Becky's Birthday Bash!

Last year for my birthday I decided to party like I had just turned 30 (I had only been here for 1 month when I turned 30 and I didn't have as many friends yet nor did I know of any cool places to party for a married woman).  I invited my friends and shared my party with my good friend, Caroline.  It was an awesome night.

Here we all are at dinner. (Laetitia is taking the picture here but is pictured above).  Going around the table from the left.  Celine, Sonia, Janaina, Samantha, Lisha, Katia, Tabitha, Andrea, Marie, Caroline, Me, Ana, Catalina and Harmony.  Harmony is my one and only American friend who was able to make it to my party.

The girls at the far end of the table. (Lisha, Tabitha and Andrea).

The other birthday girl, Caroline.

Me (being a dork).

Harmony, who takes our pictures here, gave me a collage of our latest family photo shoot.  Love it.

Us posing with our presents that we got for each other.

I'm looking sorta pastey white here.

Marie with Caroline.

Harmony being herself.  Love this crazy girl.

My birthday cake!

This restaurant has a DJ on the weekends with dancing (which is why I chose it) and we all stayed late and danced.  No pics of the dancing but it was fun.  I'm really going to miss all my ladies here in Geneva.  We play way too often and I'm going to miss it.  I'm constantly leaving Brian with the boys for a girls night (well, about once or twice a month and sometimes more when I'm lucky).  We have a lot of fun.  It was a great birthday party.

Random fall 2011 pictures.

I must admit that after Grandma Shelley left we put the camera away and didn't get it out for a bit.  Until they started tearing down the building next door.  This was an awesome process (it took them like 3 months to demolish this building) and the kids could just watch this all day long.  They don't just blow up a building and call it good here.  Nope.  They have to take it apart and recycle everything they can.  And then when they have it torn down to cement they grind it up and continue to sift through it until they have separated every last piece of metal.  Waste not, want not, I guess.

At the beginning of October my mom and Aunt Nancy came.  They had taken a family history trip down in Italy (yes, I am part Italian on my mom's side) and then they took a bit longer to really sight see as well down there.  They arrived here and immediately took over my car and headed off on some day trips here in Switzerland.  Aunt Nancy went home a few days later and we had a couple of lazy weeks with my mom.  I mean really lazy since this is literally the only picture I got of her while she was here.

Yes, James and Johnny jump naked on my bed every night before I manage to wrestle them into their jammies.

We did a lot of kids stuff while my mom was here.  We went to Espace Junior which is a seasonal bouncy house place here in Geneva.  They have about 50 huge bouncy houses.  The kids love it!  James at the bottom of the huge slide.

Johnny (last year he was too young to really enjoy himself) having the time of his life.

Look at that smile.

I took his socks off and it helped a lot for his grip.

Sorry for the overload of Johnny but he is just too cute!

We played play dough.

More playing on the bed.  Looks like I posed them but I did not.  That would be weird.

Now, I feel bad that I didn't do more with my mom.  Perhaps I can tempt her to come back out and squeeze these boys some more (and go to Prague with me)...Mom???