My mom and I had a BLAST in Paris.  We decided beforehand that I would be the navigator (which come to find out, was definitely a wise choice, no offense, mom) and mom would be in charge of translation/ communication and shopping.

I was very proud of the fact that I navigated our way from the airport to the hotel via the metro.

But pride cometh before the fall… I totally got us turned around on our way out to explore the city before our dinner cruise.  To my credit though, there was no way of us knowing that the stop that we needed to get off at was closed for repairs.

We ended up walking a lot, making our feet hurt a lot, but we finally found where we needed to be for our dinner cruise.  Which, the dinner cruise was SO fun.  They gave us enough alchohol to sink a battle ship with. Don’t worry, we didn’t drink it all.

The Eiffel tower is lit up blue these days… it is SO pretty.  And every hour on the hour, all of these little lights make it all sparkly for about 5 minutes or so.  Which you can’t really see in this picture…

That blue light at the top is the top of the eiffel tower.

After our dinner cruise, we got smart and took a cab back to the hotel.  I don’t think our feet would have survived that walk back.

The next day, we decided to take the metro (successfully this time) to Monmartre and Sacre Couer, which we heard has the best view of the city.  Unfortunately, it was really overcast and foggy, so it wasn’t as awesome as we thought it would be.  Looking back, we both wished that we hadn’t spent the time going there, but it was pretty.

It was quite the hike up to Monmartre was steep… lots of stairs.  My mom thought that I was trying to kill her.  I didn’t mention to her that I saw a tram to make it to the top (we were already at the top when I saw it).  And now that she’s flown back home, I can tell her that since she’s not here to slap me.  🙂

It was a pretty hike though.

And here was our overcast view.

Then we went to Sacre Couer, which is a big cathedral.  It was beautiful and I was bummed that they wouldn’t let us take pictures inside.  But, I did get some fun pictures of the outside.

The walk back down from Monmartre was much easier.  We enjoyed the Fall foliage.

And we passed through fabric district.

We ate in that part of town and then headed back to go to an art museum, where we saw some amazing art.  It was so cool to see this stuff in person.

I love impressionist art and music.  So like life, sometimes the strokes don’t make sense when you look at them close up… you have to stand back and see the whole picture.

The mom.

I love that painting.

From l’Orangerie, we went to take walk on the Champs Elysees.  It was incredibly crowded, I can’t imagine what it is like during tourist season.

We stopped at a cafe and had the most expensive coffee and crepes ever (we didn’t know beforehand).

Ugh, I can’t stand being in front of the camera!

Oh, and my mom bought me tripod, so I was able to get some night shots.  I’ve never gotten to experiment with long exposures before, but it was SO MUCH fun.

Mom wanted her picture taken in front of the Louis Vuitton store. Then we went inside– it was massive!

We went into a Mercedes show room.  I picked up a little gift for Adam.

Not really.

We made it to the top of the road and I had to put my tripod to good use again for the Arc de Triomphe.

From there we walked over to the Eiffel Tower.  And my mom thought that I was trying to kill her again with all of the walking that we were doing.

The tower was verrrrrrrry blue.  I actually had to desaturate these pictures in photoshop!

Mom was very patient with me and the tripod.  🙂

From underneath:

We waited around for the sparkly lights to go off so I could get some more long exposure shots.

I love Paris.

We’ll get to the rotten pumpkins.

We went trick or treating on Halloween.  It’s not as popular to do over here, but we had fun going to the 4 houses on our street and seeing our neighbors again.  And you should have seen Nora say, “Bzzzzz!!!” at each person’s house.  And we totally froze our booties off.

We got juuuuuuust enough candy.  Not too much, and not too little.

Oh, and an…. orange???  We’ve gotten oranges in years past.  Kinda weird if you ask me.

After we went trick or treating, we headed out to a fireworks party at Rob and Alice’s.  Apparently Rob enjoys setting things on fire, so he was really in his element.  The girls were totally freaked out by the fireworks, which was kind of a bummer.  So, I didn’t get to spend much time taking pictures of the fireworks, since I was holding Alanna in her puffy coat. We still had a good time with friends, though.

I love the star burst thingies (that’s the technical word) on this next one.

Alanna did love the sparklers though, in the safety of indoors.

Nora liked the sparkler, but she didn’t want to hold on to it.  Alanna said, “Don’t be scared, Nora, it’s just fire.”  hahahahahahaha

1 November:

I decided to make some pumpkin bread with the culinary pumpkin that I bought at Tesco (don’t worry, it looked better than our leprosy pumpkin), since they don’t sell canned pumpkin (I’m still grieving over this 3 and half year on).  It looked a bit lop sided when I looked at it on the windowsill.  I went over to grab the pumpkin to put in the oven.  And then I turned it.  And this was what I saw.

It totally freaked me out and I like shrieked a little bit out loud.  How did this biological warfare happen in my own home right before my eyes???  I picked it up with an old towel and took it out to bin and threw it away. With the towel.  Blech.

2 November:

Went to get Nora out of her crib in the morning and was surprised to see that she had completely taken off her pajamas.

