We began our trip with an overnight in Paris. It was so beautiful! Thankfully we were prepared for the cold and we were able to walk around the city late into the night quite comfortably. The highlight of course, was seeing the Eiffel Tower. Especially when there was a "pop" and all the sparkling lights went out. We were left with a beautiful glowing blue tower with a circle of stars. We don't think this was supposed to happen but it remained that way for the rest of the night and it was beautiful! The kids were fabulous troopers as we dragged them all over the city! Kyle is an amazing little walker and hardly complained even after 6 hours of being on his feet! We weren't so lucky in that we were there the day of a train strike. It took much longer, and a few extra trains for us to get in and out of the city. We didn't get back to the hotel, with two sleeping kids in tow, until after 11pm!
I was so excited to be in Paris and had wonderful thoughts of a beautiful French dinner. Brian prides himself that he did take us all out to dinner on the Champs Elysees - to McDondalds. Well at least the kids were happy and from the first floor window seats we had a pretty spectacular view! From there I was on a mission - I wanted to find a toy or book store so I could pick up Zach some French things! We succeeded! But we ended up a very long walk from a metro station!
We were actually quite thrilled to arrive in Seattle in the middle of a snow storm! It turned out that the snow was there to stay and we only had about 4-5 days without fresh snow the whole time we were there! Kyle absolutely loved it and was outside playing in the white stuff every single day! He could not get enough of it! Even on Christmas he and Zach wasted no time putting aside the new toys in order to go outside and play! Most days saw more than a couple of inches too! Most days the snow was over Kyle's knees and there was MUCH more than that at Aunt Laverna and Uncle Mark's.
Once we arrived home we were thrown into the chaos of our visit! After only two nights at Brian's parents' we began a schedule that wore us, me at least, very thin! I packed our overnight bags SEVEN times in three weeks in order to visit both sets of parents and Brian's aunt and uncle. Because of the all the doctor appointments we ended up going back and forth many times!
In the end we really did manage to get some great visits in with family. We feel that we left more than a few friends hanging onto hopes of at least a quick visit. Let me put it this way: our dear friend Cindy is taking care of Brian's car. While we were home all the snow (30+ inches!!) from the roof of her barn slide off and landed right on the roof of that little Corolla. We didn't even have a chance to go by to see the damage! We are really sorry that we did not get the chance to visit with so many friends (including new baby Gianna!) Just think of it this way - only 4 more months until we will have enough time to visit with everyone!
