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La Vie Est Belle

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Whew!  It has been a busy month!  Correction:  It has been a lazy month.  Prepping for Hulk/Annyong's arrival in December has taken quite a lot out of me and, as a result, I have been neglecting a lot of things.  In fact, here are a few things that have fallen by the wayside since my last post:
  • Writing and posting on Anouchka Talks
  • Anything not involving New Girl, Breaking Bad, Parks and Recreation or Christmas music
  • Regular showering
  • Vegetables
  • Keeping up with long distance friends and family via email and/or Facebook
  • Wearing my retainer (Shut up.  Bet my teeth are straighter than yours, you old hag.)
  • Baking/making ridiculous amounts of dessert
  • Imaginary band practice for my imaginary band, The Backyard River Shrimp (Buy our album on iTunes in Novembruary)
  • Herb processing/dehydrating for the winter
To give you an idea of how this pregnancy has taken over our lives, let me tell you what Habibi and I did to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary:  We went to a childbirth education class.  Woohoo.

Not.

Still, it was a great anniversary that we celebrated by an unreasonable amount of food at HuHot.  I will not tell you how many trips to the grill were involved because then you would probably judge me.  

In spite of my aching hips and tailbone, my inability to accomplish much physically, and my occasional dizzy spells, I have been doing some reflecting over the past month.  In fact, at this time last year, Habibi and I were preparing for another big life adventure:  our trip to France!  How fortunate that we were able to do that before getting ready to become parents!  I think that it was more than just a stroke of luck that enabled us to get the timing just right for such a trip.

So, in honor of these two anniversaries (wedding and trip to France), let me share a few pictures of those memorable days with you here:

From our wedding...
October 3, 2009

Worn out ballet shoes - my "something old"
My bouquet and our rings
Unity sand ; Traditional wedding crowns for Lebanese/Middle Eastern brides and grooms ;
Bible (duh) ; Memorial candle for Habibi's dad
Our cake (truly one of the best I've ever tasted in my life...and that's a LOT of cake)
and the bedazzled machete we used to cut it

 From France 2012...
(October - November 2012)
**Sorry for any repeats.  If you're interested in more pictures/stories from our trip, see last year's series of posts from France.
L'Arc de Triomphe, Habibi's favorite Parisian site
Notre Dame de Paris, my favorite Parisian site
Cathedral in Besançon, my French "hometown"
Sunset over the Atlantic, as viewed from Le Mont Saint-Michel
Fields of megaliths in Carnac
Life before Hulk/Annyong was good.

Life after her arrival will be good too.

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