Paris - October 2015

The girls have the last week of October off from school, so we decided to spend part / all of that week in Paris.  (I had to return on the Wednesday morning to teach, but LBJ and the girls stayed until the weekend.)  I spent a productive day at the OECD and had a meeting on Sunday, so we could legitimately expense the apartment, my flight, and my per diem.

We rented an apartment through AirBnB and it worked great. It may not have been the most exciting location, but it had plenty of shops and restaurants within walking distance, a bus route very close by, and walkable to the metro.  We felt like Parisians for the week (at least those who speak very poor French, except for LBJ who is, as far as I can tell, fluent).

The weather was quite warm, so we spent a lot of time outdoors.  On Saturday, we went to the Magic Museum and then walked around a lot.  Including this spot on the Seine...

My girls along the Seine

This chocolate shop had some great Halloween themed chocolates, so the girls each got one.  FABJ got a bat and ORBJ got a pumpkin.  Hmmm....Parisian chocolate.

How do you say Halloween in French?

Another thing to love about Paris is that kids are free for the art museums.  And the girls loved the ipads which some museums rented. The audioguides were good but not quite as good...

Little miss art critic at the Musee D'Orsay

Needless to say, we ate well.  We particularly like the "old man bistro" - clearly a sign of good value if "old men" eat there.  The markets had great food as well, not to mention the boulangerie.

My meetings went well, and it was a pleasure to see my friend PS who works there.

Ladies enjoying some chocolat chaud

Ah, it was a good trip (except that FABJ was very stressed in the morning for some unknown reason).  Very sad to think that only two weeks later, such bad things happened.

Look - no jackets!

One last thing - the weather was amazingly warm.  Sadly, the best day (60s) was my day of meetings (where I was inside from 10 to 4 except for the walk to / from lunch!).

back to school etc. 2015

After the challenges of last August / September of moving out of rental but our new house not being ready until November, it was nice to have a calm, uneventful start to the school year (for the girls and for me).  Well, I made it a bit more eventful by getting laser eye surgery on the girls' first day of school.  So I'm glasses-free, but I can't see very well at night yet (temporary side effect).  Thus, my tennis game has not been great, as I mostly play at night this time of year (i.e. all year except the summer).

ORBJ started in Ladybirds, the Irish version of Girl Scouts (or the equivalent for kindergarteners).  She was SO ready to join, as illustrated here:

Big sister escorting her little sister to her first day of ladybirds

FABJ still enjoys Brownies.  They are different branches, which LBJ says is a good thing to give them some separation.  It's tough to beat ORBJs location - 5 minute walk if that.

The cat has been pretty entertaining.  Except when she jumps on me in the middle of the night and wakes me up.  For some reason she doesn't do that to LBJ...

cat in a shopping (not in a hat)

Once we started back to school, we starting thinking about FABJ's birthday party.  Even though her birthday is in August, we have the party in September once she's back in school (first day of school is September 1st or a day or two before). As expected, LBJ made another impressive cake - a pirate ship:

Ahoy, mateys!  Thar be birthday cake (pirate booty?)

The other hit of the party was the pinata, although the thing took FOREVER to break (even though some of LBJs friends gave it some impressive, solid THWACKS - a technical term, I know).  (My apologies for no pictures of the pinata, and for not knowing to type the 'n' with the ~ on top.)

We had great weather and the girls had a great time.

Next posting is for October 2015, including our trip to Paris for the Bank Holiday weekend.