Long time, no blog, I know. It's partially because we've been busy, partially because I just didn't feel like it. But we're still here! And we've had a lot going on.

The most exciting thing we've done lately was make yet ANOTHER trip to Paris. My friend Stephanie was making a trip through Europe to visit family and managed to schedule in two days in Paris to meet up with me and sit around eating croissants. So I got to see her and Alex, her son, for a couple days.
Steph and Alex

It was a good time. We ate many croissants and baguettes, we took Alex to several Parisian playgrounds and carousels, we encouraged him to chase pigeons all over Paris.

The best part, though, was that Ben came on the day she was leaving and took care of Alex for a couple hours so Steph and I could go to a very fancy patisserie and then wander Montmartre a little bit and have a grown up lunch.
Steph and me

Macarons at Sacre Coeur


And then Stephanie left, and Ben stayed, and we did all our typical things. Wandering, eating, hanging out.

Sitting on the steps at Sacre Coeur. The couple behind us was on a first or second date, maybe, and the guy was a Canadian and was showing of his knowledge of maple syrup. I'm not even kidding. And the girl claimed to be from Ireland, but had no accent. Well, she had an American accent, annyway, and the Canadian guy didn't catch on to this and kept asking her questions about Ireland. It was pretty funny.

A picnic on the Seine


And the one redeeming quality of our 7th floor walk-up hotel room, the view. Although, Ben did have to (literally) hang out the window to take these pictures. So he says; I chose not to watch.


And my favorite, early mornings at Sacre Coeur. I love eating croissants while looking over Paris, before it's overrun by les touristes.

It was wonderful and I was sad to come home because I know it's going to be a while before we get to go back.

The other big event in the past few weeks was my baby shower, which was last weekend. My friend Carol threw it for me, and it was a lot of fun. We decorated onesies and ate cake (and opened presents, of course), and that was all fun. The best part, though, was that she surprised me by having my friends that are scattered all over the U.S. send presents, decorate onesies, or make scrapbook pages. AND, she got my parents to be at the shower via webcam. That was really really neat. I felt pretty special that day, and blessed to have so many people excited to celebrate Baby Otis.

Me, Otis (30 weeks along), the beautiful cake and favors

We decorated onesies instead of playing the typical shower games

Opening presents...

while talking to...

My parents!



Other than that, we've just been hanging out. It's alternating between sunny summer weather and icky gray typical drizzle here. On the cold days we park ourselves on the couch and watch whatever American tv shows we can find, or dvds (Thank God for Netflix), and on the sunny days, you'll often find us outside enjoying the weather while we can.