The weather has been nice and cool and rainy almost the entire week. We're happy for all of the cool days we can get. Hot days make it pretty uncomfortable in the house without air conditioning. We are forced to open the windows and then the flies come in! Ashton is our fly catching machine. He can catch flies with his bare hands. He is unbelievably fast!
His venus fly trap is very well fed and his shooting up a big flower of some sort. We're all excited to see it bloom.
The kids are super excited to visit home in a month. There's not a lot to do here during the week, so their looking forward to some friend time at home! Jacob continues to get better and better at the Rubik's cube. This week he got a 9 second time. His fingers are flying!
Spencer was sick most of this week and we're all hoping that we don't get it! He says he slept on the toilet last night...
Ashton is still in school. This next week is his last. The school times here in Europe are more like year round school. They have a much shorter summer vacation, but get lots more time off throughout the year.
We've enjoyed seeing the final games of the world cup. Brazil self-destructed in their last two games. That was sad to see. Jake and I stayed up late to watch Messi with Argentina and were super surprised to see his style. He barely runs around at all and lets the team do most of the work and then has flashes of brilliance. We're hoping his flashes of brilliance happen more often in the final! Argentina vs. Germany tonight should be an exciting game. My brother Brian went to Argentina and my Dad to Germany on their missions so it should be exciting back in Utah!
Ashton pestered Kim enough about his diamond that they went to a jeweler to find out if it was real. Kim took Jake along to help out with the French! After a few minutes the jeweler gave them the bad news. After a few tears and a promise of gelato, Ashton was able to forget the pain of a fake diamond.
Lots of big orange slugs in the forest!
Saint, carved into the sandstone.
Castle getting restored.
Saturday morning we got up early to take the young men in the ward hiking. A few of the boys showed up and after getting some yummy pastries we headed about 30 minutes away to a small town in the "Little Switzerland region of Luxembourg. They have kilometers and kilometers of trails through the forests. The forests here are really beautiful!!! I'm wishing I had a good mountain bike here. If I was staying longer I'd have to make that investment.
We walked about 10 kilometers up to a castle and back through the forest. We found a couple ponds, played rock soccer and did a little bouldering. We need to do more of this type of activity with the family as it was beautiful and relaxing.
As soon as we dropped off all the boys and got home, we got some food and headed towards the Tour de France. The Tour started up in England this year and was about an hour and a half away from our house in Luxembourg on Saturday.
The race started at 11:30 and we got to a small city along the route about 1:30. The roads were lined with fans all waiting for the peloton to come through. There were tons of cars, motorcycles and helicopters following the route. We waited about 30 minutes before the riders came by. At that point there was a break away that was a couple minutes ahead of the peloton. The people really started screaming as the riders came by. It was pretty exciting! It didn't take long before all of the riders and their backup cars had gone by.
We got in the car and drove towards the finish line. You could see where the race was at because of the swarm of helicopters. The little city where the race finished was beautiful. It was a mountain town with a ski resort and a little lake. We parked and walked towards the city center. There were thousands of people lining the street and there was a big parade going on. Pretty much sponsors throwing out tons of free stuff. In the main part of the city it was VERY crowded so we started up the big hill.
This stage ended on a huge 2 km hill. We stopped about a 1/4 of the way up when it started raining. A massive storm hit with lightening and tons of rain. From that point on it rained the rest of the race. We couldn't see very well, so we continued up the hill. We didn't want to miss the race, so we jogged up this huge hill. We were all breathing pretty hard, but we found a really good spot about 300 yards before the finish line. We were right on the barriers almost at the top of the hill.
The winner! A French guy that had only won two races to this point! He was about 2 minutes ahead!
The finish line!
There were some people watching the race on their phones, so we could tell that they were getting close. The anticipation really built until we saw the first guy pushing up the hill. It turned out he was way out in front. It didn't even look like he was breathing that hard after 160 km and going up this huge hill. We took tons of pictures, and yelled aller (alleeeey) to all of the passing riders. There must have been a crash because we saw lots of guys with blood on their arms and legs.
We met Spencer and as he had gone ahead and walked up to the finish line. We saw the winners get their yellow jerseys and kisses! This was definitely one of the coolest sporting events we've seen. It was super fun and allowed us to get super close to the action.
One thing we were wondering is where did all of the riders on the tour stay at night! Spencer said that probably had motorhomes and he was right! We walked past the parking lot where all of the team motorhomes were parked. There were probably over 100 motorhomes! A 3 week race is pretty impressive that you can even survive it.
We were about 2 1/2 hours from home, but the drive was beautiful. About 30 minutes from home we stopped at a KFC in Thionville! It is nice to get some good ice which is hard to come by in Luxembourg. We got home at 10:00 and went straight to bed. We're looking forward to a nap on Sunday after a busy week!!!!
Week 29 Pictures
Week 29 Pictures
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