Day 1

Let me just start by saying thank you to my Dad for financing this trip and thank you to my sister, Erin, for babysitting my girls while I am gone - I couldn't have left them if it weren't for you.

For those of you who don't know, my mom is on a mission for our church over in Frankfurt. Well, she's based in Frankfurt but her actual assignment is to provide training for all the couple missionaries in the Europe area who are in charge of the Centers for Young Adults. The centers provide a gathering place for young, single LDS people to meet together and learn and have fun. So mom travels all over Europe to do this. When she first left, my dad said he would like us kids to go over and pick her up at the end of her mission (18 months) and have her show us around Europe. Part way into her mission, mom said she did not think traveling more after her mission sounded like fun. So we are all taking our turns going to visit her and traveling around Europe ourselves:) My sister went back in March, we're here now, and my brother and his wife will go in October. So without further ado, here is a travel blog of our trip - I promise it's interesting:)

First, it took us about 24 hours from the time we left our house in Phoenix until we checked into the hotel in Paris. When I booked the flights, I didn't think a seven hour flight was a big deal, seeing that we have driven from Phoenix to Dallas (17 hours with four kids in the car) several times. But it was still hard. Especially when you walked past First Class and saw the three year old sitting there. Jealous! We had a layover in London that lasted WAY too long because of weather but it was seriously like being stuck in the fanciest mall ever! Tiffany's, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vitton, Harrod's, and what airport would be complete without Starbuck's. Didn't buy anything, just looked.

We finally made it to Paris - on Bastille Day! There was a giant party going on right by our hotel, it went on till all hours of the night. But we were so tired we slept right through most of it. Early the next morning, we were awoken by some nasty sounds in the street outside our room. We looked out to find some party goer yacking his guts up right by this little fountain. Gross!
But now we are awake and going so we take a cool picture of the other stuff we see outside our hotel room and get going to the Super Marche to buy breakfast. Three interesting things: 1) People bring their dogs everywhere here, even into the grocery store. 2) You can't buy toothpaste in the grocery store, you have to walk over to le Pharmacie. 3) You CAN buy Lay's, Kellog's, Dannon, Old El Paso, and Bertolli pasta. We could have had Cocoa Krispies for breakfast! Instead we had baguette, yogurt and fruit - how French.

We took the train out to Versailles - the palace King Louis the XIV built in the late 1600's. At first I was a little jaded, having grown up in Vegas and seen so much of this in my life time. But when I really thought about what an accomplishment this was from 300 years ago and how much money this would have cost, I was just blown away. I couldn't even get the whole thing in a camera shot, no matter how far away I stood!

This is the front of the castle, the courtyard below is massive. Look at all the gold leaf!

This is the famous hall of mirrors - on the right are windows looking out on the gardens and on the left are exact replicas of the windows only they are mirrors. This is the room the balls were held in. The level of detail on all the plaster work is incredible, especially knowing that someone produced it all by hand. No wonder all of Europe was intimidated by the French, Louis knew how to party!

This is the gate to the palace, the whole fence out front is gold, just couldn't get a good picture.

Everywhere you looked, there was Louis! On every door, in every painting, fresoed on the ceiling, just everywhere! Seriously vane.

This is his bed, with a fence in front of it. Every morning and every night the important people came to tuck him in and wake him up - but they had to stand behind the fence. Geez, next time I complain about my kids coming to wake me up, I'll remember Louis.

Amd this picture is for every mom who has ever showed up at a public place only to have the day care kids in their matching shirts show up. This is a day care group on a field trip to VERSAILLES!!! Only they wear matching orange hats. Awesome.

On the way back to the train station, we stop at the local patiserrie to get a chocolate croissant (au pain chocolat) and a napoleon (mille fois or thousand papers). DIVINE! No comparison to La Madeleine.

Next is the Arche de Triomphe - this is me across the street from it. Look carefully and you can see people on top of it - that's how massive this is. The traffic around the bottom of this is crazy, no lanes even painted on the streets, no stop lights. People just go where they want. Luckily they really do all drive tiny cars so it's a little easier. You have to go underground to get over to the Arche. When you get there, you can see the tomb of France's Unknown Soldier from WWII, it has an eternal flame burning on it just like JFK's tomb at Arlington National Cemetary. Guess JFK liked that idea and that's okay because the French really liked him - enough to name a street after him. But they also like FDR, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, and couple others I can't remember right now.

