Francy Pants

Lindsey and I went to Paris for three days or so. We are not going to spend any time blogging about it because anybody can already guess everything that we did and saw when we were there. Guess what? There were palaces, cathedrals, a river, and tasty local cuisine...



Here are the pics from the event.

We will be home from Europe on Tuesday. But before we come back, I plan on writing a final treatise on our European adventure, and how I feel about fatherhood. I'll also include some personal thoughts on soon becoming a dad. Stay tuned...

!!!

Salzburg

I just want to state for the record that I now understand why Maria was traipsing around the hills of Salzburg singing.

Case in point:

(Also, doesn't Brett take nice pictures?)

We didn't have a lot of time to hang out in Salzburg, so we basically just wandered around the downtown area, checked out where they filmed parts of The Sound of Music, and we tried to go to the Eagle's Nest on our last day. Unfortunately you can't drive up to it and it was 15 Euros a piece to take the bus up there and that doesn't include the tour that you have to pay for if you want to go inside. Sure, we could have walked up to the building, but that would have been two hours of walking and although I'm in the best shape of my life right now, we didn't have time for that because we had to get our rental car back to Vienna. (Please tell me you know I was being sarcastic about the "best shape of my life" comment.) At least the view from up there was worth the drive.

Somehow I don't think Hitler ever sat back and enjoyed the view though...


Here is a picture of me and Brett by the river (and you can kind of see my baby bump).



Schloss Mirabel is where they filmed the Do, Re, Mi scene. So obviously I had to walk around the whole place singing the song... although as it turns out, having only seen the movie once I didn't really know all of the words. Is there more to it than the Do a deer, a female deer, Re a drop of golden sun, etc.? The world may never know.



We also visited the palace where they shot some of the exterior shots of the Von Trapp home. Here we discovered the "Sixteen going on Seventeen" gazebo from the movie, but Brett was too disappointed with it to take a picture. (Apparently all of the interior shots of the gazebo, including the dancing, was shot on a sound stage in California. And this particular gazebo is locked up because according to imdb, "the public had to be excluded from the interior because film fans who were considerably older than 'sixteen going on seventeen' were injuring themselves while trying to dance along the seats.") So here's just a random picture from the palace.



We also hiked up to what we thought was the stone theater they used in the movie. It didn't turn out to be THE stone theater from the movie but it was A stone theater...



Our trip was short, but it was beautiful. We'll be home in less than two weeks and we can't wait! I am pretty sure that I'm going to put on at least 10 pounds in the first week after we get home though. I'm so excited to eat everything I've been dreaming about. (I literally dreamed about food all night last night. I guess that's what happens when you look at cooking and baking websites and blogs for too long. I just get so hungry sometimes!)

In conclusion, I don't know what this guy was playing, but he sure was good.

Red, White and BLUE

Over the last three years, Brett and I have had some pretty un-American 4th of July's. Three years ago, Brett and I were thousand's of miles apart, but both equally sweatty and miserable. Brett was in Middlebury, Vermont having a conversation with an FBI agent and anxiously waiting for the power to come back on, while I was in Arizona with my parents attempting to watch the fireworks but being forced to leave early because of my younger brother. This was probably the worst of the last three. (Oh and just in case you didn't know, Brett wasn't being interrogated or interviewed by the FBI agent or anything, he was just talking to a fellow student in the intensive summer Arabic program at Middlebury College.)


Last year, we were together, but we were also in Jordan. We actually did get to see some fireworks that night, but only because you can pretty much count on a fireworks show every night due to the ridiculously high amount of weddings in Jordan. We did manage to make the evening somewhat American with a rousing game of BANG! with some other Americans, but we were also getting over some food poisoning which makes life much less exciting.

This year, we tried again to make things as American as possible, starting our 4th of July with some "I'm Proud to be an American" and any other pro-America songs we could find. That night we went to TGI Friday's and ate some delicious hamburgers.

I love that they have this saying painted on the wall:


After the burgers, we walked down to the Rathaus (City Hall) to see what they were playing for the summer film festival. They really only play ballet's and opera's (it is Vienna after all) and I thought it would be nice to see a ballet, but it was a really weird one, and Brett can only handle so much anyway (he once took me to the Nutcracker for Christmas and could hardly stop giggling at the men in tights...) So after about a half hour, we went home.



On Sunday I decided to make a flag cake. According to my cake there were only 7 original colonies and 20 states, but that's ok, right?



The thing that makes this holiday even more difficult is hearing from family and friends about all the fun stuff that they are doing. Brett's family all headed up to Utah to get out of the heat and just hang out as a family. It broke our little American hearts every time we talked to them and saw how much fun they were having together. So hopefully next year we will be with family and friends in the good old USA. I always knew that I loved America, but living outside of the US has made me appreciate it even more.

As for why the blue in the title is capitalized... we found out on Wednesday that we are having a little boy. :) He was quite the little showman about it too. My mom not-so-secretly hoped I would have a girl first and Brett's mom and Caraline also thought I would have a girl, but I think everyone is happy either way. He's healthy and growing along like a champ. I already have a little bump and I can also already feel him moving around. Even the doctor was surprised that I could feel him moving already. She's also been surprised at his activity level the last two visits. Once when she was trying to get a clear picture of him for us to take home she said, "oh my goodness! He's dancing!" (She actually said "it's dancing" because this was before we knew it was a boy.) At any rate, he's very lively. I hope that he will settle down once he makes his debut into the world... To all the moms out there, do you think there is a correlation between a baby's activity level in the womb and their temperment once they are born?

I think that's about all the news I have for now. Sorry I haven't put up any pictures from the ultrasound's, but you all know what those look like, right? We're just happy that he's healthy and all is well. We also have some other things that we are looking forward to....
Harry Potter, anyone?

(This is my "over the moon" face)
After Harry, we're heading to Paris and then we're coming home, so all-in-all, things are good.