One much anticipated Saturday morning in October, my sister Corey and her family covertly waited behind our front door, as we surprised our kids with the news of a trip to Paris and Disneyland for the following day.
On cue, my sister's family knocked on the door to
add themselves to the surprise.
Within an hour of their arrival we drove to Segovia for a few hours before retiring to bed early for our 6:00 am flight to Paris the next day.
Segovia
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| Our kids have taken several pictures from this spot, but none with as much elation as they did on this day. |
Kamree and Adrielle have always been inseparable when they are together, and this time was no different.
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| The Alcazar of Segovia and my sister's head up close. |
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| This surely looked better in person. |
Paris and the Eiffel Tower
^This is the closest I'll ever get to a selfie or to the top of the Eiffel Tower!
We spent the first day around the Eiffel Tower, or at least most of it as you can see in the following photos.
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| We seemingly had to have pictures of the tower from every angle and at every time of day. |
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| The surprises continued even after arriving in Paris. Mason has always wanted to ride in a hot air balloon and even though this was not an actual hot air balloon it was good enough. It was a quick 11 minute ride which was plenty long for most of us. |
The views were fantastic of the city and the Eiffel Tower.
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| Cool cars and Kool kids. |
Paris Catacombs
The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries. To enter the catacombs you must descend a narrow spiral stone stairwell down 19 meters into the darkness and yes we had to ascend 19 meters of stairs to exit.
After the stairs you must pass through a long (about 1.5 km) and twisting hallway, until you eventually make your way to the ossuary entry. Somehow we missed the inscription at the entry that says, "Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead," in french.
This is said to be the "World's Largest Grave," holding the remains of about six million people. The remains fill a renovated section of caverns and tunnels from historical stone mines.
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If you hadn't noticed there were no girls with us. We couldn't agree on this or the Notre Dame and we did not have time for both since the catacombs always have at least an hour long line to enter. Therefore, we divided and conquered them both. Brent, the boys and I went here while my sister's husband drove her and all the girls to the Notre Dame Cathedral.Notre-Dame de Paris |
Seine River Cruise
That evening we all met back up on the banks of the Seine River for a surprise nighttime river cruise.
We were the last to board and thus got last choice of the seats. We were outside on the back side of the boat. They were not as cold as the roof top seats, but cold enough. They look as if they were not enjoying this, but in reality they were quite exhausted by this point.
This is the backside of the Notre Dame. In the end, we all got to see the Cathedral de Notre Dame.
Disneyland
Our kids had never been to Disneyland even after all the years of begging. We had promised that we would take them when Kamree was 5 and could ride most of the rides. Those plans were put on hold when we moved here to Spain and she was still 4 years old. Better late than never, right? It was really cold, but no one seemed to complain.
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| It's been a long time since I have been to Disneyland CA, so I could not remember all of the rides. My sister and her kids went a few years ago and were able to tell us which rides were the same and which were different, etc. Most were basically the same. |
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| My always well-prepared sister brought us yummy jelly beans that we pulled out to entertain the kids while standing in line. I think we also entertained everyone around us. Kamree was so hungry at one point that I offered her the only thing I had, some of these left over jelly beans. (she had missed the initial round) She downed about 5 of them one at a time before realizing they didn't taste so good. She thought the 5th one tasted like cheese and wanted to spit it out. It was supposed to taste like a booger, but I didn't think that was necessary information. |
Half of us got to try and enjoy the light show behind super tall people with kids on their shoulders while the others got locked outside the front gates unbeknownst to us. |
| It took us over an hour to round-up every last one of us. It was a late night with early flights the next morning. We flew home to Madrid for school and work while my sister and her family flew to Ireland for a few days. |
School Track Meet
The boys and Kaiya had a school track meet on the last day of my sister's visit. Mason and Morgan wanted to participate and since it was just a few blocks from our house we all got to go and watch. We missed Mason's heat, but we found him here later, chilling with his friends.
We got there in plenty of time to find (thanks to his standout hair) and watch Morgan run. Payden is on the right waiting to cheer on Morgan during his race.
These two great shots of Morgan were taken by my brother-in-law. I'm not sure where all the other kids were at this time but he did come in 6th place out of 150-200 boys his age.
The Week Before Halloween
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| The day before my sister left we found out that the neighborhood that does the annual trick or treating had scheduled it for the following night, a week before Halloween. We scrambled to find decent costumes for everyone. |
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The kids had a great time even though less than 20 houses were participating and it was a sea of people down every street. Can you find Kaiya? We did have to donate 60 pieces of candy per kid to participate.
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