i'll remember.... I PROMISE!

so first off....i’m really awful at this blog thing....

there was something really funny that mark did the other day...and i can’t remember what he did....but i really wanted to blog about it

sorry...

ill try to remember...in the meantime...

HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE!

i’m certain these are really much different than how i have spent them thus far...

however i have found them to rather entertaining...

thanksgiving....well okay...umm obviously the french don’t celebrate this holiday...it being an American holiday....starting with the pilgrims....(have i mentioned yet how much i love living across the road from the catholic church and hearing the bell....?...well...i really do like to hear it it’s fun....) yeah so nobody even mentioned it in passing...i really had no idea when it was....i think the missionaries brought it up at church...but yeah...we ended up buying some sandwich meat (turkey) and some really expensive cheese...(comte....YUMMY!!!) very expensive....we then took that home and mark proceeded to make crepes and we put the comte and turkey in the crepes and they was really good....and of course was saved some for sweet crepes....it was really yummy and made me quite happy

it finally decided to start getting cold here a bit after thanksgiving...all my friends at school thought i was crazy....when i told them how cold it can get in idaho and utah they were amazed.

other interesting things were also going on at school..

it turns out that this year a law is changing that somehow effects the validity of the students diplomas. many students all over france are upset about this. however i just happen to be going to the school that has a record for protesting about EVERYTHING! ALL THE TIME! so for about a week or so people refused to come to school in large numbers and actually blockaded the school to keep people out...however...they really just don’t want to go to school so it was very simple for me to get into school...thankfully...

during this time the only kids that were at school were the ones that truley wanted to be at school and wanted to learn and who saw the importance of their education.

(in france it is REALLY hard to get a job....it’s a very small country with alot of people in it....even when you have amazing specific credentials and are the best your age at what you do...if there isn’t an opening in what you have decided to do....your screwed....sorry about the dirty expression but thats really just how it is.)

so during this week or so...it was basically me and my best friends...(i was very happy to see that my best friends here were the kids in the school talking about how ridiculous the kids outside were as opposed to being the one outside....) I CHOSE GOOD FRIENDS MA! go me!

so yeah school settled down a bit for the last 2 weeks before the vacation and on the last couple days i had more sugar than i think i have eaten in my entire life....i think i almost fell into a diabetic coma.....not even kidding! and they kept offering me more! the frenchies are trying to kill me! so yeah....

Christmas vacation has been fantastic and this evening (Christmas eve) my dear husband and i once again had our turkey and comte crepes and guess what else?!

yup!

LIL’ SMOKIES!!!!

we couldn’t help buying the BBQ sauce when we saw it...and it was pretty dang good stuff for france not gonna lie!

yeah we’re having some good holidays...and tomorrow we are going to get a real taste of french holidays.....or something like that.....

yeah....anywho....french T.V. is really funny.....

more news to come.... :]

white... sundaymas?

oh, today was absolutely wonderful! as we left for church this morning it was raining (that part... not so wonderful). en route, it was gorgeously foggy and there were hints of frost on everything.

then it started to snow... just ever so slightly.

by the time we got to church, there was a really light snow dusting everything.

i was gonna shovel the walks... but there wasn’t a shovel to found anywhere on the premises... or across the street at the bakery. we tried to sweep the walks instead... but this was a nice, heavy packing snow. i was sorely tempted to skip priesthood in favor of building a snowman.

requiem for a pumpkin

i’m tired.

last week we were invited to have dinner with a few families in the ward, at the home of a delightful couple whose son is on a mission in canada. we were instructed to bring some sort of gift with us. we really weren’t sure what that meant... one gift? a gift for everyone that was going to be there? and we didn’t exactly know how many people were going to be there... which made things difficult.

we decided that the best thing to do would be to bring a treat for everyone to share.

and who doesn’t like cookies, right?

silly us, we thought the best thing to do would be to make pumpkin cookies. i think it’s just because we saw it on a list of recipes, and that’s what sounded the best at the time.

after looking over several sites, we settled on a recipe that seemed it would yield what we wanted.

introduce problem number one: US/metric conversion.

the site was kind enough to solve this problem for us... sort of. it gave the metric equivalents... but we a) forgot to copy down the american units to compare with (because when it tells you that you need 9 grams of something... it’s really a lot easier if you know that it’s asking for a tablespoon... or i assume that’s what it was), b) didn’t have any way of weighing, for example, our 490 grams of pumpkin purée and c) and didn’t consider the fact that you can’t buy canned pumpkin in france (although getting an actual pumpkin isn’t so hard... but you have to cook the devil out of the thing to remove enough water to get a decent consistency).

uhhh... i guess i also introduced the other problems there too... dang it.

yeah, needless to say, it took a heck of a lot longer to get our cookies made that i had anticipated... and they still needed to be baked! (mind you, we started making them around 8 or so saturday night...)

oooo... i just remembered another problem. we don’t have ground cinnamon. we have cinnamon sticks. that was fun. i spent hours last night destroying our little kitchen knife to get cinnamon scrapings... great times!

so... the last problem (i just keep remembering them... but i’m feeling too lazy to go back and finish the layout scheme that i started... sorry... you’ll understand shortly): our oven is miniscule. we could only bake 5 cookies at a time, for 13 minutes and another 2 for cooling.

aside from that... our downstairs neighbor is gifted with the auditive powers of a dog, and is under the impression that we walk like a heard of elephants doing the salsa. so, i had to move really slowly... due largely to the fact that you can’t look at our floor without it creaking. (i swear... one of these days his entire ceiling is going to fall in, and i’m gonna be staring through the floor at a consternated, dust-covered old man with a broom in his hands and a confused look on his face.)

to shorten the present story... i didn’t get into my bed until 3:30 this morning. and i didn’t even finish baking all the cookies! i got 43 (there was a little bit of a learning curve with this recipe... and thus a few “casualties”...) done, and have enough dough left for at least 20 more.

i’m tired.

click...

yeah! we have a working camera again. so nice... now we’ll be able to get some pictures of things up and running for y’all. it’ll be a nice change to all the boring text that’s been running around all over the place on this site.

yeah... we probably spent a little more money than we should have to get the thing up and running... but it was only 15€, so i’m not terribly concerned about it. especially since we’ve been making efforts this month to not eat as spendy. we figure we can eat for about 10€ a week... and that’s if we’re getting cheese and bread and the like. we found soup packets for 0,25€ a pop. not bad. and they’re good too!

well... here’re a few pictures for y’all to enjoy. we splurged a touch today while we were at the store and got some Christmas decorations.



this is our bedroom. these lights are super cool... and super bright. we've got our tree, and two advent calendars too!


a nice close-up for the tree. it's chill... and only cost 5€!