Home Sweet Home"

Well we made it safely home from our "East Coast Tour", we were completely lax the last few days in Connecticut but here are a few highlights:

Stew Leonards

Brett got to visit one of my favorite grocery stores- Stew Leonards. He loved it...
Really it shouldn't be called a grocery store, its a dairy (worlds largest dairy in a grocery store- you can actually see milk being bottled), petting zoo featuring farm animals, ice cream shop- using their fresh dairy of course, bakery, cheese store, meat dept, ect ect. Brett described it accurately as Disney world meets grocery store, complete with dancing bananas.....Yes.. Dancing Bananas... We ate so many samples of free food that we were STUFFED by the end of the experience, but of course we always have a little room for their ice cream!!!

Trader Joes

Brett got to visit Trader Joes also for the first time, a pretty cool grocery store also with lots of reasonably priced healthy and all natural products.... I miss grocery shopping on the East Coast- can you tell?? lol :) At Trader Joes Brett discovered his new love in life- Chocolate Macademia Nut Laceys- seriously if any of you live near a Trader Joes bring them if you ever visit Brett, he will love you forever. I tried to find them online when I got home but no luck...

Ikea
We also visited my favorite furniture store- IKEA, kinda like a modern/minimalistic/high quality/Walmart furniture... ITs awesome!! Brett was impressed and quickly claimed he is going to have an IKEA room.

Ryan like our shirts????

Thankfully we were able to fly standby all the way home today and got back about 8 hours ahead of schedule and about 24 hours ahead of our luggage..lol :) Tomorrow we return to our semi-normal lives, until Friday when we head to Bolivar to visit Bretts family (minus Sherry and Bing who are on an Alaskan cruise!!! :) wow!!) and then to Kansas on Monday to see my family. Brett or I will post later to tell you all about Lion King on broadway, Serendipity 3, MOMA, Guggenhiem, and Rockefellar Center..

Day 6: In the City

So...we made it to the City and spent our first day visiting some highlights. After sleeping in, we headed off to Wall Street. We saw the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, the Wall St. Bull, the New York Stock Exchange (where I trade stocks online), and Tiffany's. Michelle made me go inside and see all the bling (aka shiny objects).

At Times Square we saw lots of cool things including the Ferris Wheel inside Toys 'R' Us, the NASDAQ (the online stock exchange), and the Swatch store. After eating some pizza and stromboli, we headed off to get in line for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We waited for 45 min and found out that we were 5 people out of getting into the show. Ug!

We went to Canal Street and saw all the fake Coach and Dolce & Gabana bags. We saw Chinatown, some crazy dried fish, and a live fish market. We bought some chocolate covered sunflower seeds and some rocks (chocolate rocks). In the continuation of tour of Michelle's sweet tooth, we ate a canoli in Little Italy.

Ah! What a long day! Please give us some comments on our posts and we will see you tomorrow!

Day 5: The Haven revisited...

It seems as though we always post a day behind- but we're on vacation so what can you expect?? lol :) Yesterday was our last day at Princeton, we miss Ryan already...

We got up at Princeton and had a tasty brunch of Hoagie Haven.... again. ...Brett's hooked. After that we began our adventure to Jersey City, NJ. We traveled via train from Princeton to Trenton, only to realize in Trenton (thanks to a friendly NJ transit guy) that we were heading to Philidelphia???!!!??? Thankfully we got turned the right direction and ended up back in NYC. We were so tired of tranfers and trains by then we decided (really my idea) why dont we just take a taxi?? Simple right?? We're only 5 miles from the hotel!! Brett (reluctantly) agreeded and we got our cab. 1 hour of traffic jams and about $60 later we realized we probably should have just taken the train.....

The hotel is nice, its great to be in the land of clean sheets and towels!! lol.... I am so happy!! Towels everywhere!! I didnt think to bring towels to Princeton and Ryan didnt have any extra so I basically used my shirt as a towel (gross) so Im basically in heaven now...

Just a little note - this morning I woke up to fire alarms going off, they had to shut off the water to our building... LOL... so now I have clean towels but no water.... ironic..

Later we're heading to NYC where we will set in on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (watch us on TV!!) and will probably hit a museum if we get a chance.

Miss you all!! more pictures to come..

Day 4

We headed off to the super cool Equad (for those that don't habla, that is the Engineering building) for Ryan's car race. The class is called Car Lab and it is where you program circuits to control the current and voltages going to the wheels of the car as it traces the black line of the track. However, a camera is mounted on the front and follows the track around all by itself. So on a perfect run, you put the car on the track and it goes around the track all by itself without getting off the black line track.

Ryan won the best Faux-Hawk hair do from one of his friends.

