Crimson Kids Christmas Party

The party decorations were beautiful. I wish I had taken more pictures. Alex loved the ballons. He kept dragging me over to show them to me. He loved the decorations. His Aunt Melissa would be proud of her nephew who appreciated the details.


Alex naturally gravitated towards his buddy Reina. (As he does at every party.) He doesn't necessarily want to play WITH her he wants to play NEXT to her.


That was Alex's honest reaction when Santa entered the room.


Reina was thrilled to meet Santa.


The boys ready to go home.

I can't tell here if Alex was gloating because we didn't make him to sit on Santa's lap. All I know is that once Santa left his mood improved.


Alex escaped with a balloon.

Holidinner

This year we didn't go to Holidazzle. (The HBS Christmas dance) But our section still planned a dinner. So we went to Legals and dressed somewhat respectably and left Alex at home. (Thanks Alisa for watching him!) We had a really great time.



We told Matt and Meredith that this was a test shot. I guess we'll use it anyway. Meredith I think it is a pretty good picture. If you don't like it let me know and I'll remove it!

F Football Finale... WE WON!!!!!

Hello From Boston

Campus Exploration

Alex and I decided to go for a walk before dinner. He wanted to see all the leaves and flowers.



He carefully selected a few leaves that were his favorites.



At this point Alex was tired of exploring and wanted to eat dinner.



He was also tired of walking. This is how he tells me that he wants to be carried. And you would think he was focused on getting home to eat by the looks of his face at this point. However, we got distracted on the way home.



Alex wanted me to take a closer look at the flowers.

Leaves In Bloom

Bugaboo Creek

We had a farewell dinner with the section at teh bugaboo creek stake house. Patrick and I were snapping pictures like crazy to try and have some pics of our friends who wont be in Boston this summer.


Marla, Sam, and Brad who believe it or not will be in SLC for the summer!


Here are Haven, Giovanni, and Patrick. Giovanni and I caught our waiter eating Dave's fries before he delievered them to the table. Its a crazy story maybe I will tell it sometime.


Alex was starting to get really sleepy in this picture... can you tell?


Patrick, me and Jonathon saying goodbye. Jonathon will be in New York this summer.



Brad, Jeremiah, Patrick's head... and Chris


Here Alex is being very silly with Brooke and Chris. Chris will be in GA ,but hey we will still have Brooke around.


Alex was totally exhausted by this time. But we wanted to get a bunch of pics with as many friends as possible. Here is Alex, Patrick, Irina, Aaron, Tracy, Preetha, Elliot, Dervan and Marla.

Good Bye A. Lowe

Alex is graduating this year from HBS. We had an end of the year barbecue and it was our chance to say goodbye to our good friend. Class ended this week, but he has to come back in early June for graduation so hopefully we will see him there.

Olympic Gold

Imagine the world's largest field day.

Congraduations Catherine

My best friend/sister graduated from the Univerity of Utah today. I am so proud of her. She has managed to work full time and balance classes and get awesome grades the whole way through. She is absolutely amazing. If you want to want to watch the commencement exercises they are on the net at

http://www.kued.org/includes/vod/commencementPlayer.php?name=Commencement2008.m4v

Just copy the URL and put it in the address line of your web browser! It has been a really emotional day for me because I can't believe that I am in Boston and missing Faf's graduation. I have watched the commencement on the net, had cans and cans of coke and have been generally weepy. I was so excited when Catherine sent me the video from her phone. The quality isn't that great but it really made me feel included!

faf graduates
Uploaded by patriciabarnes

Texas Style Chili Cook Off

I wish I had more to say about the cook off! Unfortunately Saturday is a bit of a blur. I was so tired from being out and taking care of a sick baby that it was all I could do to stay concious.



We enjoyed the chili. Every section brought a chili and tried it out. It was difficult to rally a lof of section F enthusiasm early in the event because we were all up so late contributing to the auction, which for many of us was a year long pet project.



The weather started to cool a bit in the afternoon. I can't feel badly about it though. We have had beautiful weather for the past two weeks. So we are about due for some chili weather. get it chili weather?... ok that ws lame. It was a beautiful day. And we discovered that Patrick was pretty good and playing corn hole. (a fancy name for bean bag tossing)

Section Auction

Dad watched Alex for us so that we could go to the section charity auction. The people who were in charge of it did a fantastic job. And everyone that donated was so good to have contributed. We donated money to the Prize for Life and Dana Farber cancer Foundation. I was particularly impressed with Prize for life and it;s efforts to find a way to get research on obscure diseases.

