...Finally in Paris! (Location #4...)

And back to our European adventure...

After a few days of rest and relaxation with the Rodenackers in Domfessel (the tiny village in the Elsass region of France), we traveled westward on a Thursday morning to Paris! It was only a four-hour trek to the city by train, so we arrived with plenty of daylight to enjoy. We checked our large backpacks at the high security lockers in the train station, and set off with the bare bone essentials to see as much of the city as we could.


Our first stop off the metro was Île de la Cité, one of the two natural twin islands in the middle of the Seine (the river that runs through Paris). Our first stop - meaning first stop after the Panini stand - was Notre Dame. This church is beautiful...


We love the picture below. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see the streams of light shining through the stained glass windows onto the frescoes...


From Notre Dame, we decided to travel through Paris on foot. I have been to Paris before, and wanted to show Marcos the things I thought he would love the most. So after crossing Pont Neuf, and walking past Le Louvre (we decided to tackle the inside on a day when we had more time), and Jardin des Tuileries, we headed up Avenue des Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. Can I stop italicizing now? Please and thank you.


Our plan was to take a great photo of us with a stretch of Champs-Élysées in the background and the Arc de Triomphe crowning off the photo. I can't tell you how many times we crossed half way through the cross-walk to the median strip, took a picture and then got stuck balancing on the median curb when the traffic started up again. I'm sure we caused a scene.


And this. Ohhh this. Along Champs-Élysées are many upscale shopping stores, and in order to keep the boys happy, Paris has allowed some muscle automobile companies to put in their race car and super hip automobile shops.

At the Renault store/museum, not only could you take a picture next to cut outs of world renowned race car drivers, but there was a machine to test the speed of your reflexes and coordination to see if you were race car driver material. It was basically a large metal web of lighted buttons that would light up one by one, and in order for the next to fire off, you had to hit the lighted button as fast as you could.


And we finally made it to the Arc de Triomphe. There was something important going on concerning famous people, and security guards and photographers, but we still managed to maneuver around the roped areas and admire the monument.


And an hour or so later (after a stop into a small grocery store for the picnic essentials of chocolate, bread, and juice), and perfectly in time for sunset, we found ourselves at the Palais de Chaillot, which is the best place to view the Eiffel Tower. Marcos was so excited.

In case you forgot what the Eiffel Tower looks like, I've kindly included 6 photos (and honestly, we had over 30, so this was my attempt to narrow it down!).


The photo below is one of our favorites from Paris, which we took in "widescreen" mode so that we could make it our computer's wallpaper when we got home. We did, and it is.


One of the most special things about our trip to Paris was meeting Stella, my pen pal from sixth grade (15 years ago!). When I told her months ago that we would be coming to Europe and that we were interested in seeing her, if possible, she very kindly invited us to stay with her in Paris, and in Switzerland (where she is from). She works for a Swiss company that helps museums such as Le Louvre organize their inventories electronically into a comprehensive computer system, and so her work during the week brings her to this beautiful apartment in Paris.


After a good night's rest at Stella's we decided to tackle the Louvre... One of the things I often caught myself wondering as we passed oodles and oodles of world famous sculptures and paintings was, "What makes a piece famous?".


It clearly wasn't Venus de Milo's arms...


Or Nike's head...


Or Mona's size...


It really made me think. I wondered, "If I passed this work of art on the street, would it really strike me as exceptional? If I didn't recognize it as something famous, would it matter to me that I was looking at it?".


It's amazing how knowing the value of a thing alters your ability to look at it and frankly answer the question, "Do I like this or not?".


In the afternoon we returned to Stella's apartment, and Marcos made Brazilian stroganoff for the three of us for dinner. He learned quickly how to navigate in a teeny tiny kitchen...


After dinner we went out on the town, and checked out the hip quarters of Paris with Stella. One nice thing about going out with someone who knows the town is that instead of ending up with three thousand other tourists at one of the cafes listed in Lonely Planet, you find yourself ordering a pear milkshake right next to the plaza at Centre Pompidou. Yes please!


And our next morning was Saturday, which meant that Stella did not have to work. We went together to the Luxembourg Gardens, and captured my first belly shots. Just as a note, I really didn't have much of a belly to speak of at this point. But with my Empire waist shirt, my natural pudge, and Stella's skills, we got a few very cool pictures...


Some places are just really beautiful. I vote views from the bridges spanning the Seine River in Paris really high up on my list of places I like to oooh and aaah from.


...especially when there is kissing involved.


...or the sunset.


For our last day in Paris, we visited one of my favorite museums. After checking out church in French...


...we met Stella at the Rodin museum. The Rodin museum is my favorite for a few reasons: first, I like Rodin's art and find it interesting and moving and kind of raw, and second, instead of being two palaces converted into a museum (such as the Louvre), the Rodin museum is a house converted into a museum, which means that it matches well the size of my attention span.


