Having a great Christmas......but...

Merry Christmas to all our family.  Moms, dads, sisters and brothers.  We are fortunate to have some of our family here to celebrate our first Christmas here in Paris.  Thank you family for all the gifts and love and support through this holiday season.  We always have a place here for you. We are having a great Christmas.... but we really do wish you were here.

Love to all.

Nope, scratch Cologne

Well, mark Cologne in the book as an "almost". Allie woke up with a pretty feisty fever and complete lethargy this morning, so we cancelled the train and hotel reservations. A little bit of the flu, methinks. Fret not, though. She seems to have kicked the fever and is just tired now. Guess we'll try to check out those Christmas markets next year.

Rats.

To Cologne tomorrow!

Tomorrow we catch the train for Cologne, Germany for a couple of days. We hear the Christmas markets are pretty skippy there, so Jodi, Wayne, Megan and the monkeys will head off.

Usually I try to do some research on new places, but there just hasn't been much time for this one. We know two things:  it's on the Rhine, and there is a magnificent cathedral that survived WW II (barely) when the rest of the city was pretty well flattened.  That will have to do. We'll learn more tomorrow!

Faux amis

I've learned that the English and French languages have more words in common than I might have suspected. For example, words ending in -able  (comfortable, formidable) mean pretty much the same in both languages, although of course the pronunciation is different. And, there are quite a few words that were just plain adopted from French to English (or vice versa. Who knows?) such as rendezvous, avenue, and baton.

But French also has a way of lulling you into complacency with "faux amis", or false friends. These are words that look the same but do not mean the same at all. Try these:

singe:  to lightly burn, perhaps? Nope!  A singe is a monkey! Les Singes à Paris!

introduir:  to introduce? Not really. If you used it that way people would understand. But usually it means to insert. Be sure you presèntez a friend to your female colleague instead!

attendre:  to go to, or attend? Nah, almost the opposite. It means "to wait."

douche:  Troy uses a douche almost every day here, and be glad he does. It's a shower.

There are thousands of these. We may discuss more of these later!

Welcome J.E.B.

Some days I wonder why we choose to move around so much.  I question our choices and places we have lived.  Some days you just wish you were stationary and not a million miles away from the ones you love.  Today is one of those days.

Today my best friend had a beautiful baby boy and all I could do was wait and wait and wait by the phone or computer to get some inkling of what was happening.  

I just received the call from her and her baby arrived safely one hour ago.  I cried.  Happy tears and sad.  Sad because I am not there to pop open some champagne and toast to the new member of her family.  After all, besides my parents she was the one holding the little monkey on day one of her arrival.  

Like I said some days you realize family and friends trump all else and where we are truly the happiest is as close to them as we can be.

We are gearing up for some holiday fun.  The Elmores are coming to town to spend the holiday with the monkeys.  The weather is getting a lot colder.  It snowed a little today!  Nothing like the East coast though.  In fact, I had to hold back the little monkey from running out the door in her snow suit.  

Momma: "No Allie, it is not the kind of snow that will stay on the ground"  

Allie:  "Momma, I want to make snow angels."  

Momma, after making a disgusted face:  "Allie, no snow angels in the city, I think the dogs own the pavement around here!"  Catch my drift.

All in all, it is beginning to look a lot like.....a Parisian Christmas.  More on that later.