Ici, c'eeeeeeeeeest Paris!

Update: My husband told me I'm thinking too much like a girl and that I should have included the final score. So here it be: 4 Paris 2 Evian  (that means we won!)

There is this soccer team here called PSG. It stands for Paris Saint Germain and you say it like "Pay Ess Juh-ay). Our national team isn't always something to write home to Mom about but our Paris team, well they're another story. You see, a couple of years ago Qatar bought PSG. Yes, I really do mean the country of Qatar. And being that they are, how should I say it, uh, rich, they have been able to bring in a lot of big names. Currently we've got Zlatan Ibrahimovic (if you're as clueless as me here's the wikipedia link) and not so long ago David Beckham had a brief stint chez nous.  (side note: it's really too bad that he and Victoria decided not to bring the kids across the Channel--I was really hoping they'd enroll them in our school so that parent teacher conferences might be a little spiced up....haha, yes I did just say that...) 

Matt is a big fan of the PSG team and has made it a personal challenge to never miss telling me the score from a game. He knows that I don't really give a hoot and I think I've decided that his tactic is to persist, persist, persist in the hope that someday I'll grudgingly become a fan. Ironically, he also employs this strategy with classical music but I digress... So while I don't really like watching a soccer game on TV, I figured I could bite the bullet and give the whole 'live performance' bit a go. For Christmas I surprised him with two tickets to a PSG game against Evian (yes, where the water is from). 

We bundled up, waved goodbye repeatedly to the Livster (who was spending the afternoon doing the whole playdate thing with friends of ours), and embraced our temporary freedom by following the rambunctious sports fans on the metro. The weather was gorgeous, albeit freezing. All in all it was a really fun date as well as highly informative. Here's some of the life lessons I took away with me:

1. Security (heightened due to the recent terrorist attacks) does not like cans of diet coke (that's right, we will aspartame you all to death so watch out.)

2. The options for said coke cans are to chug or dump. Dumping a perfectly good can of pop is against my religion so we chugged. A lot. In front of security. If I didn't hate hashtagging so much I'd write #awkward moment.

3. Chugging a can of coke has consequences: a) your body goes into hypothermia as a result of having ice cold pop thrown into it during freezing temps b) you have to pee, and I mean really.

4. If you are of the lady persuasion, do not go to the bathroom. Qatar clearly spent all its mula on Ibrahimovic and didn't have any left over to spare for things like a garbage bin, paper towels, soap, or even toilet paper.

5. Later on I see a bunch of beer-filled men also using the ladies restroom and that seals the deal. No more peeing until home.

6.Unless you pay better money than we did, expect seat assignments to be a very loose concept.

7. The sports arena is the modern man's attempt to go to war. There is everything you need: war paint, drums, chants, flags and lots of old fashioned trash-talking.

8. The chants are the arena's way of separating the true fans from the fakers. I gave up trying to figure out all the chants and decided mouthing watermelon would serve my purposes just fine.

9. The terrorist attacks reached even the sphere of the stadium: we held a moment of silence for each of the recent victims.

10. Scoring on your own team is bad. It will probably make the little man in the coaches boxes very animated.

And there you have it. My life changing encounter with PSG aka going on a date with the hubs.

Happy Holidays Part 2

Merry Christmas late for the second time in a row! :) I just like to be different, what can I say...

So I shared a couple of things that we were up to in Colombes (our suburb of Paris) leading up to the holidays but I hadn't yet gotten around to telling you what were up to during the actual holiday. Last Christmas was in Oregon so this one we spent with Matt's family in the Brittany region of France. 

Let me tell you, when you live in the Paris area (esp. we you're an in-the-closet-tree-hugger from the west coast) getting away from the daily grind is like a breath of fresh air! Suddenly in no particular order you find yourself surrounded by trees, space, and smiling faces. 

There may have been some family walks, some ice skating, and some general good-time having by all. 

These are my two sisters in law, Anne and Lucile,--aren't they just  beeautiful? 

