Reason number 2, the food! I am a sandwich lover and when you make those sandwiches on the most delicious baguettes it is a dream come true. Finish the meal with gourmet chocolates or pastries, oh la la. And you can find these treats on every street corner, they are more popular than McDonalds. Note that even McDonalds burgers come on ciabatta bread.
Next, Paris was made for night owls. Sleep late and stay up late. That is something I could quickly get used to (as Justin will attest to). And best of all a siesta is the norm! See, I'm not just obsessed with naps, I'm really Paresian at heart :). This is the French way, even for the kids. The late nights have been a bit rough on our kids who are not on this schedule and it is still very light and very loud when they need to go to bed, but longer term and we would all adjust fast.
Finally, dining al fresco. Many of you know that our family eats most of our meals outside, and for most of the year thanks to Papa and Gigi who got us our heater. The sidewalk cafe's and outdoor seating far outnumber any indoor options here, it's great. Even inside the mall the food court is set up to look like you are dining outside. I'll admit, we've only been here during beautiful summer weather, it is a bit idyllic, but since this is a once in a life time vacation I'll just keep living in my vacation dream world.
There are a few things Paris could use, like Toll House chocolate chip cookies, ice cubes, and washcloths. Perhaps those innovations (can you still call them that?) will be my gift to Paris when I move here in my dreams.
All joking aside, we have been gone long enough to miss home but we could not have hoped for a better vacation. We have had an incredible time in France. It has been a perfect mix of being tourists in Paris, living with (I can almost say like) locals in Brittany, enjoying time with family, doing the classic family vacation at Disney, seeing the most popular sights and some lesser known, and most of all making memories together. Don't get me wrong, this is not a storybook, we had grumpy kids and stressed parents along the way, but it most definitely has a happy ending.
Overall the kids have each amazed me at their ability to adjust to new time zones, new foods, new customs, new sleeping arrangements, and a new language. They have appreciated the historic and beautiful sights (albeit briefly), played alongside many kids that they could only communicate with through gestures and body language, and walked miles!!! They have also dealt with eating whatever I can manage to order and have happily eaten fries with many meals when I thought I was ordering fruit, clearly something is lost in translation. And I can't believe I'm even going to write this but this is real life with little kids so I also want to celebrate that we have had only 1 potty accident so far, yay for small victories (actually for us this is a huge victory)!
But without a doubt the best part of this trip to France has been 2 weeks of our family spending time together with no work, no cooking, no cleaning, no tv, just having fun together. We have even gone days without using any electronic devices, wow!
The kids have had their moments of being annoyed with each other (or us) but no more than normal. I did finally get so sick of them purposely stepping on each others shoes while we were walking and walking and walking that we came up with a code word "apple" (this is not very creative, it is what they were eating when we devised this plan). Whenever we caught them doing it, or something else similar, they got an apple and 3 apples meant sitting out of the next fun activity. Of course that would mean either mommy or daddy sitting out too so I'm especially happy to report that no one got more than 2 apples in a day, I just love it when this stuff works! For a while our code word when the gang was getting too loud was "pickles for president", not sure how we came up with that one but it got some funny looks when I had to use it in public. Amazing how that works so much better than "be quiet", I need to remember that more often, quiet is not our family's strong suit. But I digress...
A few days before we left for this trip Ethan said to me, "mom, I wish you could cook a lot 1 day a week and then just play with us every night before dinner instead of cooking". How sweet and smart and how it made me realize how much the kids need my time. Unfortunately they need to eat too so that makes for a tough balance, but that is what has made this trip so beautiful, it's all time together.
God has blessed our family generously and we have seen this in so many details of this trip, starting with the fact that we are on this trip at all. From parking spaces that appeared when there were sure to be none to Katya sleeping most nights. From Jax finding an entire plane's full of missing strollers (many people wanted to hug him for this find) to our shuttle waiting for us while we searched for the missing stroller. From family coming outside just as we were about to pass the house for the third time to the gas light coming on just as Justin was pulling into the rental car lot (and not before, phew). From safe on-time flights to kind strangers that helped us when our French was not cutting it. From public toilets found to public toilets not needed. Thank you all for your prayers.
Now on to the next leg of our journey (as Cullen refers to it, the other France), one with more stress and uncertainty, fewer playgrounds and no sandwiches (that is one of the things I missed the most on our previous trips to Ukraine, how tragic to go from the best sandwiches to none, I'm bringing extra French cookies home for the person who has a ham and swiss on baguette waiting when the plane arrives in VA). We arrive in Kiev at 1:00 local time on Wednesday praying that our bags arrive with us (we have only a 35 minute layover in Munich).
We are looking forward to returning to Ukraine and sharing it with the kids. And on that note I need to go brush up on my Russian, I have only a basic understanding of it to start with and now 2 weeks of French to confuse me even more, but as the translator for the family (wow that is a scary thought) I'm feeling the pressure, wish me luck! This will be a true test of Rosetta Stone, considering that 4 years of high school and 4 semesters of college Spanish barely got me past Hola. This is a real stretch for me, and possibly a huge testimony to Rosetta Stone and what a lot motivation can do.
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