chez thompson

Peekaboo

This video was taken more than a month ago, but it's taken us a while to upload it. Too cute, or trop mignonne, no?

Oh, Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding . . .

We had a wonderful Noel here in Paris. We spent Christmas morning opening loads of presents. Ratio of gifts for Roxy to gifts for anyone else? About 10:1. Here's Roxy modeling a new jolly red jumper from a friend in the states:

After an afternoon of cooking and cleaning, and putting away toys, we welcomed several friends over for a Christmas dinner of roast lamb. Joining us for dinner were friends Inhee, Diego, Macrui and Chris.

Hope you all had a merry!

Joyeux Anniversaire!

Last Tuesday Agnes had a birthday and we celebrated it at Alcazar with friends.

Grandma Carol is in town and stayed home to babysit Roxanne. This is Agnes' third birthday in the City of Light. Joining us were Janet (Irish), her husband JP (Portugese-French), Michelle (American), Ping (Malaysian) and her husband Jan (Norwegian-Dutch).

And John of course. We had dinner up on the mezzanine, amidst lots of reveling office workers tying one on at the company party and trying to pick up that cutie in accounting. Unfortunately, lamb chops are no longer on the menu, but they still have their delish tuna & mango millefeuille. It was a wonderful way to turn 25! OK, go ahead and add another dozen years to that number. . . .

Londres

A few weekends ago we all boarded the Eurostar for a jaunt to London, a city which, though only 2 hours and 15 minutes away by train, could not be more different from Paris. We had a wonderful time -- mostly visiting friends strewn throughout the city. Our first stop was in North London at Jessica's -- a friend of Agnes' from high school and college. She has two beautiful children -- Mazzy and Wyatt. Mazzy took an immediate liking to Roxy:

That evening, Agnes went out to dinner in Shortage to a great Vietnamese restaurant  with, among others, friends Greg & Paula while John stayed home and babysat.

After dinner, Agnes stayed home while John hit the town visiting a bar, a comedy club and then a casino with a friend. The next morning we went up to Hampstead to visit David & KayC who recently gave birth to twins. Roxy was fascinated:

Even though it was way past her bedtime on the train ride home, Roxy was unruffled. She made friends with fellow passengers like Max, the son of John's co-worker Dee:

Yeah! It's Hanukkah!

Well, it was Hanukkah. No, John isn't too cool for school, he was recovering from eye surgery.

Horsey Business

We are lame bloggers and deserve to be flogged. We DO partake of lots of cool things and have no earthly good reason for not blogging about it, besides sheer laziness. Last weekend, John sprung a surprise on the two ladies of his life and after a short metro trip to Porte de Versailles, we all found ourselves at the Salon du Cheval. It turned out to be a great way to spend a cold and drizzly Sunday afternoon -- in the company of ponies and horses and the pre-pubescent girls that love them. The lighting made it difficult to photograph, so excuse the bad coloring.
We found a performance area, and to get a better view, Roxy sat on her dad's shoulders. The highlight of the show was when a bespectacled adolescent girl stood astride two ponies, miked up, and sang the first verse and the chorus of "Sweet Dreams" over and over and over and over and over. Long after we had walked away and were firmly ensconced in the country and western section, we were still mumbling ". . .hold your head up . . . movin' on  . . . keep your head up . . . movin' on."