June 25, 2012

Paris- June 6th

June 6- Paris

We woke up this morning to the telephone, and realized that during the
night, we didn't even MOVE!  We were so tired! We got down to
breakfast though, and Mal said that she didn't sleep at all!  Poor
Mal.  We slept great though- thank goodness!  We headed over to the
Marche Franprix (the grocery store that is right next to our hotel!)
and got some waters, and a few snacks for the day.  We then headed out
in search of some crepes!  This is the problem with traveling with
this big of a group! It's hard to decide where to go- and to all agree
on something! So, we walked around for a bit, but couldn't really find
anywhere that had a decent price for Crepes, so we ended up going to a
place right up on the Place d'Italy circle which is just a few blocks
from our hotel.  They had the most delicious croissants EVER!  They
were warm, and flaky, and butter and just the most delicious thing
I've eaten in a LONG time!  We were just going to have a croissant
while we waited for the Crepe machine to warm up, but we ended up
having to leave, because the dude couldn't get the crepe machine to
work!  It wasn't hot enough yet, and we didn't want to wait any
longer, so we had a few more croissants and decided to wait for lunch
to eat more.  So we hopped back onto the Metro and headed to the Arc
de Triompe.  Such a cool big monument!  We think that it was the
monument that Napolean had made for himself to all of the places that
they conquered.  It was really neat to see all of the cool statues on
the facade of the Arc.  It's cool too, because the Arc is on the end of
the Champs Elesseys, so after we saw the Arc, we walked down the
Champs Elesseys the whole way until we found some other neat stuff.
We decided that we were going to walk to Napoleans Tomb.  We weren't
able to actually see Napoleans tomb becasue it cost money to get into
the museum, but we saw a really neat church that is right over there
by it!  BEAUTIFUL church!  It's cool- these churches are HUGE!  Lots
of cool paintings, and stain glass, and stuff like that in them.  It's
crazy how public they are though.
    After we went there, we were hungry for lunch, so we found a really
yummy little cafe and had breakfast for lunch!  I had an omelet
complete (an omelette with ham and eggs and potatoes in it!) and Cole
had a grilled cheese sandwich that looked really yummy!  We all needed
to have a Coke to stay awake, because we were all dozing off at the
table!  Rocky even fell asleep just as the waiter was trying to ask
him what he wanted to eat!  I am actually feeling quite good though!
It must be that I have been a bit sleep deprived in the past couple of
months what with the new baby and all, so it hasn't really bothered me
much!  I say that now, but will probably be a zombie in the next few
days when it finally catches up to me!  Anyways...after lunch, Cole
and I made the executive decision that we were going to head over to
the French Open at Rolland Garros Stadium!  WHAT!  We were SO excited,
because it is going on right now here in Paris, and we just happen to
be here, and it is our dream to go to each of the Opens!  We made it!
We were just going to go over there and check things out, but when we
got there, you really can't see in to anything from the outside, and
we met a nice guy (ha!) named Miccio that was trying to sell us some
tickets!  He was total sketch!  There are alot of policemen around,
and it is totally illegal to scalp tickets, so it took us about an
hour and a half to finally do it, but we were able to get into the
open!  We totally got ripped off, but that's alright.  We paid Miccio
(and his really skittish friend) 400 Euros ($500) for the tickets that
were supposed to be for the Maria Sharapova match, and the Rafael
Nadal match, but we got in there too late to see Sharapova (something
we did NOT know until after the Nadal match was over!).  Nuts.  Oh
well.  We got there just as the first set was ending.  Nadal took it
easily.  It was SOmuch fun to watch though! Cole and I could NOT
believe that we were actually there watching this match!  It was SO
awesome!  Such a dream!  Nadal was awesome, and there were actually
some really great points!  He annialated his oponnent (another
Spaniard- Nico Almagro) but it was super fun to just be there and
watch it.  After the match, we headed out to walk around the grounds
and see if we could see some more tennis.  In the other big venue,
Andy Murray and David Ferrer were playing, and it was a LONG match!
So we were able to watch some of it on the big screen, and it was so
fun!  After that was over, we headed over to La Boutique and got us a
new key chain as a souvenier!  Cole talked me out of a tennis ball
that had actually been used in play there at the French, and had clay
on it and everything! Such a kill joy. :) Probably a good choice
though.  He is such a smart, practical dude.
    After the tennis match, we hopped back onto the Metro (because by
this time, it was about 9:00 or so!) and headed back towards our
hotel.  We were STARVING and were planning on going to the Marche
Franprix for some bread or something because it was so late, but it
was closed by the time we got home, so we went to a little place on
the corner by our hotel and had a really yummy pork sandwich and some
french fries for dinner!  It was delicious!  Then we hopped into bed
to prepare for another day of fun!  Stockton is still the best baby
ever, and hardley makes a fuss at all!

