2015 Year in Review

By far, hands down, no contest – this was our busiest year ever.  But also our best one to date!

January 

We kicked off the year in Nebraska at my oldest nephews wedding.  It was so nice to spend that special day with them and to watch them get married.  We also spent some nice quality time with family!  We brought Hannah along with us and she did great.

February

We got Abby in February.  It was a quick decision on our part, and while I don’t ever recommend making quick decisions ESPECIALLY when animals are involved, I do have to say that this one worked out great.  Abby is the most lovable, attentive, playful little dog that I’ve ever met.  We love her to pieces.

March

We held a garage sale in March at my mother-in-law’s house.  Not our biggest one yet, but it was still successful!

We also lost our old, sweet kitty Masami.  She was 19.

April

April marked our 5-year anniversary!  We had a great anniversary and a nice dinner at The Melting Pot. 

We also had our Circuit Assembly plus our Memorial.

May

May was filled with last minute plans for our trip, including a shopping trip to Santa Fe.

June

June was a blur, but a great blur!  We left for England, Belgium and France

July

We kicked off July still in Europe (Belgium) and attended the Special Convention there.  It was amazing!

When we got back we learned that we got a new host congregation for our French group.

August

August was a little calmer than the previous months, thank goodness!  Watson began his service dog training.  We also started losing weight!!

September 

Our annual Fantasy Football draft was held in September.  I decided not to play this year, but I helped out at the draft.

I also spent some time getting my house in order!

And….I had dental surgery which was no fun.  I’m glad it’s over!

And……husband started a new job.  He spent a week in Denver for training and we got him all moved into his office downtown.

October

October was great.  My mom and dad visited and we went to Balloon Fiesta.  The weather was PERFECT!  We had fun just spending time together, going to flea markets, and eating of course. 

We had our English Circuit Assembly.

At the end of October my mother-in-law and I took a trip to Los Angeles.  We played tourists for the first two days, and then attended the French Circuit Assembly.

November – My newest nephew Connor was born.  Hubby and I also went to San Diego again (including Disneyland and a football game!).  I also had another dental procedure done.  Ugh.  I am so over the dentist!

December – December was probably our calmest month out of the entire year.  It was nice! 

Here's a little summary:

New pets:  1 (Abby)

New family members: 2 (nephew - Connor & niece-in-law - Emily)

Travels:

Nebraska (Lincoln, Omaha)

Iowa (Council Bluffs)

California (Mira Loma, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Hollywood, San Diego, Pacific Beach, Del Mar, Coronado & Anaheim)

England (London)

France (Paris, Cormeilles, Versailles)

Belgium (Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, Flobecq, Loppem)

2016 should be a bit calmer as far as travel.  I plan to take a trip to Nebraska to visit my family and meet my newest nephew.  And we might go to South America to visit friends that moved there a couple of years ago.  But that’s it (so far, ha ha).

A Tale of Two Paintings

One of the things we always like to buy when we go on trips is artwork.  It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, we just have to love it.   

When we went to Europe, we were walking around the 18^th district (Montmartre), which is known as the artsy-fartsy district.  Meaning…the local Parisian artists set up shop in the streets there and sell their work.  It’s also the District that contains the Sacre Coeur, the famous stairs that are in practically every  movie based in Paris, and the steep streets.  

We walked all around, and we stopped twice at this one particular artist’s booth.  We really liked his work as an impressionist.  So we picked out which painting we liked the best and he wrapped it up for us.

But I think the best part of the whole experience was that he didn’t speak any English.  So we had a nice (somewhat choppy) conversation with him in French.  We asked what the painting was (his imagination or an actual place).  He told us that he lives in Normandy so all of his paintings are scenes from Normandy.  Then we asked him if he preferred Normandy or Paris.  He said he prefers Normandy to live, but Paris for work.  Ha ha.  Which makes sense.  He can sell way more paintings to tourists in Paris than he can in Normandy.  He said he comes to Paris every weekend to sell his work.

He was a very nice older gentleman.  He had this crazy white/grey hair that was very….untamed.  And round glasses.

