You may remember last year (http://geggis.com/2006/) we had said that we were going on Kenny Kramer’s tour in NYC. This was where we were last Christmas Eve. Kenny is the one lying down in front. Diane and I are standing below the “R” in the second restaurant. Kenny’s tour was absolutely fantastic and we highly recommend it to anyone who is a Seinfeld fan. We went down to NYC again this year and saw Spamalot, which was great fun as well.

Arguably the most exciting event of our year was that Diane finished her B.S. in Health Care Administration at Northeastern University. She finished at the top of her class. Here we are with Diane’s former supervisor and mentor David Wise at Northeastern’s Award Ceremony on April 29th at the Museum of Science. Diane’s job at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center continues to go well, and we especially continue to enjoy the discounted Red Sox tickets that we are occasionally able to get our hands on.

We went to our first Lowell Devils (formerly Lowell Lock Monsters) hockey game with our friends Karen Westphalen and Tim Dennis. The Lowell Devils lost to the Worcester Sharks 3-2. This was the same day (1/21/07) that the Patriots lost their playoff bid to the Colts. It was a bad day for local sports. However, you’ll have to admit that it’s turned into a pretty good year for Boston sports.

We had a couple of excellent outings with our friends Mike and Carol Cavins. Here we are at the Double Tree Hotel after we saw Strunz & Farah on January 25th at Scullers Jazz Club. We also saw Spyro Gyra a little later this year. We recently did some excellent fine dining with Mike and Carol at Rendevouz in Central Square Cambridge.

Not every excellent event had an excellent picture to go with it. Chris went up to Sunday River with Bob Dean and Bob Hogan (aka The Bob’s). Chris and Diane went to their friend Eric Faulkner’s 40th birthday party on March 16th. Diane took her first business trip down to Atlanta on March 25th. The picture of Diane at Logan getting ready to leave made the cut. We also saw an excellent performance called the B. Will Derd show at the Tannery in Newburyport on March 24th. This was put on by our friends Tim and Karen (pictured earlier). Diane and I are still raving about how great B. Will Derd was.

In April we went on a Duck tour followed by an unsuccessful attempt to get into the Red Sox home opener. We’re not even going to try for the home opener in 2008. We had a little get together at our place on April 28th with (from left) Chris, Bob Hogan, Tony & Erica Northrup, Heather Dean, Diane, and Bob Dean.

On May 13th (Mother’s Day) we took Mom to the Dunaway restaurant at the Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, NH. It was a fantastic dinner and the waiter turned out to be a decent photographer as well. His excellent photo was followed by an excellent tip.

The summer is always the most exciting time of the year for us. We went to a Roger Water’s concert July 9th. We went to the Monadnock Speedway with Tony and Erica on July 14th. We went to a cookout at my cousins house (pictured) in Newton on July 21st. From the left Bob Gaudes, my mother, Diane, my cousins Nancy, Janet, and Carol, and my father. My cousin Cathie must be in the kitchen. The food was excellent, as always.

On Aug. 4 & 5 we headed down to New York City to see the Bronx Zoo and the New York Yankees in Yankee stadium. We wanted to see Yankee stadium before they tear it down at the end of next year. It turned out that there was a National American Miss pageant being held at the Marriott in Stamford, CT where we stayed. It reminded us of “Little Miss Sunshine”.

Left, lion at the Bronx Zoo. Right, Diane in front of Yankee Stadium.

We both considered our 2 week trip to Italy the best vacation of our lives. We can’t include enough pictures here to do it justice, but if you have the time we’ve got the pictures at: http://geggis.com/Italy/

We flew into Naples and stayed in Sorrento, Orvieto, Siena, Florence, and Venice. St. Mark’s Square in Venice is pictured. We also went to Pompeii, Capri, and Cavita. At the same time we were in Italy the company Chris worked for (Acopia Networks) was taken over by F5 Networks. So far. So good.

October is always a fun month. This year we took some great walks. We did Beacon Hill with our friends Chris & Jen O’Malley. We had quite a few excellent outings with Chris & Jen this past year. In the photo to the right I combined three themes – our new kitten (Keegan [which means small and fiery in Gaelic]), our new big screen HD plasma TV and of course the Red Sox winning the World Series.

There has been a bit of a dry spell the last few months for pictures. In November we went to gatherings at Dan Rullo’s house which are always great fun. Dan won the prestigious rotator cup trophy in the Pitcher’s pool. We also went golfing and saw the Pat’s win a few games this year.

Diane went to a reunion of her high school friends at the end of November. In Dec. we had dinner with our friend Cathy Clark. Last year Chris reunited with an old friend Barbara O'Connell and this year he reunited with an old friend Guy DeMartinis. We just had a great Christmas Eve dinner at my cousin Cathie’s house. Beef Wellington!