Week 47 - Last trip to Paris!

Pretty normal week again this week, except we did get a few fun things in during the week and then the weekend.

One thing that I forgot to talk about last week, was that Spencer gave a great talk in church.  It is pretty awesome that the kids are to the point where they can give their own talks.  Spencer gave his talk on the house of Israel and how we can be missionaries.

One sort of exciting thing...  I was walking to lunch this week and saw a big procession.  It turned out to be the King and Queen of Spain!  The Grand Duchy himself came strolling out of the palace on his red carpet and then a big procession of cars, security and ambulances came by with the King and Queen.  They came of of the car, got some kissy, kissy, flowers from children and then a band played their national anthem.  All pretty formal!

For mutual this week, we arranged for the boys to go to a climbing gym in Arlon, Belgium.  It was great as most of the boys had never been to one.  They supplied us with an instructor and we had 3 adults to belay.  However, they had cool, auto-locking belay devices, so they even let the boys belay.

The wall was huge, so the boys had a great time!  Spencer and Jacob both climbed up the wall like monkeys.  It was fun to watch them.  I was watching two of our Spanish speaking boys.  One of them is small and the other large.  So when the larger boy would come down the smaller boy would shoot upwards.  I’d grab him and pull him back down!  Pretty hilarious!

Emilee had a personal progress night on the same night we went climbing, so I missed that.  Kim, Ashton and Emilee all road the bus home late as we had the car and had to run the boys home from Arlon.

This weekend was a big one as it was our last trip over to Paris.  We been saving the Louvre for the end.  I decided to use my Marriott points and get a hotel out by the airport, so we actually stayed the weekend and didn’t try to do Paris in a day.

On Saturday we got there about 11:00 and had some trouble finding parking.  The spot that I’d found on the Internet was only long term residential parking.  We finally found a spot by turning on the Internet on my phone for a bit.  We had to walk about 15 minutes to the Paris Catacombs and wait in an hour line.  We had some good sandwiches from Paul while we waited.  The kids fed the birds and we watched a happy drunk guy say hi to people on the street.  The communist party was also doing a big rally across the street so there were tons of police!

The catacombs were really cool.  Over 6 million people from the middle ages to the 1800s were buried there.  They basically would take bones from cemeteries and bring them down to the catacombs when they were full.  It took about 25 minutes of walking underground to get to the area where the bones were located.  It freaked Kim out a bit.  Paris was an inland sea a long time ago, so there was a good layer of limestone where they quarried rock, leaving tunnels where they could put the bones. 

The catacombs didn’t disappoint.  It was unbelievable how many dead people were down there.  I wouldn’t want to be there during the resurrection.  It would be one crowded spot!  Amazing to think that each one of those people had a story that was lost to time…

We all used this self cleaning toilet!  Awesome, once we figured it out!

After the catacombs we headed to Luxembourg Gardens.  It is a really nice park in downtown Paris.  The big attraction there was the wooden sailboats.  For 3 euros you could rent these little boats and a stock and put them on a little pond.  The breeze was perfect and the kids had a GREAT time pushing the boats around and sending them sailing across the pond.  Definitely a highlight of Paris!

We got back to the car and drove to another highlight, Chipotle!  We still miss Mexican food, so a delicious burrito really hit the spot!  The traffic in Paris was crazy, busy.  It was pretty stressful trying to eat my burrito and navigate the crazy roundabouts in downtown Paris. 

We made it safely over to the Eiffel tower just in time to see the hourly light display!  It was worth it.  The Eiffel tower is pretty at night, but amazing when the light display is turned on for 5 minutes.

About 45 minutes later we had a great night’s sleep at one of the nicer hotels we’ve stayed at.  It was a pretty basic Marriott, but a Marriott nonetheless!

We got up early the next morning and were on the road by 7:30 to head to the Louvre.  The Louvre was the palace in downtown Paris that was turned into the most amazing museum in the world.  If you haven’t been there it is difficult to describe how big it is. 

It would literally take a week to see everything.  We were there early enough that we got to see the Mona Lisa with very few people in the room.  The Louvre took about an hour to fill up and then it was pretty crowded at the key works of art. Tons and tons of Chinese people.

We saw most of the really famous pieces.  We’d purchased the audioguide on our iPhones so that was really nice.  Ashton was pushed around by Spencer in his stroller and watched 2.5 movies on his iPad!  Awesome that we actually got to enjoy the Louvre with the kids without Ash complaining!

The works of art in the Louvre are amazing, but the setting really makes it incredible.  The French knew how to go over the top in their palaces.  One of our favorite paintings was the crowning of Napoleon’s wife.  We also like the Davinci’s, the winged victory statue, Venus de Milo and the entire Egyptian exhibit.  I love the actual scribe’s palletes because they are dirty, used and still have the paint and paint brushes in them.  Pretty hard to believe the beautiful things they created so long ago…

After 4 hours in the Louvre all of the kids were ready to go.  It is painful on the feet and you get quite tired going up and down all of the steps.  Our final exhibit was the Code of Hammurabi.  It is a big basalt rock dating back about 4000 years ago with the rules for the society written all over the rock.  It was pretty interesting because it depicts the laws came down from God to man.  Every square inch of the rock was covered in script.  The script didn’t look Egyptian or middle eastern.  Definitely the first time I’ve ever seen it.  Pretty impressive.

After the Louvre we were dying of hunger and pretty close to Chipotle, so we went there again.  We enjoyed our burritos as we said goodbye to Paris for the last time.  On the drive home, we kept our eyes open for the tiger that has been menacing Paris!  ;)

We saw some people in orange clothing in the woods.  We don’t know if they were just hunters or if they were actually looking for the big cat.

It was amazing to drive home from Paris during the daylight.  We got home at 5:30, called the Grandparents and had an enjoyable evening.  We’ve watched way too many movies while we’ve been here.  We’ve sunk pretty low and are currently going to the X-men series! 

Oh, it is going to be awesome to get back home where we can walk around the neighborhood on Sunday afternoons, be with family and friends.

4 weeks to go!

Until next week….

Pictures from Week 48