Up on top the view is spectacular! You just have no idea what the skyline of Paris looks like until you've been up there. First, you can see much of the older architecture right close to you, including the palace, the Eiffel Tower, the Opera House, Notre Dame, etc. But what you don't realize is that on one end of the Champs Elysse is the palace and on the other end is downtown with modern buildings and all. Also, there seem to be several downtown's - apparantly each quarter sort of has one. Anyway, at this particular tourist site, there were a lot of American's, so we had a couple on thier honeymoon take this picture of us. After today, I would not recommend a honeymoon in Paris - no matter how romantic you think it is:)

We had tickets to go to the top of the Eifeel Tower but when we got there, the police were clearing everyone out and standing guard with machine guns! No one would tell us why so I'll keep you posted if I find out what went on. After that we went to dinner - all the little cafe's everywhere were serving duck, salmon, and cheeseburgers (for 14 euros!). That says a lot about the tourists from America. They were EVERYWHERE! And the ads for our movies are on every billboard at every train station. Most of their TV is just American shows dubbed in French. And seriously, no wonder the French don't have a good opinion of us. For those of you who have seen the Unsinkable Molly Brown, most of the American's here are like her before she gets some culture.

The sites were amazing but this is People Watching at it's BEST! We think we are so different from everyone else in the world, but we are so much alike. Same problems, same successes, just in a different language. There are a few glaring differences, more French smoke than Americans. More French know English than American's know French. Also, not nearly as many tattoes. Maybe that's an American craze - they haven't got L.A. Ink on their TV yet.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow (hopefully it won't be so long).

1st Week of Summer Vacation . . . by numbers

Let me just say up front that I really enjoy my kids being out of school. I like not having to get ready in the morning and not packing lunches. I enjoy spur of the moment projects and outings and staying up late. But this week wasn't what I envisioned. Here is my week by numbers:

On any given day I had at least eight kids in my house from 8AM - 6PM. I babysit my neice and nephew and then two of my neices from Utah came to visit. Add a few friends here and there and on Thursday I was up to eleven! We spent ten hours swimming, did nine art projects, played eight board games, and seven video games. I went through six gallons of milk, five pizzas, four bags of cereal, three batches of cookies, and two movies. That makes one very tired me. There are still ten weeks of summer left but lucky for me I have three vacations planned, one that does not include kids! Wish me luck!

Accentuate the Positive

When you look back at your life, the things that stick out are the really good and the really bad. Hopefully the good outweigh the bad . I personally think it helps if you document the decent times so that if you're on the fence about having a good life or bad, this can push you over the good edge. So here's to a fantastic week at the Perkins House.

First, we had Caroline's kindergarten graduation. When they sang their little songs, you could hear cute little Caroline so well. She really has a talent for remembering words. It was amazing to look back over this school year and think that Caroline started the year with a cast on her arm and road rash on her face. Amazing.

For breakfast on the last day of school, my mom started the tradition of having banana splits. I thought it was worth keeping. Some people leave off the banana and just have the ice cream. Sophia was amazed when I set this creation on her tray.

Then the first day of summer vacation was all about sugar cereal, karoake, video games, and of course it was Kassie's birthday today! How much better could it get?

We had a swimming party for Kassie, very low key but fun. She requested a cookie cake from Nestle but I just made one instead. Our recipe for chocolate chip cookies is way better.
In this shot, I told the birthday crowd to jump on three. The splash is Caroline, who jumped on two:)

The one dark spot on our day was that poor little Sydney was throwing up. We are hoping it was just a 24 hour thing. But I'm accentuating the positive so I'll just tell you that if I have to have any of the kids throwing up, I'm glad it's her. She's so neat and clean and low maintenance.

When the kids think life is bad, I'll just show them this post! Maybe I need a blog book...

Yummy!

