Alex's New Do

Sean had taken Ethan to get his haircut at Supercuts earlier that same day, but he wouldn't stop moving. The girl told Sean that it was "company policy" that she couldn't cut his hair if he wouldn't hold still because they had "cut too many kids." So Sean just brought him home wihtout a hair cut, but at least he still had both of his ears! :D
Even though Ethan was the one who needed the haircut more, Alex was the one who got his done. He was obviously not too happy about it.


I think he's mostly upset about his mullet at this point.

Look at all that hair! (he's not even 2)

It turned out so cute and he seems pretty pleased.

So CUTE!


Little LuLu

The kids playing in the bubbles
At least it's a lot easier to tell them apart now! Until Ethie gets his cut these week too anyways.

Last One About Paris...

Just a couple random thing that we thought we interesting and/or hilarious.

Definitely the rollerblading cops!  So funny and not intimidating!

I swear it's gotta be a joke.
Next, There are very few free public toilettes.  If you're in a museum or some other place that you pay to get into, you can find a bathroom with a really long line, but other than that you pretty much have to pay to use the bathroom!  Very weird.  The bathroom we paid to use (not this one in the picture) was freaking awesome and worth the 3 Euros a piece!

Why I started out HATING Paris

Well, as soon as we got off the plane we headed to EuroDisney (which I don't think anyone besides Americans call it that, by the way).  Here are some pictures of when we first got there, seems wonderful right?

It started out fine.  Neil even got this weird "Tower Burger" that had a hamburger patty and a giant hashbrown patty on it too.
Looks pretty nice...
Still excited to be there at this point.

I think it was a combination of many things that forced us to curse Disney's name and vow to never return to EuroDisney (aka Disneyland Paris) again.  First of all, nobody there knows about personal space.  It was as if everyone behind you was in line to "punk" you, if anyone remembers that term from junior high.  The second you'd move forward, the person behind you was filling in your exact footsteps.  It was a yucky feeling to have strangers on top of us all day long.

Secondly, they are not very efficient.  The sign for Big Thunder Rail Road said 45 minutes.  W get in line and wait for 2 hours.  After 2 hours, we decide to leave since we still had at least 1 more hour of waiting!  stupid rollercoaster.

Next, everyone smokes everywhere (this goes for Paris is general, not just Disneyland).  You can't eat anything without the stench of smoke,  in any line you're surrounded by a smoke cloud.  It's just gross.  It's like they still think it's cool to smoke- I think America grew out of that in the 70's...Luckily!  I'm so glad for Indoor Clean Air Acts!

I'll stop there about what I didn't like about France, except for the thing that topped it all off...

The next day we waited around forever for Mom, Stef, Julie, and Jeff to show up.

It took forever.  This is Berrie's version of waiting; I was jealous.

  When they did show up, we wanted to go into the city as quickly as possible because we were bored and had been waiting around.  We didn't know very much about how to get around or what to do so we were just walking and walking and walking without finding anything.  I was scared (because I'm a scaredy cat) and kept thinking we were going to get robbed and raped at any second.  Luckily neither of those things happened the whole time!  

Anyways, we did find the Louvre which was cool, but it was closed.  So we went to dinner and the waiter was a big fat jerk (we had a lot of those).  I don't know what his problem was but he hated us (I realize that's a common theme with the French, but I don't get it, nor do I like it!)  Finally we left the idiot restaurant and heading home.  We took the train, then got on the bus.  We got off the bus without actually knowing which stop was ours- BAD DECISION!!  So we look at the bus schedule to see when the next bus will be here to pick us up on the next round: 1 hour, wait no.... That was the last trip of the bus all night!  Did I mention it was a rainy night and close to midnight?  Our phones wouldn't call into France (we could call the US and the US could call us, but no in France calling was allowed apparently).  There was nothing around us but houses and 1 restaurant that was closed.  So Jeff and Neil are looking at maps trying to see if they could find out where we were and where we were supposed to go (another stupid thing about France is they only have like 5 street signs in the whole city!)  Finally some people come out of the closed restaurant and Neil and I RUN over there asking to use their phone to call a cab.  They barely speak English and we barely speak French, so they say hold on.  LUCKILY, the nicest girl in the world owned the restaurant AND spoke perfect English!  We asked her if we could use their phone and she's said, "No, I'll just take you."  We told her there were 7 of us and we just needed to call a cab and she again said that she would take some of us and her friend would take the rest of us!  I almost cried because she was so nice and we were seriously SCREWED!  Thanks to Simone, we made it home that night!  

