Last year was unlike any other year I’ve ever had. I think the silence on this blog kind of reflects that. Trucking along in a quieter-than-usual but other wise normal year, and then June 17th comes and off the grid I go. That’s when we finished packing up everything we owned in NJ (everything that was left after weeks of purging, yard sales, and donations), left the house we’d owned for 10 years, 7 months, and 12 days, spent a week driving across the country to Washington, moved into a rental apartment, spent three months looking at houses/putting offers on houses/buying a house, and then moved into our farmhouse on the 28th of September. It’s on six acres of forested woodlands, it’s beautiful, and I’m so in love with it out here.

Use your imagination here, and picture a gorgeous, silky looking sauce instead of a mess of onions. Because that’s what this is, even if the photos don’t show it. I made this the last two New Year’s Eves in a row, and I still can’t take a proper photo. Last year I forgot to buy shallots and used an onion instead (hence the jammy look of the sauce above).
I’ve been sorting through the videos I filmed in Paris. All I can say is, I have missed the speed of our internet here at home. Thirty seconds to upload a video that took 45 minutes at the hotel in Paris. W00t!
Happy New Year! It’s 1:30 am here, but I keep this blogging-every-day thing on EST.
We spent the day at Montparnasse. I shot some little videos at the old and new train station and the cemetary so that my students could see where The Invention of Hugo Cabret takes place. I’m reading it with the 3rd graders from now until…whenever we finish it! Then we wandered around the area, debating whether to get on the very long line for the Catacombs. We did not.