At the Rodin Museum, they provide a laminated cheat sheet in each room in a bazillion foreign languages, so that visitors from all countries can read the story of each of the pieces in the room. Below, Stella, me and Marcos lean out the window towards the gardens.


Rodin's most well-known piece is "Le Penseur" (the Thinker). Because Rodin created molds of his pieces, there are actually a number of authentic "The Thinkers" in the world. His other famous work is "The Kiss". It looks almost as good as ours...

One of our favorite family home evening activities

Believe it or not, when I became pregnant, my camera-happiness just near disappeared. It revived itself for our trip to Europe, but when I'm home I don't even think of pulling out the camera anymore. I don't know if I'm saving up my energy for the thousands of pictures I will take of our new baby next spring, or what, but I have been a pathetic documenter of our family home evening activities lately.

Until now. This week was our annual pumpkin carving and caramel apples evening, and it is one of my favorite things to do with friends. This year things were a bit slower going, as we had three new additions to our family home evening group who required frequent attention. Luckily their addition really raises the average cuteness factor of our group, so we don't mind snuggling with them.


And the carving went on. Krista and Ertle, on the left, made a wicked cool Nightmare Before Christmas spooky jack o' lantern, and Jason and Kim made a butterfly for Kinsey.


Kinsey helped with the pumpkin, but was a bit traumatized after sticking her hand into the goo...


Krista and Ertle kicked off the caramel apples, which were amazing. We each brought a topping to share, and the end product was sticky, but soooo worth doing every day. I mean, think of all the nutrients in those apples!


Nick, if you ever get sick of Brookston pulling off your glasses, we'll take a hit for the team, and borrow him for a year or two. Just say the word...


Here are the end products: The Nightmare Before Christmas, the butterfly, the Empey's happy faces pumpkin, and our I-can't-really-think-of-any-good-ideas star pumpkin. Maybe our end product wasn't very impressive, but I think that our approach nowadays is more of the "joy in the journey" variety. Did we have joy? Yes. Check!

Disc Golfing in the fall...

Last week the Empeys invited us to go disc golfing. For those of you who are as clueless as I was a year ago: it's a sport, a type of golfing that requires throwing a small, hard Frisbee disk down a fairway and into a standing netted basket. The bonus part of the game is that instead of using manicured grassy areas, the courses usually cut right through the forest.


And in North Carolina, the forests are beautiful. We went to a really nice course in Durham, off of a public park, and the colorful fall leaves blanketed the ground. So while the boys played...


...these two monkeys kept Nicole and me busy. I'm secretly in love with Brookston (on the right), but don't tell Everett (on the left) or else he might grow up with a complex. I just have this thing for bad boys, and Brookston is the fuss-pot of the two.


Nicole is so excited to be a mom of twins that she nearly ran the stroller up the hill. It was quite a day of off-roading pushing the stroller through the forest. Nicole and I threw a few discs at the beginning of the game, but we were too accomplished for the men and didn't want them to be discouraged, so we moved on with life, and just enjoyed chatting, hiking through the forest and being outside on a beautiful fall day. Below, my 4.5 month belly. Isn't it amazing that my pregnancy is already half way over?


And here is wildlife in North Carolina. When we got home and looked at this photo I had taken of a (garden?) spider we encountered in the forest, I was so impressed that my camera had picked it up so well. Click to make it larger and to see its hairy legs!


What a great way to spend a fall afternoon outdoors: thanks Nick and Nicole!

The results are in!

Today Marcos and I went in for the baby's 18-week ultrasound appointment, and we found out that we are (most likely) having a girl! We are sooooo excited! For the past few months I have been saying that I want a girl, and Marcos has been saying that he wants a boy, so when the technician said that it looked like a girl, I felt really bad for Marcos. I told him that he could have time to feel sad if he wants to, and that it was normal to experience some sense of loss and disappointment, to which he replied, "What? I'm excited! I really wanted a girl". Apparently, after I had declared that I would like to have a little girl, he just chose the opposite so that at the ultrasound it wouldn't be a family-wide blow if it were a boy.

But really? We didn't much care either way. Half of me was just relieved that there is a baby in there, because sometimes I think I am dreaming. I think that for my sanity's sake, being able to feel the movements of the baby in a few weeks and having a confirmation that there's something moving in there will be really rewarding and amazing.


Ultrasounds have largely been associated with finding out the gender of a baby, because that is such a special moment for parents, but you would be surprised at how little time is spent finding out that information compared to the (really) more essential purposes of the machine. Our technician spent most of the time measuring organs, looking at black and white spaces and the colored areas of blood flow, making sure there are four chambers of the heart, looking for the right spacing in the brain, etc., and everything looked perfect and measures out to keep her due date at April 1st! Our bugaboo was tightly balled up and sleeping, so the technician also spent some time wiggling my belly to get her to change position. Her feet were tucked up and crossed, so finding the gender cues were pretty difficult. Above, our little girl is upside down and curled into a ball. What a good-looking spine, eh?


