I'm hiding

Not really, but I haven't been around in a long time. School is over in 11 more days, so expect lots more detailed and exciting posts at the beginning of July. But, it has been busy here. On May 27th, Joern celebrated his 35th birthday. We enjoyed a Paula Deen caramel cake. On the 29th, Joern, Marcel, and I made our way to Parma for the long weekend here. We spent two days outside of Parma at our B&B and then went to Portovenere, on the Ligurian coast for a day.
Our 8th anniversary was on June 9th. We had a pretty quiet celebration, and enjoyed a delicious dinner of filet mignon and fresh pasta with traditional balsamic vinegar. Our desert were cupcakes that I prepared for work the following day, as June 10th was our last day of work before my birthday.
June 11th was a holiday here- of course, it was my 30th birthday! And we were lucky enough to be given June 12th, a Friday, off as well. With the amazing gift of a four day weekend coinciding with my big birthday, I decided Paris was an excellent destination! We left around 8 pm on Wednesday night, and made it in to Paris at 2 am. It was incredible to see the Eiffel Tower from bed as I woke up on my birthday morning! My birthday was spent meandering around Paris, with nothing really big in mind. We did have a dinner cruise on the Seine booked for Thursday night, which we ended up missing because we were stuck in traffic (our hotel on Thursday night was 30 minutes outside of Paris, and we had no idea traffic into Paris on a Thursday night would be so bad.) On Friday morning, I called the boat company, and rescheduled the dinner cruise for July 4th. You will read the full story in the upcoming weeks. Friday, we slept incredibly late, enjoying our plush king sized bed in our HUGE suite! We went to a mall for a little while, then returned to Paris for the afternoon. We walked along the Champs-Elysees all the way down to the Louvre, and enjoyed the Louvre's late Friday evening hours. On Saturday, we made our way out of Paris to Reims, in the Champagne area of France. We visited two Champagne houses, Ruinart and Mumm. Both were interesting. Ruinart also makes fabulous champagne! We drank lots of wonderful champagne and enjoyed exploring the town of Reims. We came home on Sunday, and were glad that we took it easy over the weekend. I'm also incredibly excited to return to Paris in 3 week's time.
In all, it was a wonderful 30th birthday. It was so much more than I ever could have imagined!!