Favorite Photos of 2010: Winners!

...after much thought, pondering, and deliberation, here are our Ten Favorite Photos of 2010. To all those who offered us bribes, back-rubs, and the like, we appreciate the kind thoughts, but we tried to keep everything semi-honest. It was crazy hard to winnow down thousands of pictures to 20-30 favorites (The Nominees), but it was even more challenging to narrow those down to ten winners. Now, for the next twelve months, you'll see the below ten pictures hanging proudly on our fridge (first ever fridge photos at our new house!) and in 2012 they will eventually be retired to a very special photo album, where only the most elite of pictures are allowed to chill.

Like last year (2009 Nominees and Winners), I went all international with my five photo selections. Although I love life in the U.S., so many of my most cherished memories in life went down during wild and crazy adventures overseas, and 2010 was certainly no exception. Plus, since I spend a fair amount of money on international travel, reliving all these glorious memories washes away any financial second thoughts in about two seconds.

And, with that lame intro, I present our ten favorite photos of 2010! Congrats to all of you who made special cameos!

Andrew's Top 5:

Monkey Family at Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

I actually had about 4-5 different Southeast Asian monkey pictures vying for a spot in my Final Five. However, my short and pink Euro-esque bathing suit was badly angled in a few of them and they were a bit too PG-13. Furthermore, the confused/scared/bewildered look on this baby monkey's face is too adorable to pass up.

Dysentery and an Elephant

I'm in Thailand. In a dirty stank river. With an elephant. It's impossible for such a picture not to find its way into my Final Five. A mile upstream from this point, Howard and I saw some guys wading in this dirty river and we thought they were insane. An hour later, we were swimming around in this poopy water. With an elephant.

Directionless and Soupless

Krabi, Thailand is the home of some of the world's most beautiful beaches. It is also the home of a really gross and unsanitary "make your own soup" hotpot restaurant. Unfortunately, there were no directions (or meat that had been untouched by flies) and so our "soup" was a complete disaster. Howard and I laughed like crazy throughout the "cooking" process. We then spent the next hour struggling to eat the fiery, fatty, and disastrous creation we had concocted. We spent the next seven days trying to set the "couple's" record for most bouts of diarrhea in a single day. 20?

Breaking Boundaries.

During our bareback elephant ride through the "jungle" (ie-burned down farm), Howard and I got to know each other in new and romantic ways. It was the most painful hour of my life, as we sat directly on the elephant's spine. The elephant's prickly hair didn't help, nor did the snot it blew on us 15-20 times. Or the 100 degree heat. Or the close proximity. It was completely ridiculous, and bizarre, as every other person we saw in the "jungle" was riding solo. Not us.

Hot as Cambodia

We spent three really awesome days at Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. We were beast and didn't take tuk tuks or taxis, but rode some busted 1950s-esque bikes everywhere. We probably did about 20 miles a day. Oh, and it was about 193 degrees. The above picture was taken at 9:00am. Amanda had a breakdown a few hours later and demanded that we go home (this was day three of our trip and we had six more weeks in Cambodia. She persevered.)

Amanda's Top Five:

A little Eclipse love at Siam Paragon Mall in Bangkok, Thailand:

Amazingly patriotic matching at Capital City Church's KidFest:

Chicago Bean Jump. What a great bean.

Amazing Backstreet Boys concert with the Chens and my Britney Spears shirt:

The insanely amazing and dance-filled Saturday night at our five-year UVA reunion: