New Years 2012 Road Trip to Paris

almost all of my boxes from the states have arrived!!!! it's like christmas all over again at our apartment. my favorite clothes, my kitchen utensils, my coffee grinder, air pump for the car, everything!!!! the only box that has yet to arrive is my box full of spices... which i pray makes it here in one piece. dad's been careful enough when packing things and i am beyond grateful. Here's the funny part... we now have 4 sets of measuring cups, two sets of measuring spoons, over 4 bottles of vanilla, two can openers, two cheese graters, five different corkscrews, and many more random duplicates. lol go figure.

THE PARIS UPDATE

it is truly an amazing feeling to revisit a foreign country... and it was an added bonus to be able to show dana around paris and know where i was going. it makes me super psyched for him to take me to Rome! Paris was beautiful... even though it was rainy and overcast the whole time. i've always wanted to bare witness to paris in the rain... as nothing quite beats walking around hand in hand with an umbrella. oddly enough i do want us to go back in the spring or summer... i saw paris in the summer last time and i'd be hugely disappointed if dana didn't get the chance to see the rosy sunlight. we saw as much as we could in the time that we had... all the big things that people go to Paris to see. what cracks me up is that i kept spouting out architectural trivia and knowledge upon a group of decidedly non-architects. why do i do this? it's like a knee jerk reaction that i can't clamp down on.

my favorite parts of the trip were walking around hand-in-hand with dana. talking about life and the splendor surrounding us. he may not be an architect but he's an old soul. and has the same strange appreciation for beautiful things, history, and world renowned buildings. Dinner was also a highlight as i had smoked salmon sandwhich and salad and also had bites of Dana's duck with potatoes. delicious!!! we had creme brulee for dessert.... YUM! and then savored almost 3 glasses of wine apiece. i'm ashamed to say both of us walked around Paris with mulberry red lips for the remainder of the evening.

seeing the eiffel tower at midnight was a rush... we decided to go there because we figured we'd get the best show... what you never account for in this situation is the 3.5 hundred thousand other people who had the same idea as you. i'd bet that being at the eiffel tower on new years eve pretty much rivals being in times square. so. many. people. but if you take a moment and find a five foot radius you can call your own... and let your husband wrap his arms around you, none of it really matters any more. and then you get a group of fun french people who have champagne and pop the bottle at midnight and sing "Bonne Annee" drunkenly. i loved it! seriously. even getting sprayed by the champagne. the real experience,however, happened after midnight.... because the metro was free, the entire population of paris decided to use it after midnight to get home. so there's a mad dash rush to all the stations and some of them even had the gates closed as to not overcrowd the stations. which meant dana and i had to walk past for metro stops before we found one that was open... which took about an hour. and may or may not have included me scaling a fence to a construction site. and we even had to sneak through the exit. hopped on a train and took it to the connection point between lines... where we waited for another 45 minutes for the train to take us back to our stop near the hotel. we were dying. we'd been up since 4 that morning to drive into Paris, and we had been awake for 23 hours at that point. and i had to pee the entire time... i really do miss free bathrooms. part of me couldn't believe that we had made it back. after showering off the city grime, poor dana collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep on top of the comforter and sheets. i seriously don't believe i have ever been that tired in my life. nor have i ever been as sore as i was the next morning. my brother and i have this weird thing where the ball and socket joint of our hips to our legs doesn't fit exactly... so if we walk for long periods of time we start to limp. because it gets out of alignment. not fun. haha i was so grateful for dana. that i could trust him, and lean on him (literally), and know that he would get me back home safely.

it was a great trip though. i finally got to meet more of dana's friends... Zach is a hilarious cocky gent, who loves to spout movie quotes and random trivia... but his secrets out... i know underneath it all, he's a sweetheart and a good guy. Crystal is my tiny pocket sized curly haired little sister who loves to be goofy but has such a kind heart. Sarah is her older sister who is an amazing outside of the box thinker. Jeremy and Emily are friends of Crystals and are great people. Jeremy likes good beer and Emily has great taste in clothes. basically your recipe for a great traveling crew. i loved that the on car ride home we took the back roads and saw beautiful french countryside.... and told riddles and gave logic problems... and played "what's yours like?" which can unexpectedly be played without a wipe board. all in all, an amazing new years, and a great success of an adventure. if you'd like to see all the photos from our trip this is our "Bonne Annee Paris!" album.

has been a productive week. i've discovered that 3/4 of our remaining boxes are clothes. which means as soon as we can get more storage, that part of our unpacking/apartment cleaning will be easily done. the duvet i want at west elm is on sale... and i'm tempted to get it. considering i've waited for it to go on sale for about a year now. still waiting on the couch... i haven't had a chance to get to the BX to get a photo. i had a dr's appointment on tuesday with dana's PCM to get my command sponsorship moving forward. so i spent most of the day on base editing photos. oh! speaking of which, Zach and i talked about putting our heads together and coming up with a business where he takes photos with his amazing camera and i edit them. he hates to edit photos but has an amazing eye for photography. so cross your fingers... that'd be a dream come true!

this weekend d and i have alot of wedding nonsense to catch up on. we've let it fall to the wayside a bit and decided it was time to get back on the nuptial horse. i have a skype date with brit on saturday which i'm SO excited about! and dana also gave me the okay to get paint this weekend so we can finally paint the kitchen! and then there's studying for my drivers test which has also taken a hiatus this holiday season. all in all, life is good and we're trying to kick off the new year strong. it's weird to think i'll be home in five months. huh. bizarre. time definitely flies.

Happy New Year! love and miss ya'll.