 

The biggest outing by far, however, was our trip to a place called Puy du Fou. I had never been to this place but I have to say it was the definitely the cat's pajamas. How to describe it? They call themselves a theme park but it's basically a private medieval village with rotating biannual themes. I'm sure you'll be shocked when I tell you the current theme was Christmas. Complete with fake snow falling from I never figured out where, the place was decked to the hilt for the holidays. 

I looved the old school carousel. Here's Liv living it up (is that redundant?) with two of her cousins... 

In the main 'place' at one point the buildings put on a little show for us. We got serenaded from the windows by our lovely musicians (ps. just a fyi: they're not real people). 

Here's a close-up: (please don't ask me what instrument she's playing--I really have no clue)

And who doesn't love giant paintings stuck out in the woods surrounded by a blanket of fresh fake snow? 

Another show we got to watch, this time with real musicians singing Christmas carols...

But the real show, by far, was this one, that we had tickets for inside the theater there. It was called the miracle of Christmas and while I was expecting something along the lines of a hallmark card commercial, it was actually the nativity story. Very well done, I might add! I loved all the special effects. 

 

So there you have it! Christmas with the Sanders! (The rest of them I mean!) Hope yours was just as merry! 

Happy Holidays Part 1

I'm thinking that if I say 'Happy Holidays' maybe some of you won't notice that I'm posting about Christmas on the 26th. Maybe someday that magic Christmas will swing around when I do everything on time, even a blog post. At this point, I just consider getting presents under the tree without losing my sanity to be relative success. Speaking of trees, we finally have one! Would you consider it pathetic or economical that this is our first Christmas tree in 5 1/2 years of marriage? I'm not counting the foot tall one that we bought a few years back for our old, even tinier, apartment. 

To be truthful, you can basically chalk it up to just plain moping, really. I found myself stuck in that phase where you're secretly hoping that you'll wake up on Christmas morning 10 years old again surrounded by that Christmas magic that only mom knows how to make. I think I would self-pitied my grown up responsible self to the end of time if something hadn't come along to kick my butt out of that grinch-like hole. And that something was Livie. Suddenly I am now the mom who is supposed to make the Christmas magic and while I was able to still retain a slight grinch-like inclination for her first Christmas, I figured this one as a toddler might be slightly less acceptable to skimp on. Considering my stress levels just before Christmas break, I probably went just a tad overboard (proof of that in my unfinished advent calendar below): 

But overall I am glad that I got out of my grinch mode and started/continued a Christmas tradition or two... 

One of the things I got super excited about was finally getting a nativity scene! I have awesome memories of following Mary and Joseph along in our house as they "made their way" to the stable and awaiting manger (aka a spot on the living room shelf). I wanted that kind of experience for Livia as well--something that I enjoyed looking at but was easy for her to interact with; a nativity that she could play with to her little aggressive toddler heart's content. Enter peg dolls from Etsy! Seriously, I'm in love. They're super cute and I don't have to worry about her breaking anything. The "stable" is a wall shelf in the shape of a house that I found at a craft fair. 

Then I indoctrinated Liva in the ways of the motherland (aka Albany) by making our family's Christmas sugar cookies with her. Of course, in real life she doubles not only as a professional baker but also food inspector so here she is "testing" the merchandise. We tried decorating them together but that resulted in lots more eating while I decorated. :) 

 

A frenchie Christmas tradition that we started up a few years back is to make the annual hike to our local marché de noël. It takes place in a business district called La Defense (hence the skyscrapers) every December and is a fun warm up to Christmas.

I mean, where else do you get to see a giant pink pig on top of a wine barrel, right? 

Yes, French kids write letters to Santa too, just in case you where wondering.... 

This, though, is the reason we go to the Christmas market. Vin Chaud and French hot dogs. Vin Chaud, which literally means 'hot wine', is like the Christmas grown up version of spiced cider here. I am literally salivating just thinking about it. Red wine + mulled Christmas spices = fabulousness. 

So there you have it: some of the Christmasy things we've been up to lately. Currently we're in Nantes soaking up the rest of the holiday break with Matt's family (more on that next time!) before it's back to the daily grind. Hope you're having a fabulous holiday season!