The moment you've all been waiting for: the blog is back. Yes, you heard it ladies and gentlemen, normalcy has snuck into the junior Sanders' household. End product: blogging time. So what have we been up to all of this time? Well, to name a few, we:

• have (at last!) settled into our new place (after packing up 7 giant suitcases of stuff from the wedding, 3 of which Matt's parents were super nice and took with them, and lugging the other four through the Paris metro and RER subway system...which lemme me tell you folks, c'est pas evident!)
• entered (or for Matt re-entered) back into the working world (I had just about forgotten what it was like to get up earlier than 8 am...)
• became church members (ok, well as Pastor Matt kinda already was one :) but now I'm official! That might sound trivial but let me remind you that I had to give my testimony twice in French--once at the church council meeting with all the elders and once in front of the whole congregation! oy vey... )
  
• have become the new proud parents of two mini hamsters who are ridiculously spoiled by all the attention we give them (although due to lack of parenting skills we've been unable to break up the sibling squabbles and had to buy a second gave to separate the little buggers...)
• got my (Talia's) French residency again...for the third time...and will continue to get it until years from now I become an official Frenchy (don't panic though folks, it just means that I get my second passport but I don't have to give up the first)
• joined the church Christmas choir (a stttrreetchhing experience for me, I can assure you all...)
• joined the realm of universal marriedom in learning how to work out joint finances, a more complicated social calendar, 'learning how to communicate" and the like...
• spent our first Christmas ever together in France
• entered into the mysterious realm of church ministry as a couple...
• learned that tv in a French public hospital costs money while not so in the states when Matt got shipped to the hospital following an inflated elbow and a bacterial infection. (no worries now and thankfully his elbow has gone back to its normal size now...that could have been awkward)

I could go on (I'm sure that doesn't shock any of you) but I'll leave you with that for now. Here are some pics of our little place (and when I say little, I mean 39 sq meters and 419 sq ft) which basically consist of a small living/dining room, bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom




First, the befores...









































Then the middles:


























































And the afters...