini's we set off to walk the town, see The Tree and the ice skating rink and get ourselves to our dinner reservation. On the way we ran into the Intercontinental Hotel. This was very exciting for us since we now have a thing for this chain of hotels since our entire honeymoon was spent at Intercontinentals. For this picture we flagged down an average newyorker and asked her to take our picture in the middle of the street. She obliged, but was not thrilled about it.
Dinner was at an out of the way French place that we found on a recommendation. When you sit down the first thing they do is bring you a Sausage Tree! Its awesome! It is literally a tree of something like six different types of sausage and you get to hack away at it and eat as much as you like. These two meat eaters loved the thing! We ordered two steaks, because clearly we needed more red meat in our diet. The food was decent but the conversation was memorable.

In NY you sit inches from the next table. We found ourselves sitting next to a couple of long time friends. She was a Catholic. He was a Jewish Atheist.

Conversation began talking about the shows to see and sights to check out. Soon, after a bottle of wine for each table, talk turned to religion. At one point it became so heated that the Jewish Atheist flew up from his table and bolted to the door in an angry rush to leave. Alas, he hadn't paid his bill yet so he had to come back and sit for a few more minutes. His deepest argument was this, " Brain washing". Yes, he argued that anyone who believes in God or a God is brainwashed by their fathers. But he, being of Jewish blood line and an atheist is one of the few non-brainwashed people walking the earth today. Daren and I both had fun with that one!

After dinner and all hyped up the city, the wine, and the locals we went in search of another local hang out...any local hang out where good drinks were served. And man alive did we ever find them! We laughed and drank our way through the neighborhood until we found ourselves back at O'Neils pub to end the night.

Our first day in New York was wonderfully fun and we laughed our heads off and celebrated just being us and being together in NYC.

New York Moves Fast

Daren and I just got back from a whirlwind weekend in New York at Christmastime.

Here we are waiting in line to go to "The Top of The Rock"

Here is Daren outside of the NBC studios.

And here we are in front of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree

Good night, and big balls.Christmas in NYC is truly a moving experience.