Proof that Stockton was there!  :)




Here we are...at the French Open! 

And the brother too...of course!  He was so good.


How cool is it that we were right there watching one of the best tennis players in the WORLD!  Surreal.



















Paris- June 4 & 5

June 4/5
The day has finally arrived!  It's time for our trip to Europe.  So,
on Saturday, June 2nd, we hopped in the car- with just about
everything that we own!- and headed to Richmond to drop the kids off.
They were SO excited to be going somewhere!  We have needed this
vacation- for sure!  We were able to spend a nice Sunday with the
Smith family (well, just Cleve and Maxine and Kade and his kids)
before we headed for the hills!  We went to church, had a nice dinner
of dutch oven potatoes that Kade made, and then we headed down to
Bountiful for the night!  The next morning, we woke up and Sylvia was
nice enough to come over and take us to the airport around 7 a.m.  We
got there with no problems, were able to check our luggage with no
problem, and got to the gate with enough time to grab some breakfast,
and we were off to Atlanta.  The flight to Atlanta was very
uneventful.  Stockton was AMAZING!  He really didn't even make a
sound!  He was so calm and quiet the whole flight.  What a dream baby!
When we got to Atlanta, we only had a few minutes before we had to
leave for Munich, so we SCRAMBLED from the plane and practically ran
to the gate!  When we got there, everyone was already boarding, but we
were able to talk to the desk, and they gave us an extra seat for
Stockton!  WOAH!  That was the nicest thing that happened to us!
Seriously...it was SO nice!  We were on the very back row of the
plane, but we had 3 seats for the 3 of us, and Stockton was able to
lay down and kick around the whole time.  This resulted in an even
better plane ride!  Stockton was an angel the whole flight, and
everyone just kept commenting on how wonderful and cute he was.  I'd
have to agree! :)  We got about 2 or 3 hours into our 9 hour flight,
and had to turn around and make an emergency landing in Boston because
a guy had a heart attack, or something related, right there on the
flight and he DIED! WHAT!  It was the craziest and saddest thing ever!
So, the detour back to Boston took about 3 hours.  We were 3 hours
delayed from our trip to Boston.  But it really wasn't that big of a
deal, because Stockton was such a good boy!  I was able to get about 5
or 6 hours of continuous sleep- which was so nice!  Stockton even
slept for that long!  When we got to Munich, we hurried out of the
airplane to meet Mom and Dad!  It was SOOOO nice to see them!  I have
missed them SO baldly, so it was so fun to be able to see them for
just a few minutes.  It was kind of a bummer, because we had planned
on seeing them for the whole 3 hours that we were delayed, but because
we were delayed, we had to quickly get through security there in
Munich so that we could get on our plane to Paris.  We'll be excited
to see them when it is time to go back to Germany though!
    After our uneventful ride to Paris, we got into the airport to a
language that we dont' speak...that's for sure!  Yikes!  It was crazy-
that first little while.  Reminded me of Ecuador when I got off the
plane and didn't speak much Spanish!  Except for that I did speak a
little Spanish there- I dont' speak a LICK here!  It's actually really
weird not understanding ANYTHING anyone says.  I probably have a
French vocabulary of about 10 words- 4 of them being numbers and I
don't even know how to say them right.  :)  All part of the experience
eh!?  So, we found a Mini Bus driven by Jean Claude (the black Jean
Claude VanDamm- he said!) and drove the hour that it took to get to
our hotel.  We are staying in the Kyriad Hotel- not quite sure what
street we are even on- but it is pretty nice!  The rooms are TEENY
TINY, but they do the job!  This city is SO dense!  There are so many
apartments, hotels, businesses, etc. that are all pretty small square
footage on each level, but all the buildings go STRAIGHT up!  They are
SO tall, and have quite a few rooms and things on each level!  It's
really cool.  There is SO much history in this huge city!  The city is
HUGE!  It's crazy to me how big it is.  It reminds me a little bit of
New York, but just on a bigger scale.  To get around paris, we headed
down to the Metro and each bought a 10 pack of tickets to get around
while we are here.  Hopefully we will make it on just that.  It cost
about 12 Euros to get a 10 pack. That first night, we got to our hotel
at about 5 p.m. Paris time, and spent a few minutes in our hotel, and
then headed out to the Eiffel Tower!  WOW!  That place is absolutely
amazing!  It is so cool!  It was a bit rainy that night, but we had
our rain jackets and an umbrella, so it wasn't that big of a deal.  We
decided to take the stairs up the entire lower half of the building-
WOW- that's alot of stairs!  It was nice to be stretching our legs a
little bit though after the huge long flight- so it was fun!  What an
amazing structure!  Sheesh!  SO tall!  When we got to each of the
levels, it was fun to be able to look out and see EVERYTHING in Paris.
Of course, we didnt' know what any of it was yet- but it was still
cool to see.  The old architecture of everything is so cool here!
There sure is a lot of history here.  We spent quite a bit of time at
the Eiffel Tower, but then we were all starving, so we walked to a
little place to eat, and it was SO delicious!  We were all kind of
cold, so we had the YUMMIEST bowls of French Onion Soup!  They had a
grilled cheese sandwich on the top!  It was so amazing!  Always wanted
to eat French Onion Soup in France!  Then I had the Salmon and Cole
had a Steak, and they were both really yummy.  The bread here is what
is to die for though!  So delish!  It was so late by the time that we
finished, and we were all totally falling asleep at dinner!  So, we
headed back to the Kyriad for a nice sleep.  We were a bit nervous
about how Stockton would sleep, but I fed him right before bed, and he
ZONKED for the night!  Such a cute little snack.  He has been SO
dreamy thus far on this trip!



















