Friday we arrived in Paris after a very long journey. We met the owner of our vacation apartment and got the keys and the lay of the land from her. We had dinner at Le Sketch, a place we found next to a fountain called “Le Fontaine de Mars” on the corner of Rue Saint-Dominique and Rue de l’Exposition. Ash had the magret de canard au poivre (duck in pepper sauce). “C’est magnifique!” David had the veal. For dessert we shared an excellent tarte tatin. It was good because it was “just a little tart.” Then we walked to the base of the Eiffel Tower and looked at souvenirs.

Saturday we had pain au chocolat and café crème (which was trés bien) at Le Den on the corner of Rue de Grenelle and Rue Cler. Ash was able to get our train tickets for the week in French, and we went to Parc Disneyland for Halloween. It was crowded. We liked the architecture, the dragon lair, and the castle, but the only ride we went on was Phantom Manor. “Trés frighteningue!” (I don’t know how to say “scary” in French.) We saw Ash’s friends Erinn, Christina, Carlos, and Casey in the “Once Upon a Dream” parade. We also saw the “Fantillusion” parade, which David called “the electrical parade part deux.” We bought some souvenirs for the nieces before we left.

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Ilse wishes you a "hoppy" Easter! This photo is from her Cadbury audition, naturally.

It’s funny because there are both lemon blossoms and lemons on the tree at the same time. I didn’t know they worked like that.

Thank you, Mom and Lisa! Ilse loves my birthday present, and I think it looks very nice in our room.

I’m a happy birthday boy when I get my free bag of fresh tortillas from Disney’s California Adventure. This year I had a very happy birthday. I got my tortillas, and Disney bought me some t-shirts.

See, if you’re a normal person, Disneyland gives you a free ticket on your birthday. But if you’re an annual passholder like me, you already get in free on your birthday… so instead they give you a $69 Birthday Fun Card, which is just like a gift card but with TONS of terms and conditions (like, “no food” and “no discounts”). I used my Birthday Fun Card to buy a cool 80’s Mickey Mouse t-shirt and a Monorail t-shirt.

My mother has been begging me to post pictures of the house all decorated for the holidays, so here it is! Amusingly, I took all the decorations down today.

Our house is all moved into now, and decorated for Christmas. We couldn’t have done it without Ash’s parents and our friend Ryan. They helped so much, our house turned out amazing!

We’re so fed up with waiting for them to install FiOS in our apartment, we decided to buy a townhouse in Orange because they have Time Warner Cable instead. Okay, so maybe that’s not really the impetus for the move, but it’s certainly a plus.

We’re in escrow now, and if all goes well, we should be moving into our new home in late November or early December. Wish us luck!

I finally got a Sonicare toothbrush. The hygienist recommended getting one when I was at my new dentist’s office last month. My previous dentists just recommended any electric toothbrush, but apparently my new dentist’s staff are believers in the Sonicare hype.

Anyway, in my research of the different models, I found out that Wal-Mart had a model called the Sonicare Xtreme–which uses AA batteries instead of a charging base–and it was only $28 (instead of the typical $99 or more)!

Some reviews online say it dies a quick death if the battery compartment gets wet, so I’ll have to be careful. But it comes with a 2-year warranty, so I should be covered even if it does. I was replacing my Crest SpinBrush ($10) every six months anyway, so if this one lasts just a year and a half, it’ll be worth it. And supposedly it works much better than other toothbrushes, thanks to its “sonic cleaning action,” which I still think is hogwash but my new dentist thinks is science.

Today I picked up my new Jhane Barnes glasses at the optometrist, and I received my new phone in the mail. It’s an enV2 from LG, which is similar to the enV but smaller. I like it so far. My big complaints about the enV (which I had for a hot second) were the small keys on the front of the phone and the big overall size. This phone’s smaller, but with larger keys, so I’m pleased now.