Monday

Here's Monday. Quite the day...

1. First of all, I am such a city girl! I mastered the Parisian Bus System! I can't take full credit though -- Elise loves the bus too and is very excited when we jump off one, run to the next stop, and jump on another! It's quite the ride; you need to picture me pushing Celia in the stroller and calling Elise from behind me as we hustle from one bus to the other. It's a scene. I've got to give Elise credit though; she is very fast and loves this game!
2. Got our bus passes! NaviGO! I filled out all the paperwork and now we have our very own bus/metro/tram passes that you can recharge with credits. It's pretty sweet and I'm feeling very cool. No more tiny tickets!
3. Celia has passport pictures. I found a little place to take Celia's picture. The rest of the Fischer's were able to take care of our Carte de Sejour pictures in the little photo booth on campus. However we could not get Celia to sit still and look in the scary dark void of the camera at the right time. For all of you that think we're crazy to think that we could accomplish this feat, we almost did get her! So there!
4. Mailed visa information for the ladies. So I went to the post office, struggled through my French with the P.O. lady and was able to fill out the correct envelope. Then, these forms must be mailed through registered mail so I had to find my good friend again. As I struggled to get all that out, she asked if I would prefer to speak in English? Well, yeah!! It was much easier to take care of that hugely important administrative task in English! I still wonder why she waited so long to bust out the English...
5. Struck out at Mairie but at least I made it there! The Fabulous 14th Mairie is our local town hall. I need to go there and register the ladies for school. This amounts to verifying we live here, confirm passports and visas, vaccinations, paystubs, and marriage license. I had a fabulous duo that walked me through the process and started me on my quest for the Carnet de Sejour. Here in Paris, you do not keep a vaccination card on your child. You keep a book! It's huge! So now I have that, I need to find a pediatrician that will look over my USA Vaccination Card and fill out the Carnet de Sejour so that we can complete the ladies maternelle inscription! This will be a fun one! (By the way, I'm calling it right now that it is going to take at least three trips to the Mairie to get this done. I'm 1 for 3.)
6. Got nailed by the rain! We tried to go out and get milk before the rain came but lost! So, in addition to buying milk, we also bought delicious dinosaur crackers covered in chocolate; I was able to convince Elise to run to the tram stop in order to get her cracker! She ran very fast...I don't even think she got wet! We both can't wait for our umbrellas to get here. The next couple days could get ugly. But we'll survive. We have dinosaur crackers....covered in chocolate! Who needs sun?

Paris just can't keep us down! We're off to the Eiffel Tower tomorrow for an adventure with some friends! Should be fun!

Hope all is well!