EUROPE BABY!!!!

The time has finally come!  Yahoo!  It's time to go to Europe!!!!!  There's gonna be a WHOLE BUNCH of posts! I'll try to get them over the next few days.  Hopefully.  Enjoy!  :)

Happy Memorial Day!

We had SUCH a fun Memorial Day this year! We decided to have a last minute BBQ with some friends of ours, and it turned out to be so much fun!  The Wilsons are moving away for a couple of years to live in different places each little while, so it was fun to have them over.  Tate and Lincoln got to be great buddies as they were both in Ms. Listers class in school, and Payton and Cache were SO cute together as well!  We love the Wilson's and will miss them as they start their new adventure!  We also had the Metz, the Gowensmiths and the Smith's over.  It was the day that the Smith's were moving into their new house, so they were so glad to be able to take a little break for a few hours!  We had DELICIOUS hamburgers and hot dogs- thanks to Cole, the grill master- and we had a really fun time roasting marshmallows and making smores!  I am SO happy that it is the summer time and we can spend some more time outside!  Yahoo! 
    We set up the tent before the party so that people could sit in it and then later that night, we slept in it!  Our kids LOVE to have sleepovers in the tent, so we kept it up for a few days and had a great time.  Bring on the summer fun!
Hangin on the tramp!

So many boys!  There were, I think, 8 boys there that night, and only 2 girls! 


Debbie Gowensmith and Suzanne Metz

The hoard/gaggle of boys!


Roastin the mallows!

Suzanne getting a baby hit while I was helping with the smores.

Owen Metz is a crack up.  He is so hilarious!

Cache enjoying a popsicle- our other dessert

Peek-a-boo!



See!  I was there!

And so was Stockin! (That's what the kids call him...it's sticking!)