Avril a Paris - April in Paris!

The weather is warming up now and we've been enjoying Paris in the springtime!  I'm just off the 'phone to Martina and remembered that I've not updated the blog for ages so I thought I'd post a quick message before I forget what we've been up to.  Unfortunately, I've been terrible with the camera recently and even when I've remembered to take it somewhere, I keep forgetting to take pictures.  I need to be more camera conscious!

Paul's pal, Graeme Dobbin was over for the weekend a fortnight ago and so Paul enjoyed a couple of nights out catching up with Graeme.  They blasted the main sights on the Friday before sampling a lot of French wine.  On Saturday, they felt pretty dead so they headed straight for the cemetery.  Pere Lachaise cemetery is one of the most visited cemeteries in the world - Jim Morrison, Marcel Proust, Chopin and Oscar Wilde are all buried there.  And of course la famille Dobbin:

Dobbin pays the family tomb a visit

The boys went out again on the Saturday night, and were joined by Paul's cousin Neil, John Mumma and Ran, our Israeli neighbour.  Einat (Ran's wife) brought her baby up here and we blethered until 2am, putting the world to rights and thinking we'd resolved the problems in the middle east.  The following weekend was spent hanging out with my Australian pal, Penny Martin, who was on my LLM.  It was fantastic to see her - she used to live in Paris (we'd actually stayed in her old flat around the corner from us when we visited her a few years ago) and knows our area really well.  We went around to her friend Nicolas' house on Saturday for a huge lunch.  He made great galettes - a sort of savory crepe made from buckwheat flour and taste delicious.  I went out for a few drinks with Penny in the evening to a few bars along the canal.  Max then PARTIED all day on the Sunday at Oscar's first birthday party!  Rachel and Fabien put on a great spread and set the ball quite high for birthday parties.  French parties always seem to involve a lot of food, even parties that are for babies!  That said, Oscar and Max were the only babies there - but they loved the attention.

Crawling race - Oscar and Max spy the cakes.

The birthday boy - Oscar is 1!

'Doucement, doucement!'  Oscar and Max grab the tools and start thumping everything in sight, even each other.

Both Max and Oscar had a virus last week that led to wee ear infections so were put on a course of antibiotics.  Max hardly ate a thing for 5 days, but he's well and truly making up for it now! We went out tonight to another party - a leaving night for an old work pal who is commencing a round-the-world trip with her French boyfriend and his parents threw a 'bon voyage' party in their house in the suburbs.  There was the usual over-the-top French buffet and Max got stuck right in, despite having had a huge dinner.  Max is a little wary of men he doesn't know, but was in a sociable mood this evening and quite confidently crawled over to strangers at the party (if they had a plate of food!).  He was knackered by 8.30 though and fell asleep on me in the baby carrier.

Sound asleep - Max is all partied out on the way home from Nanterre