oakland nature preserve

this past weekend, nate and i explored a nature preserve - did i blog about that already? i think i did... either way, here's a few pictures from our adventures:

sinkhole??? seriously???

look! i exist!

so i played with this a bit in photoshop, but check this tree out! it struck my fancy. if a tree can do that...

congrats nately!

nate's starting a new job in a couple of weeks! still at disney, but a different department. for those of you who don't know, nate and i currently work in the same department - in fact, if he laughs or talks loud from his office, i can hear him in mine. we carpool and usually eat lunch together when we can. but soon, he'll be in a different department and building! it's an exciting opportunity for him but i'll miss having him around :) we still hope to be able to carpool although it'll be a bit more cumbersome than before. especially with the price of gas these days! i'm not sure how we compare to the rest of the country but it's been around $3.15 here lately.

we've got a string of exciting weekends coming up, we're either visiting or receiving visitors pretty much through mid-april! spring break is always a busy time in florida :) the weather has been absolutely beautiful lately, we've been spending a lot of time out reading on the porch. i've been really into historical fiction lately (philippa gregory writing about henry viii and the elizabethan time period) which has also spurred some actualy historical reading (biographies on elizabeth) but i've also been mixing some janet evanovich in there (four to score!).

we watched several movies from the library this week too - nate chose "310 to yuma" (shoot-em-up western) and "ghost-rider" while i went with "hairspray" and "3 men & a baby" -- we weren't exactly on the same movie wave length but we both enjoyed each other's choices :) never did get a chance to watch ghost rider though...

lunar eclipse!

lastnight nate and i headed into the backyard to check out the lunar eclipse -- he set my tripod up for me so we could take some pictures of it -- i don't have much of a zoom lens, but i cropped this one and you can kinda tell what's going on! the white specks are stars --

in other news, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary on monday :) since i was still kinda zombie-ish we had a low-key evening, i made tostadas (mmmmm, mexican food!) and then fell asleep almost immediately around 8:30 pm! but we do plan to celebrate more formally this weekend :) maybe dinner out? or a nice indulgent dinner in - we'll see!

i haven't forgotten about my favorite photo subject

miss cleo :)

happy valentine's day!

hmm.. does valentine(')s have an apostrephe? is that how you spell apostrophe? obviously i am tired. regardless, cleo wishes you a happy one, however you spell it!

it's hard to not cheese like a tourist..

... when you're standing in front of the eiffel tower :)

happy birthday nately!

it's nate's birthday today :) i can't wait to celebrate with him when i get home! we'll probably eat some citrus ;)

hope you have a good day nately! i never thought i'd have so much fun :)

an american blogger in paris!

so i got off to a bit of a rough start (lots of work and food poisoning- blech!) but it's only been better from there :) alicia and i had time to explore paris this weekend and loved it. we're also getting better at swinging around on public transport (metro around paris, larger trains to head back to where we're staying, and catching various buses to and around work on a daily basis). we've also learned how to order coffee, pastries, and water - and we've gotten pretty adept at pointing :) words like bonjour, merci, parlez vous anglais?, sil vous plait are all coming in very handy!

and the food poisoning? that was courtesy of a tasty creamy scallop/shrimp dish i had one of my first evenings here. but i'm back to normal and had some wonderful triage support from nathan and my mom :) when you're up at 4 a.m. it's kind of nice to have people that are 6-8 hours behind you!

i think nate was pretty worried about me the first few days here, he stayed up every night until 1 a.m. so that he could call me in the morning before i left for work :) it was wonderful to hear his voice when starting my workday so far away. i've been enjoying my time here, but i'm really excited to be home again!

guess what else? there are french bulldogs everywhere! i've probably seen close to 10 walking around the streets of paris. makes me miss cleo even more :)

i'll post more later about our weekend travels, but for now, here's my favorite picture so far:

ps: did you know the french use a different keyboard? no QWERTY for them! it's AZERTY and impossible for me to use effectively- luckily i have my own ;)