Paris: the Mona Lisa

Yes, it's an entire blog post dedicated to one painting. We'll cover the rest of the Louvre in a future post.

On our first full day in Paris, we woke up at 6:00 AM, which felt like 11:00 PM back home, to get some breakfast and to see the most famous painting in the world.

We hired a tour guide who took a lot of pride in getting his customers to the famously crowded room to see the Mona Lisa before everybody else. We, along with one other guy in our group, were the very first museum visitors to see it! This wide shot is a bit of a flex:

Here's what the rush to get there looked like:

On the left we have Veronica in 2012, at the French festival in Santa Barbara. The photo on the right feels like the fulfillment of a goal in life:

If you want to jump back fourteen and a half years, Veronica was here before she was born, during my and R's babymoon. You can see we didn't beat the rush that time:

Here's another one I like, bringing it back to the modern age:

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Paris: touchdown

This first photo from Paris was taken by R. We left home on Christmas afternoon, traveled all night, and arrived in the historic district known as Le Marias in the late morning. It was our home for a week.

I'll be posting more from the neighborhood and from inside our apartment eventually. At this point I'm still trying to wrap my arms around all of the photos I took. I'm expecting my Paris posts to go on for many weeks!

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Omri on his new bean bag

Now fully expanded...

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Christmas morning 2024

It was a lovely Christmas morning at home.

Omri got a Rubik's cube in his stocking and is well on his way to learning to properly solve it (thanks to a YouTube tutorial)!

 

V with her new weighted stuffed animal:

Checking out the stockings:

Checking out the wool socks:

R opens a few gifts:

Omri gets a new Switch game and V opens the cover for her new, warmer duvet:

Part of Omri's bedroom redesign project: LED light strips:

V got Lana Del Rey's poetry book. Omri "relaxes" on his (still-compressed) bean bag chair (trust me - it got a lot bigger/fluffier when we released it!):

Opening a new Clue game from Uncle Nate.

Omri also got a subscription to The Week Junior, a Swiss Army knife, and toiletry bag for travel.

V is getting into tea with some loose-leaf varieties to try, a proper infuser, and glass mugs:

My gifts below! Thanks to everyone who thought of us!

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Christmas Eve 2024

While Christmas may have been a little overshadowed by the stomach bug (had only by me and R a few days before) and our departure for Paris on the afternoon of the 25th, we did still have a nice -- if abbreviated holiday -- as just the four of us. Here we are after church:

The first gift of Christmas:

It was new pajama pants for everybody:

We managed to get out for our traditional tour of lights in the neighborhood too:

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Other December ongoings

Quilly was running a few days behind his scheduled arrival and got locked out:

Bill of Rights Day with the Girl Scouts (photo by R):

Omri spent two nights away on a school trip, so Raia and I had a night out in Minneapolis after dropping off V at rehearsal. We had dinner at Gai Noi.

Walking around New Brighton during one of Veronica's voice lessons:

She sang "Blue Christmas" at a recital, solo, in front of a church full of people (I don't have permission to post the video, but this is her poodle skirt):

Omri and I went to the Bell Museum to see an award-winning planetarium show produced by our friend Dr. Holly:

We did NOT start smoking. This is R blowing out the advent candles after dinner:

I took 300 photos at a concert held at Bethel University. That happened to be during the weekend before my busiest week of the year at work.

It eventually caught up with me because I, literally, fell ill the Saturday morning before Christmas, when my parents were in town, passing out onto the floor of the kitchen in front of my dad. It was mostly due to a stomach virus, but it was also a warning sign to slow down.

Taking and editing photos is not what is stressing me out, but I'm still going to take a little pause on the blog for the next week or so, for reasons that will become clear. Christmas photos are still coming (in January)!

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Solstice Festival 2024

Still catching up on the month a bit...

Veronica sold homemade candles at the junior high market to raise money for her upcoming trip to Washington DC:

Thank you to Grandma Linda for the help in making them. They turned out beautifully:

She also sang and played the flute:

I did not have a good vantage point for the band, so we only have video of her singing:

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Family photos 2024

You may have received our Christmas card, which features a few of these, but I wanted to post them here too. All credit goes to local photographer Gretchen Loretta. She did an amazing job! It's even more impressive when I tell you these were taken on a windy, rainy, chilly day.

 

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