Unfortunately, we didn't get any really classic profile shots of her face this time around. She was sleepy and not completely compliant (Marcos says she's is stubborn already, like her mother), but I loved this shot of her hand. Isn't it a miracle that we can already count her fingers?

And below is the moment you have all been waiting for. Just like a modest mouse, she had her legs tucked and crossed, so this shot was a long time in coming, but this view from her underside indicated to the technician that we have a girl. Apparently, those suspiciously ball-looking white circles are not balls (I double and triple and quadruple checked this with the technician), but are really female privates. Before she even said anything, Marcos looked at the screen and said, "It looks like a girl, doesn't it?", and she confirmed that she had been thinking so for ten minutes, but wanted to find a better angle so that we could see it too. Marcos had a knack at ultrasounds; the entire time, I was just blown away by the technician's ability to make any sense out of the grayscale blobs we were staring at...


And so when I came home from our appointment I finally did something I have never been able to do.

As a child I collected things like foreign coins, stamps, and erasers, but after I grew up and got married I sallied into greener pastures. On a shopping trip with my pregnant best friend Lindsay some years ago, we visited a consignment shop for kiddo clothes and I thought that a $.50 pink baby shirt with a shave-ice cone on it was pretty cute, and I bought it. That was the beginning of my new collection. When I took everything out today and finally got to separate the boys clothes from the girls clothes, I was really impressed with how far things had gotten out of control, even though I stopped buying baby clothes a long time ago. 78 outfits in sizes from newborn to 2-years! But in my defense, I have not spent more than a dollar on most of these items. To view my downfall (the pink shirt with the shave-ice cone), just click on the photo to make it larger...


And that is our exciting news! Just to end on a funny note, which is the story of my life living with Marcos Prieto, I overheard him telling his boss on the phone tonight, "We went to our ultrasound appointment today, and it's a girl! I'm going to be a mother!"

Hey, maybe things just work differently in Brazil.

When family comes to town...

Living out here in North Carolina, we feel very far removed from Hawaii, Brazil, and even Utah, where some of Marcos' family live. So we were thrilled when Marcos' brother Danny called us up a few months ago and said that he and his family were planning a trip to visit us!


Danny, his wife Marie and their nearly-3 year old girl Kaitlyn arrived on October 6th. Our incredibly kind friends let us use their beach house at Kill Devil Hills (Outer Banks) for a few days, so after packing up the car with five warm bodies and nearly the entire kitchen, we headed out to one of the most beautiful of the North Carolina beaches.

And how incredible! Our first beach day was beautiful... for early October, the weather was perfect, and the water was only cold at the first touch. It was Kaitlyn's first time to the ocean, and she found a small (dead) fish on the beach, which she named "Nemo" and carried around with her all day. She was very proud of her find.


This photo of Marcos reminds me of that show Babe Watch, with the hunks running through the waves. And me below, striking a happy pose.


Marie and Danny, and then with monkey girl Kaitlyn. It was sooo much fun to be together!


These two brothers are really close, and it's fun for me to observe them, as I didn't have any siblings in my home growing up.


One of the highlights of our first beach day was boogie boarding. After we had all warmed up a bit, we spent hours and hours catching waves. Even Kaitlyn joined Danny on some tandem rides before she started to get too cold and we bundled her up.


Marcos trying his hand at body surfing (no pun intended, really). I have spent many hours in my life looking at surfing magazines, and I always notice that surfers make very distinctive monkey faces at the peak of their concentration. Marcos is here on the verge of a great monkey face...

Danny, Kaitlyn and Marie walking home from the beach after a long afternoon in the ocean.


Our friends who own the beach house also surprised us by leaving a birthday cake and balloon for my 28th (*gasp*) birthday. With good food and good dessert and my family around me, it was a happy, happy celebration.

The next morning, we headed back to the beach, but this day was much different. The weather was a bit darker and more ominous, and the waves were a bit too big and too oddly shaped for catching anything good with the boogie boards...


Uncle and niece playing with shark egg sacs, which were all over the beach. Funny, that didn't really deter us from getting in the water...


The waves were much different on day 2... we left the boogie boards on the shore and just practiced not getting white washed by the force of the water.


And after a few days, we headed back to Chapel Hill. Marie's younger brother is very much into firefighting, so we stopped by the station to pick up a souvenir and check out the Carolina blue firetrucks. In Chapel Hill, NC, our firetrucks, ambulances, and buses are mostly Carolina blue, with the UNC mascot "Ramses", or the "tar heel" logo on the back. There is a lot of school pride in this town...


On our last good-weathered day together, we took the family to Duke Gardens. It was Danny and Marie's 5th wedding anniversary, so we tried to capture some lovin'....


And no visit to Chapel Hill is complete without a stop at Maple View Farms to have ice-cream on the porch of the Country Store sitting in big rocking chairs. We happened to arrive just at sundown, and it was a perfect end to a great visit. Danny and Marie and Kaitlyn, please come visit us again!