Ryan had the biggest cheering section...he had lots of his friends come by to visit him. He was 6th out of 12 until he tweaked his car. After some quick minor reprogramming, he put in the track, but the camera tracked off and consequently his car left the track. His partner told Ryan to start the car where it had gone off the track. Ryan did so and the car was faster and it completed the course in 26.8 seconds. Therefore Ryan took 5th, which is pretty good actually. We went to Hoagie Haven...this Princeton staple dining establishment. Despite the rain, we enjoyed a Fat Cat and a Heart Stop hoagie. Quite delicious might I add, a definite must should you ever venture in these neck of the woods.

Ryan gave us a nice tour of campus where we saw some lecture halls that Einstein had spoke in, p=np in binary on the side of the building, the Frist center, and some eating clubs.

(this is Ryan on his air guitar treating his "student" to a John Denver song- "Country Roads" who does this remind you of????)

We did stop by Dr. Malkiel's office so he could autograph a book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, that Michelle bought for me the previous day.

We played a second round of Settlers of Catan. Michelle did great and won! She lulled us into complacency and struck with a fury of roads and cities to win the game. Ryan and I talked about old times for quite a bit...and downloaded a childhood jet game called Raptor. Overall, it was an awesome day and I can't wait to see tomorrow will hold...Stay tuned!

Day 3: And we saw it was good and rested

So we didnt post yesterday- Im making up for it this morning (by morning I mean 12:49, that is now morning for us) yesterday we were much too busy accomplishing great feats of sleep. Brett has beaten Ryans record by far. We got up early and went to Ryans church, it was pretty neat, the pastors message was on being thankful- the church has much to be thankful for, they just raised 7 million dollars for their new church site!!! They only needed 4 million and were predicted to only raise 2!!! wow.. Thats really impressive especially considering this church probably had only about 100 people there for the service we went too (9:30, theres another one at 11- Ryan actually goes to the early one!!).

After church we went back to Princeton via a nice shuttle van provided by the church and ate brunch in the dining hall. FANTASTIC!! Princeton food amazes me!! The brunch was the best so far, they had eggs benedict, fresh fruit, made to order omelets (unfortunately not as good as Bing Bayer eggs), pancakes, sausage, bacon, pastas for the lunch people, you name it!! We filled up then went back to the dorm and just relaxed for the rest of the day, Ryan doing homework and Brett and I having an Office marathon. At around midnight we raided BOTH dining halls, the boys scrounging pb&j and I had some tasty cereal. Today we watch Ryan race his car he made and will have lunch/breakfast a Hoagie Haven. More pictures and posts to follow...

Michelle

Day 2

So Ryan slept in until noon...go figure. We all got up and went to eat on Nassau Street. Ryan claimed that he had to "go study," so Michelle and I explored Princeton. After a brief stop at the Princeton Historical Society, we stopped by a flower shop, a camera store, the Princeton Univ. store, and a candy shop. We bought some gummy brains for Ryan and his roommates.

Overall, I would say that Princeton is very different than Memphis. Princeton has a nice clean quiet intellectual air while Memphis is dangerous and thugish. I do not belong in Memphis, but I feel a little more like home here in Princeton. I like the colonial "old school" feel of Princeton...reminds me of Annapolis. I wonder if it has something to do with the school being established in 1746...yeah, that is before the United States was founded.

Ryan still has his "fro-hawk" haircut. I like it. His beard and fro-hawk truly set him apart in my family...since all of his brothers are in the military. Ryan is very independent and isn't afraid to be set apart from everyone else. Ryan's roommates are really cool and study a lot. They are a great influence on each other. Back to our adventure, though.

We ate some burgers and dogs at a finals study break cookout. It was very surprising to see so many students still on campus on a Saturday afternoon. People were tossing the Frisbee around and playing sand volleyball. I can only imagine what would have happened if I had gone to a "real" college and not the Academy.

Princeton Pictures Day 1

http://picasaweb.google.com/ms.micheller/PrincetonVisitDay1

Pictures are up from yesterday- if you're wondering what we're doing with pool table- Ryan taught us a new game called "horse ball". Trust Ryan to turn pool, a slow paced non contact sport into this fast paced, intense, somewhat dangerous activity... It was fun...

We arrived..

Light on the wall of one of the Princeton Dorms

We just got into Princeton (I wore my Harvard shirt just for Ryan) and ate at the dining hall where he works. The food actually wasn't too bad as cafeteria food goes, talapia and pizza what a combo.
Ryan and Brett just left to go to PEF Princetons version of the Loop while I take a nap- Im BEAT!!! Its nice to see Ryan here in his element, unfortunately he has too much free time- it's dead week which means LOTS of practical jokes.. By the way he didnt wash his sheets but thankfully his roommate has some extra pink ones.. his MALE roommate... I didnt ask, Im just thankful for clean sheets.

The beginning...

So we decided to create a blog so everyone can keep up with our crazy lives. We'll both post on here from time to time and put pictures up so our loved ones will know where in the world we are, and what we're doing. Hope you enjoy!!

Brett & Michelle