C'est La Vie

Friends,
It's been too long again.

It's fall and I love, love, love fall. Leaves, colors, smells, weather, apples, pumpkins, schedules, school buses, sweaters. Yay for fall.

This September is a big month. First, Maggie Jane will be one on the 27th. My, I don't know how that's possible. She is so, so funny and I love who she is. Yesterday she found some of my shoes and tried to put them on her feet. She brushes her hair ( or daddy's) if she has a brush. She loves to drink from real cups and then purposefully spills the leftovers on the floor. She still claps when daddy enters the room, she points at everything, waves goodnight, and seems to be quite a percussionist! She does a little bum scoot when she hears music and thinks it's hilarious to take her clips out of her hair and show them to me. She says "uh oh" and "dada", "mama" and "ball" and "BAH" but we have no idea what it means.
We have a polka dot party planned for her and we are also having her dedicated on her birthday. Woops. A little behind on that!

Cate is registered for soccer and we had her first lesson this week. Let's just say that she isn't quite sure what to think of the big, loud man who coaches her, or the other children running around her, or even the practice itself. :) My sweet, cautious little girl.

And!!! It is just two weeks until David and I leave for Paris, Belgium and Amsterdam! You may have seen David's picture of our airline tickets a couple of months ago, but neither of us have written about it. It's true. We will be gone for two weeks and it will just be the two of us-wandering Paris for one week and Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and Amsterdam for another. sigh. We've never been away alone together ( at least not since our honeymoon) and we are so excited. This is what we're hoping for:
Long walks with no where to go
Early morning coffees in streetside cafes
museums and art (The Louvre, van Gough museum, Anne Frank House)
narrow cobblestone streets
canals
bicycling
picnics of baguettes and cheese and wine
cathedrals
no schedule
trains through france and belgium and holland
etc.

In Paris we'll be staying in an area called Montmartre where Salvador Dali, Monet, Picasso and van Gough all had studios or worked at one time. The film Amelie was filmed in this area and it's also the location of Moulin Rouge. A little gritty but artistic and colorful... It's also said to be one of the greatest areas of Paris for wandering. ahhh. perfection.
We do plan to see some famous landmarks, but we hope that much of our time will be spent just getting lost and seeing Paris as it really is.

We are fortunate to be staying with some family friends in Antwerp, Belgium and will do some day trips from there as Belgium is so very small and easy to see. We'll then head to Amsterdam for a couple of nights and then back to Bruges, Belgium, which is listed as World Heritage site of UNESCO and is also said to be "the Venice of the North". We'll spend one more night in Paris before we fly home.

It will be soo hard to leave the girls for so long, but our parents have graciously agreed to split the care of our daughters at our home. We know they are in great hands, so we know we don't have to worry.

And now the little ladies have awoken from their slumber. must go.