The next night we went back to her restaurant (we drove this time) and thanked her as much as we possibly could.   (She's the one in the middle- in the uniform)

So there ya have it. My first 2 days in France were definitely not very fun. The rest of the trip was so awesome, but it got off to a rough start!

Arc de Triomphe

One of my favorite places: The Arc de Triomphe!

Me and Steffie at the top, the Eiffel Tower in the background.
Berrie, Mom, Neil, Stefanie.  I think they're reading info about the Arc, since I took the picture, I did not read the plaque and have nothing historical to say about it.

It was a seriously long walk up those stairs!  I have to say I did enjoy it though since that was my only form of exercise for the week :)
The view from the top at sunset.
Champs de Elysee at night

The Arc at night. So gorgeous, a perfect place to see why Paris is "the City of Lights"

(Disclaimer: I know it looks like we're all just wearing the exact same clothes every day, but I'm not doing these posts in order of what we did, so a lot of the things we did in the same day- which is why we're in the same clothes. We really did change our clothes daily. Although I did wear my same scarf and mittens the whole time)

Our Darling Villa in the Country

We actually didn't stay right in Paris while we were there. It took us about an hour on the train each day to get to the city, but we were in sucha gorgeous area it was totally worth it.
Here's the cute villa we got to call home for a week.

Notre Dame Cathedral and Sainte-Chapelle

Notre-Dame took 170 years to build! Pope Alexander III laid the first stone in 1163. It's so amazing that these buildings are all so old and still standing. This is the front of the cathedral.

Christ.
This is called the South Rose Window, Christ is at the center, but you can't really tell. It's 43 feet high.
This is the center of the Cathedral. We tried to go to Mass, but we got there at the wrong time and didn't really want to wait 3 hours.
This is in back of the Notre-Dame. This is where the Flying Buttresses are (but they're not in the picture)
Then this is Sainte-Chapelle. It's just about a block from the Notre-Dame.
This is the lower chapel, only servants and commoners were allowed to worship here. The upper chapel was reserved for the king and the royal family only.
This is the upper chapel. It has amazing stained glass windows all around. The windows are a pictorial Bible. You're supposed to see the stories starting with Genesis, I couldn't figure it out though.
This Stefanie below the Rose Window in the upper chapel, it tells the story of the Apocalypse (again I couldn't see the story). The window was a gift from Charles VIII n 1485.

Paris In Pieces

To avoid a serious picture overload, I'll try to break the Paris trip up into smaller chunks over the next few days. It was mostly a very great trip- there were a couple miserable days, but I'll get to those...

First, L'Orangerie and The Louvre.

(Mom's doing a king tut chin thing with her hand, in case you were wondering)

The Beautiful Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower took 2 years to build, it was finished in 1889.  It was built as the entrance for a World's Fair.  The architect was Gustav Eiffel- hence the name.  It was almost torn down 20 years after, but the city wanted to use it's antennae for military reasons, so it was saved!

It weighs about 10,000 tons.

This first picture is a view from the very very top.  It was so HIGH!  On the elevator ride, I just had to keep popping my ears over and over.

The 2nd pic is just Neil and I by a tree at the bottom of the Tower.

The 3rd picture is a view of the Eiffel Tower as we were on a boat on the Seine River.

The 4th one was taken from the top of the Arc de Triomphe at night, so gorgeous!

Musee D'Orsay

The Musee D'Orsay was super awesome as well.  I would've spent a ton more time there, but it had to close. 

 They have some amazing sculptures and paintings.  

Definitely worth some time!