Sometimes I get sick and tired of eating the same stuff day after day. It is my lot since I am sort of a picky eater. So every once in a while, I will pull out my cookbooks or look online to spice up my weekly menu. This week has some old favorites as well as a recipe from Courtney's Angels Cookbook. Amy Pennington contributed it and it is YUMMY! I don't usually post recipes on my blog but this one is so good and easy! All you do is mix all the ingredients together in the crock pot and cook on high for 4-5 hours, shredding the chicken about an hour before complete. When you're ready to serve, you can put it in taco shells or roll it up like a burrito, and top with lettuce, shredded cheese, and sour cream. Everyone in my family ate it - which is VERY unusual. Thanks Amy!

3-4 chicken breast (thawed)

1 jar salsa

1 can of corn

1 can of black beans

1/2 packet of chicken taco seasoning

Thanks to Facebook

I am a fairly nosey person by nature - not in a bad way, not gossipy - just fascinated by people in general and specifically in those who have touched my life significantly. So a couple of years ago when a friend told us how great facebook was for helping you reconnect with old friends, I jumped on it! I spent HOURS looking for friends from my old neighborhood, schools, church. It was addicting. There are still some people who aren't on facebook and I wonder about them, especially when I hear certain songs on the radio that bring back memories. But luckily I am able to stay in touch with most of my closest friends from the past.

Today, I met up with one of my closest friends from high school, embarrassingly we called ourselves the Crayola Queens. (Jenn, Cathleen, Sherri - forgive me for posting this picture):

You see, we thought we were so smart and so over high school that we didn't really have to listen to our government teacher (who spent most of his time drunk and to this day every time I hear the name Justice Rehnquist I hear it in his voice) or our World Lit teacher (who we really liked but again, we were too cool). We each bought ourselves a Brand New Pack of 96 Crayola Crayons. And that was back when they were introducing the new colors and we got to enter the contest to help name them, you know Purple Mountain Majesty and Macaroni and Cheese. (You know you are wishing this very minute for a fresh pack of brand new crayons.) Anyway, senior year was great with these girls in almost all my classes. After high school, we each went to separate colleges and haven't seen each except at our 10 year reunion! But thanks to facebook, we are in touch again! Jenn and I took our families to the Phoenix Zoo and the first thing we saw was the Ram at the top of the mountain! It was a sign since we were the Rancho Rams in high school:)

After trekking through the zoo in fairly warm weather, we paused to take this picture of us with our kids. I had such a good time, it's amazing how good friends can just reconnect and melt away all the years spent apart. Jenn is the same amazing person with a realistic outlook on life, witty sense of humor, and get-it-done attitude that I remember. No wonder we were such good friends! Cathleen, I can't wait till you come in June and we can ALL get together. Thanks, facebook!

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

One of the things that sold us on this house was the backyard. It is gorgeous and it has a pool! Right after we moved in, we dumped hundreds of dollars into the pool trying to get it ready to swim in, only to find out that it needed to be completely drained! So we drained it, cleaned it, and refilled it, then dumped a few hundred more dollars worth of chemicals in. We swam for a few months before it was too cold and then it sat all winter. Unfortunately, when we tested the water in the spring, it was like tap water with no trace of the chemicals we had put in last fall! We discovered that it had a leak in the fill valve, fixed that and started the chemical process all over again.

We were so frustrated and began to be very concerned about the money pit we apparently bought! Seriously, that kind of money was not in the budget! What were we going to do? Clearly, we had made a terrible mistake!

Luckily the problem turned out to be realtively cheap to fix and we have been enjoying the pool for several weeks now. In fact, the kids come home from school, put on their swimming suits and hardly come in the house (except for homework). They even have their snack and their dinner out there. It's divine! Definitely worth all the money and stress:)

Not Quite as Disturbing as the Last Post

You wouldn't think that something as ho-hum as a potty chair could bring so much excitement to our baby. Sophia doesn't turn two until June but lately she's been interested in the toilet so I thought I would just pick up this little seat while I was at grocery shopping today. It's much fancier than what the other girls sat on but works just the same. Sophia loved it! After taking her diaper off by herself over and over again, she carried it all over the house today and then out to the back yard! Not a single drop of pee-pee all day but it was fun to watch.