Anyways….we got the painting home safely and then took it to the frame store to get framed.  It was painted on a wrapped canvas, so technically we didn’t NEED a frame for it (wrapped canvas is wrapped around a wood frame of some sort), but we wanted it to stand out a bit more.  So we chose a gold-brushed frame with a blue matting to bring out the blue in the painting.  We hung it in the dining room.  I love it!

The next painting we bought was last week in California.  It’s a very different type of painting.

It’s Chunk!  From the Goonies.  Doing the Truffle Shuffle.

This just goes to show you are varied our tastes are.  On one wall we have a painting of Normandy done by a French artist.  And on the same wall (the other side in the hallway) we have a kid from an 80’s movie lifting his shirt up and shaking his belly. 

I love both paintings.  One makes me think back of that day in Paris walking around the cobblestone streets, listening to the local musicians play in the square, walking hand in hand with husband and just breathing in Paris. 

And the other makes me think of the pizza place in downtown San Diego where I would burst out laughing about every 5 minutes, each time I would look at Chunk, a character from one of my favorite movies as a kid.

And that is a tale of two paintings.

Day 9 - Paris & Cormeilles

This was our last day in France.  We slept in, and went into the city just for a little bit to pick up some souvenirs. 

We got home early to do some laundry and pack and then our hosts made us dinner.  We had Champaign, wine, bread, cheese, salad, spicy hot dogs, quiche and desert. 

 It was so nice to eat outside and relax and spend some time with them.  And then we packed and got ready for the next country:  Belgium!!

Day 8 - Versailles

Ah, Versailles.  I do believe this is my favorite place in France.  When we were planning this trip, when my friends and husband asked me what was a ‘must-see’, Versailles was at the top of my list.

We had bought tickets in advance, to both the palace, gardens, and then the night show.

When we got off the train, we immediately saw sisters doing cart witnessing in English.  They were in the English group there.

Because it was a Saturday, it was INSANELY busy.  We waited in line for probably 2 hours just to get in (with our pre-printed tickets)  But that’s okay.  We had plenty to look at.

We toured the palace first.  Saw the King and Queens bedrooms, and the Hall of Mirrors of course.  It was very crowded.

Then we decided to rent a golf cart.  We had about an hour and a half to tour the gardens before they closed (they close from like 5:00 until 8:00).  So we grabbed our stuff (including our wine and cheese ha ha) and took off. 

We saw fountains.  Some set to music.  

Then we drove to the Petit Trianon, given to Marie Antoinette by her husband.  Inside was really cool (this was also new to me, it was just too cold the last time I was there). 

Then we drove to Marie Antoinette’s hamlet that she had constructed while she was there to ‘escape’ her princess/queen life.  It was amazing.  You couldn’t go inside any of the buildings. They all looked pretty untouched.  It was so pretty.  There were swans, and they even had donkeys, chickens, goats, etc.  

Then we made a mad rush back to our golf cart because we HAD to have it back by 5:00 and it was about 4:59.  With about a 10 minute drive back to the return place.  So Nancy, kept yelling “Attention” as she was plowing through the crowds of people in our cart, only in French (AH-TAUNT-SEE-ON!!) to get people to move out of the way (our golf cart didn’t have a horn).  It was so funny.  We decided that she will be the one to drive our getaway car.

Then we left the park to go have some dinner.  It was a good place with good beer, and then we ordered a ginormous mojito that served 4.

Then we went back into the park for the fountains and fireworks.

We kept seeing all of these people dressed up going into the park, so we asked one of them what was going on and they said that one Saturday night per year, by invitation only, there is an event at Versailles where people dress up in period costumes and then after the fireworks (after all of the common folk leave) they have an event inside the palace (like a dance or something).  It was so cool to see everyone dressed up and walking around as the music played.

The fountains were so pretty all lit up at night and the fireworks were amazing.

It was a SUPER late night.  We missed the last trains to Cormeilles, so we took a cab from Paris to Cormeilles (at like 1:00 in the morning).  But it was totally worth it!  The cab drivers in Paris are just as insane as the ones in London.  Yikes.