WHAT'S GOING ON LATELY......

After celebrating my birthday for nearly the entire week, Valentine's Day slipped by with very little attention.  I think it's usually that way if your birthday is near a holiday..one gets lots of attention and one merely comes and goes.  I love Valentine's Day (being born three days before my mother always made me a heart-shaped birthday cake with pink frosting)  and have always had a wreath on the front door, red/pink napkins, placemats, flowers and candles adorning miscellaneous areas of the house.  Here, not so much.  It's not that I've changed, but my surroundings certainly have!  It's nearly impossible to find a simple wreath to decorate and even if I did, I'm not sure our apartment owner or the gardienne of the apartment building would want me putting it on my front door.  I did put out red/pink/white flowers for several weeks in a row for my weekly flowers from the market, and I exchanged the white candles sitting around for pink.  I guess it's in the little things.

Normally, we might go out to dinner on Valentine's Day,  but this year, here in the city of love and light, we didn't even do that!  We stayed home and had soup and watched a movie!  What's happened to us???!!!  The truth is we had been out and about so much with "birthday" things, we enjoyed just being together quietly in our little apartment.  Plus, our big celebration was happening the evening after Valentine's Day (Friday, February 15) so there was much to finish up with that.

A birthday party was David's idea since I'm honestly not crazy about an event in my honor.  I love it for someone else, and, luckily, I did share the honor with a friend who's birthday was soon after mine.  Yea!!!!  Anyway, we invited some of our friends for a little celebration with warm appetizers, crudités and, most importantly, birthday cake!!!  Our friend, Janine Springall, who catered Bloom last year and is catering Bloom again this year, did all the food which was delicious.

This only shows a small part of the food..perhaps we should have added the other table leaf because the table was jammed with food once all the warm dishes were set out

This chocolate cake was absolutely delicious!!  We hoped we would have some left so we could freeze it and have it in the days ahead.....but no such luck.  Probably just as well.  How much do you have to walk to wear off a slice of cake????!!

There were no planned activities, and I wondered how everyone would mingle....they didn't all know each other.  But it was a wonderful evening with everyone embracing and visiting with those they knew well and meeting and getting to know those they were just meeting.  For me, it's difficult to completely enjoy the evening because I don't want to spend the night just exchanging pleasantries with everyone, I want to sit and really visit with everyone.  Impossible!!!!  So, unfortunately, I didn't get to spend time with as many as I would have liked, but I didn't do too bad!!!!  It was a fun time and everyone went home with a little goody bag of chocolates--don't you always leave a birthday party with a goody bag??? 

One goody bag per couple, please

Then we were back to our real world the next morning with regular market shopping and planning food for the next week.  You can only be Cinderella for one night...longer is way too exhausting!!!

The other night we were watching a movie when I looked out the living room window and saw we had the most magnificent moon hanging in the sky.  I showed David,  and we decided to take a little stroll. The temps have been lovely (I wish it had been this way a year ago when we moved here instead of so cold and rainy, oh, well...) so we chose to walk along the Seine.  Being a weeknight, it was pretty quiet out and this is what we saw...

Always I will love this sight!

this is one of those magical moments I know I'll carry with me.  

Other than this, life is just moving on.  We're revamping the small group we attend on Sunday morning, and that has been good.  We're working on Bloom (we will not be running around like crazy people in July/August like we had to do last year!!!!) and have nearly all our speakers in place (not all confirmed) and most of our committee chairs in place (not all confirmed), the bookstore, and the caterer.  So things are falling into place so that, hopefully, we can make a trip home this summer.

Next week, we have an appointment to see if we can get an extension on our visas until our scheduled appointments (David's in March and mine in May) are met (our visas expire late February).  So, we'll be ending our first year here the same way we began our first year here..dealing with French bureaucracy.  Let's hope it goes as smoothly as it has the earlier times.....