December/January...

...seems to of flew by. We ended the year with an exciting Christmas in Paris, and a visit from my sister Jessica who helped us ring in the new year with friends. Thought I'd share a few of our favorite pictures.

Concord Square & "Wedding Cake Bridge" (Eiffel Tower)

Notre Dame

We feel like we were able to see lots, but still could go back and do more. The tour was tremendous, but there was so much to see and do and not enough time for it all! The Notre Dame is a spectacular church by day and night with beautiful architecture as seen throughout Paris. The Louvre museum stretched on and on! We had enough time to see one level of one wing, picking it based on being able to stop by the Monna Lisa. We were told that if you spent 24/7 looking at each piece of art for 10 seconds.... you would spend 9 months in the Louvre!

The Louvre

We went by numerous other museums, took a tour around the city at night to see all the spectacular Christmas lights, went on a river cruise down the River Seine, stopped by the Moulin Rouge, and the Sacre Coeur (Church of the Sacred Heart). It hosts church services 24/7, 365 days a year and we briefly sat in a little on Christmas night, unfortunately couldn't understand any of it with it all being in French! Of course, we also stopped by the Eiffel Tower and went all the way to the top on Christmas Eve! What a spectacular view and my favorite picture of Paris!

Sacre Coeur & Eiffel Tower

Last but not least was that the food left little to be desired. We had really good French Onion Soup, but in my excitement to "try new things", I learned that one should never order Pate... especially if you don't know what it is! :)

Ugg.....

Jessica came and spent 10 jam packed days with us. We were able to tour London, Madame Tussauds with many pictures of us with wax celebrities, Windsor Castle, visit local villages, and of course we took her to our Friday night bowling. With the help of Granny Mc, we were able to eat at a local pub and introduce Jess to some of the local cuisine and also discover it is "untraditional" for women to drink beer!

Tower Bridge & Windsor Castle

Appearance on Jerry Springer... Cuddles with Shrek...

and Proposal to Robin Williams?

After all that... things finally started to slow down a bit. Shaye is spending the month studying to test for his next rank and is looking forward to being done with it (he tests on Feb 1st). We were able to go to London last weekend to see Cirque de Soleil which was very exciting. Other than that we have been enjoying our mild winter of temps averaging in the 40's. The only moisture has surfaced in the form of rain, but we are told that if it is going to snow, it will be in Februrary.

Whew... that was quite the update. Future blogs will not be so long, but hopefully I will get good at utilizing this feature and all of you at checkin in to see what we've been up to! We love and miss all of you immensely and are looking forward to our trip home in April!