For all of the moms out there, I have always wondered why there is a little tab at the top of the all in one zip up pajamas (the ones with the feet in them).

As a side note, Nora calls that snap the “buckle seat.”  I guess she has somehow made the correlation between the “buckle seat” in her car seat and the snap on her pajamas.

Anyhow, she can’t get the all in one pajamas with the tab/ snap off.  So that’s what the “buckle seat” is apparently for.

Don’t worry, Nora’s working hard, starting early, to meet her drool quota for the day.

My mom’s coming tomorrow and we are going to PARIS for a few days next weekend.  I can’t WAIT!!!

If you didn’t catch it, it’s “Manamana.”  You can find the video on you tube…. it’s great for the kiddies!

27 October:

The girls got some practice for Halloween.  My girls lovvvveeeee to dress up.  It’s that time of year again… time to whip out the ol’ flash.  Pretty soon, the sun will be setting at like 3:30.  We sleep really well this time of year!

Alanna loves the feathers on this “ballernina” outfit.

Nora was Dora the mermaid. Seriously, this outfit is a winner.  Dora AND mermaid.

“Dora!!!!”

This girl’s got some sass.

29 October:

We walked to Tesco to get a few things.  It was cold, so we got all bundled up.

That’s Nora sitting behind Alanna.

Went home and Alanna decided to act like Rebecca, who is pregnant.

Except, she’s got Jesus in her tummy.  🙂

She’s really got the stance down.

It’s actually kind of scary.

Later that day, Ryan and Fran came over to hang out.  I had the idea to make paper mache hot air balloons.  Complete with applesauce containers for baskets.  We didn’t get to that part though, becauset the paper mache had to dry. We still haven’t finished them yet.

The kids lasted approximately 2 minutes, 38 seconds, with the paper mache, so me and Fran ended up doing all of it.

Ryan is such a cutie. And he and Alanna get along so well.  It’s very cute.

30 October:

The sky looked amazing that afternoon.  I so wanted to go outside, but it just wanted possible, so upstairs had to work.  I was too lazy to even open the window, lol.

That night, we carved our pumpkin.  Alanna wanted a happy one.

So did Nora.

Nora’s smiles turned to tears as they started pulling out the pumpkin guts.  She’s sooooo not into having her hands dirty.

“It’s so gross, it’s so gross, it’s so gross….”

Alanna got all into digging her hand in there though.

“Look, I got a weed!!!”  Yes, she thought that was weeds in there.  haha. Gotta love kids.

Then it came time for Adam to carve the face.  And they got bored.

Adam drew the face on the good side of the pumpkin, but messed up, so he was forced to use the other side.

So here’s our leprosy jack o’lantern.

Yeah, the state of our produce department has not been good lately.  That was the best pumpkin I could find.  They don’t have pumpkin patches here, which is a bummer!  I’ve enjoyed looking at all of my American friends’ pictures though.  🙂

Just to show you the state our our fruit situation:

Look at those bananas!! HA!  The peaches were like, “hard, hard, hard, and OHMYGOSHREALLYRIPE.”  So ripe that they were like moldy.  Yummmmmm, moldy peaches.

31 October:

We got the girls all dressed up in their Halloween Costumes and took them to the mall.  We went and got lunch at Starbucks and the girls had a good time prancing around as a bumble bee (Nora) and Dorothy (Alanna).

I whipped out my D50 for these mall shots.

Look, I made it into a picture!

We ran into Mark and Caroline at the mall with little baby Asher.  He really liked Nora’s antennae.  Look how big his eyes are!!  Haha!

She was getting to be an impatient bumble bee.  🙂

Back at home, I wanted to get some good pictures of the girls in their costumes.  I’m usually not so much into the backdrop thing, but it was just too cold to go outside. So here goes:

Too bad you can’t see her legs and shoes against the black!  Oh well. 🙂

So cute. Can’t. Stand. It.

She’s holding toto.

My sweet girl.

We went out that night for fireworks at a friend’s house, but I haven’t even gotten those pictures off of the card yet.  So, I’ll add ’em later!  I hope everyone else had as much fun as we did making fun memories with the kids at Halloween.

Adam went to the airport to pick up some really fun guys that stayed with us over the weekend.  I receive this in my inbox while he’s there:

“So I’m at the airport and I had to go to the bathroom…
I hear two men speaking russian in the toilet next to me. See attached photo.
Weird.
Real weird.
A”

I concur, that is really weird.

Janna had a baby, Elise, and she is SOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL.  I am sooooooooooooooooooooo (really I could add o’s all day) sad that I am not there to see her in person.

And yes, we both look funny, but isn’t Elise precious???

And finally, we’ve got some friends that live down the road from us (who are awesome) that called me last Saturday to see if I’d like a break for an hour or so.  To which I said, “Yes.”  And asked, “When?”  To which Mark said, “Oh, you know whenever.”  To which I said, “How’s now?”  Such sports.

Anyway, Mark took this picture of Nora that I’m still laughing about.

Yep.  I’m still laughing.