Slow Cooking Thirty

Happy Monday, Friends! First off, thank you to everyone for all the 30th Birthday Wishes.  I feel so loved and wiser already.  I had a very relaxing birthday here and we had a fun time continuing the celebration here with an impromptu Saturday night party.  I spent the morning of my birthday having a café creme and my favorite breakfast pastry, une feuilleté, which is basically a pain au chocolat with a...

Fifteen

When I was 5, I was convinced that there was no number 15.  I spent weeks arguing this fact with my parents, convinced that they were lying to me and making up some fake number between 14 and 16 where no number existed.  It finally took the wise words of my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Greenwald, to convince me that, there indeed was a number 15.  I think that's when my parents realized that I was going to be a...

On The Road Again Bed Beard

With all this ECLT recapping going on around here lately, I know you've been wondering what we've been up to all week.  Well, we've been busy!  Our friend Ty and his friend Mike came to town so we spent a day or two showing them around Montpellier, stuffing their faces with amazing food, and playing on the beach.     We've also been working on plans for our travels over the next month which...

New Computer, Sleepy Bed Beard

Remember when you were in high school and you had to use dial up to connect to the Internet?  And then you had to wait 5 minutes between each page jump just to get to Hotmail.com to check your email?  That's what it feels like using our old, spare computer.  So I got my butt in gear, stat, and ordered a new one yesterday!  Thanks to a dear friend, I got a great deal on a refurbished Thinkpad T61.  That's great...

I Survived the East Coast Love Tour and All I Got Was This Lousy Blog Post

This is just a quick post to let you all know that I'm alive!  Sorry that you haven't heard from me sooner, but I'm sad to report that my trusty ThinkPad has finally bit the dust.  Yes, I am computerless and writing this post from our old, ancient, dinosaur of a Mac which I can't use to upload pictures or watch Slingbox.  But I can type and go on Facebook, so I guess I'm surviving.  I'm hoping to get a new PC...

Baby-Sitting Bed Beard

We're on vacation, ya'll!  But there is one big huge drawback to going on vacation...leaving our little boy behind. We've been lucky enough to always have friends willing and available to baby-sit little Figgy when we travel and we're working on building another group of baby-sitting friends here in France.  During this trip Fig will be staying with a pet-sitter that Stéphanie and Simon recommended for the...

21st Century Baby Shower

What do you do when your only little sister is having a baby shower and you live over 4,000 miles away?  Surprise Skype in, of course!  Thanks to 21st century technology, living on a different continent than your family isn't so bad.  After several test runs earlier in the week (first I could see Mom but not hear her, then she could hear me, but not see me) we finally got Skype up and running at Shady Hollow...

Smoking Hot Bed Beard

Sorry for no post yesterday and I have to warn you:  this isn't going to be much of one either.  I had a really good post planned for yesterday, but you'll just have to wait until next week because I'm too busy sitting here wallowing in my own sweat to be motivated to think too much.  We're going on nearly two weeks straight of intense sun and humidity with no air conditioning or reprieve,  and it's making me...

Midnight in Paris

Around midnight on Sunday in Paris, after a long first day of sightseeing and dinner with the parents, Michael and I wanted to buy some bottled water and maybe a beer or two to bring back to our hotel room.  We spoke to the concierge to see if there was a corner store nearby, but he informed us that everything around the hotel was closed for the evening.  Even though he was probably right, we decided to take a...

Mr. Fix-It: Dad’s Vacation

I think if you asked my Dad, “Hey Dave, what was your favorite part about France?  Was it the Eiffel Tower?  Seeing Versailles?  The Mediterranean Sea?”  He would probably say something like, “Hmm, it's a tie between installing the new oven and re-wiring the bathroom lighting.”  Seriously.  I think my Dad is happiest when he's helping others and fixing things.  Case in point:  When I was growing up,...