First Day of Spring... According to Me

Well, It was hot, it was sunny, and it was green. And therefore we the Barnes family declare it officially spring. (And yes Patrick did sunbathe in JFK park without his shirt, which is a sure sign of things warming up.)

Sky Deck Reunion + Hide

So, we must have enjoyed having Patrick sit in the back row (aka: The Sky Deck) in class last semester. Because, tonight Linda organized dinner with everyone that sat in that part of the class. We had a couple of additions to the group for fun, first of all Alex and I don't attend class and we got to go to dinner. Secondly, Hide does attend class, but he sat somewhere else. We thought that it would be fun to have him at dinner. (Plus he was able to help explain the menu!)Here we are at Shilla with Mash, Hide, Linda, Brooke in spirit, Chris, Patricia, Patrick, Alex, and Yoga mat.



Here is a random photo of Hide and Mash.



We ate at Shilla. It a Japanese/Korean restaurant. My food was called something like Ba-baime or boom-boom or no wait, it was bippity boppity boo... no that is something else. Anyway,I can't remember what it was called. It was a cool concept. My bowl (And Patrick and Hide's... they ordered the same thing.) was made of a carved stone. The stone was really, really hot. My meal had a raw egg in it. I stirred the food around and the bowl. It was so hot that it cooked the egg. It was interesting. Order-envy struck again! Chris' meal looked so good he ordered garlic chicken. Funny thing about Japanese food, I often come home hungry. Is that normal? Here is a picture of Patrick with his bam-bam.



We had a really great time. Although I was sad that the waitress didn't ask us for dessert. She brought us our check before I had the chance to order. The fried bananas and fried icecream sounded like fun. I don't know what that would have tasted like but it sounded yummy and I was still hungry. Oh well, I will just have to go back another time and try it out. Till next time... bop bop aloo bop ba lop bam boom!

Stowe Ski Trip

This was my favorite picture that we took on our trip to Stowe Vermont.



We had so much fun with the section in Stowe. We stayed at this 1940's ski lodge called the Ski Inn. The owner made all thirty five of us dinner each night. We ate pot roast and mashed potatoes. It was so nice to come back to the lodge and relax. it just so happened that Alisa and Corey's section was up there the same weekend. They skied on Saturday. Which was the wettest day that I have ever skiied. We were sad when the weekend was over. But thanks to Maureen who watched Alex for us Saturday, we skiied really hard. We were worn out enough to come home.

Skibackpack
Uploaded by patriciabarnes

Alex seemed to like the back pack more than the front pack. He had a much better view. Don't worry he was perfectly safe we made sure that he was wearing sunscreen.

Inaugural Winter Dinner

Wilfred and Ben did an amazing job on the dinner. We had so much fun. Patrick and I dropped Alex off and checked him into a room in Spangler. Ben found sitters to watch 45 little kids. Alex had a great time. We handed him to Rob and Alex didn't even look back to see us. He was just happy to play. He didn't even notice we left. The kids looked like they were going to have a great time.



We had a great time getting out together. it was nice to know we could enjoy ourselves and Alex was having a great time too!




We sat at a fun table. Here is a picture of everyone we sat with. Back to front left to right: Brittany, Jordan, Johny, Corinne, Corey, Alisa, Patricia, Patrick

La Galleria... Finally I found the memory card!

Last night Irina organized a dinner with Patrick's section. About thirty of us went to dinner in the north end. The food was really good. I ordered the ravioli it had spinich, eggplant, and sundried tomatoes in it. Alex enjoyed getting the girls attention. Here he is "networking" with Laura.

After dinner the rain subsided a bit and we walked to Mike's Pastries. I debated the entire way if I should branch out and order something different... other than a ricotta canoli. Well, I did. I ordered a chocolate dipped ricotta canoli. WOW!!!!!!! It was so good that even as I write this blog entry my mouth starts to water and I can feel a strong urge to run out to the north end and buy another one.



I can't believe it someone offered to take a picture of the three of us. We get very few of these because one of us has to be behind the camera.



This next picture is quite funny. When Patrick took the picture I thought that Irina and Julia were in it. As you can see from the picture if you look close they thought they were in it too. Evidently Patrick was only taking a picture of Nitin.



Haven came to dinner with his wife Theresa. They brought their baby so Alex is no longer the only baby to come to section events! I told Alex that he should make his move during dinner but she slept through the dinner. Evidently Alex needs to work on his delivery. I love this next picture it is Haven on the left then Rodolfo and Nitin.