Em, Erin, & Kelly came to visit!

It was so great to spend time with these girls after so long!

While in Paris, we had a full day of pastry tastings around the city…

we went on Jethro’s night bike tour…

we ate some truly delicious meals…

The first night they were in town, we ate in the Latin Quarter at a restaurant where my friend Ryan works, so we were lucky enough to get fantastic recommendations as well as a hilarious mini photo shoot of the chefs in the kitchen.

After a couple days in Paris, we headed south to Provence for the weekend, wandered quiet cobblestone streets, modeled in front of fountains, bought lots of spices & lavender, rented a car, went to a vineyard & winery, drove to Marseilles, played pranks on each other in a restaurant bathroom to the point of involving other tables…There was lots of laughter, lots of eating, lots of pictures.

I had so much fun w/ them and it was great to catch up and laugh and talk about life.  Loved having them to visit!!

Halloween

Tell you what I love about Halloween…It’s not very often you see the Grim Reaper & Dracula hangin’ out together on the Metro.

We rounded out the end of October with a Halloween party at Brian & Ned’s apartment that went till 4:30am.  4:30!!  Because of this crazy crew, I have stayed up more late nights in the past 6 months than I have in the past 10 years.  Guaranteed.  Don’t these people know about my grandma status??  Not to mention that we did this on actual Halloween night, which was a Monday.  Geez I loooove getting 3 hours of sleep and then working early the next morning.  At the beginning of the week.

In a duel for honor, the Whisk .45 will tear someone up.

I got so many guesses as to what my costume was: Martha Stewart, a housewife, a baker, our chef friend Ryan, on and on.  I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be Julia Child or Betty Crocker, so I was actually Julia Child at a Halloween party dressed as Betty Crocker.  Every now and then, I would shout in a Julia Child sing-song voice, “I’m Betty Crocker!!”

I don’t know what can speak more clearly about the general unsoftness of nearly all toilet paper in France, besides the fact that Graham would find himself rubbing some exceptionally soft toilet paper on his face, and clearly having a moment doing so.

Favorite costume award goes to Ned, an SNCF controller.  He checked all our metro tickets and fined anyone who was without.

I take that back…the award should go to Maygan and Kyle, inspired by our zombie stroll through Pere Lachaise cemetery, who came as wine-toting Parisian Zombies.

The funny thing is that Brian & Ned’s apartment was supposed to be a meeting point, not the main event.  “Meet at our place at 10 and we’ll go from there.”  We were supposed to go to a Canadian pub that was all decked out for Halloween.  Nope.  Once we had everyone there, and some old school gangsta rap started flowin’, nobody even thought about leaving.

And then it was suddenly 4:30am, and Ned the SNCF controller was yelling for everyone to make their way towards the door considering that he and Brian had to lead tours in 4 hours.  We all spilled out onto the quiet streets of Paris, and Maygan, Kyle, and I headed towards the river, 2 zombies and Julia Child/Betty Crocker, in search of that elusive late night taxi to share back towards our side of town.