Por Fin! (don't know how to say "finally" in French)

I need to finish up blogging this trip so I can blog about my kids; like how Victoria took notes during General Conference and how Karissa was so brave in getting her first cavity filled...

Monday morning we went on a hike in the Jura Mountains. It was gorgeous and made us miss the mountains.

After our hike we ate at a family-owned Italian restaurant that had all homemade fresh pasta- yum! And we visited with Eliane, my mom's good French friend. That was a highlight of my trip to visit with her in her home and get a better taste for the culture there. We drank carbonated water flavored with syrup, a common drink in France.

That evening we went to Family Home Evening at the Institute with the Spanish speakers. I felt really good about my Spanish after hearing all the French that I don't understand. Jason made a good contribution to the lesson.

Before leaving for Paris on Tuesday, we went to Nyon to see some Roman ruins.
I had to take a picture of the Sycamore trees that are trimmed so uniquely everywhere there.
We were sad to leave my mom and Jim, but excited see Paris. Luckily, we had been forewarned just the day before by a missionary from Paris how dangerous it is there with all the pick-pockets. After checking into our hotel, we took a bus and then the metro to see Sac le' Couer, a huge cathedral that overlooks Paris. As we got closer, we could see that we were in a dangerous part of town and felt the reality of the dangers we had heard. The metro started getting super crowded with the kind of crowd we wouldn't want to hang out with. It made NYC feel very safe!! Then, all those people got off with us and made the trek up to the cathedral! Check out this amazing-looking cathedral

and all the people in front. You'd think they were going to watch fireworks, or something. No, they were all just sitting there, drinking and smoking who-knows-what. Then some guy started to dance with a ball and climbed up the light post showing off his tricks. He had to include some nasty moves as well. The view of the city was cool (our pics of that were fuzzy for some reason).

The funniest thing was we thought we were supposed to be looking directly at the Eiffel tower, but we couldn't see it anywhere. And really, the Eiffel Tower is huge, how could we miss it? Well, we did, until it got dark and it was lit up. It was slightly to the right, and from where we were, amongst all the people, it was covered by some trees and buildings close-by. When we finally got to a good picture place, everyone was already taking up the good places and I had to squeeze my camera through to get this shot of when the lights started to twinkle, which they do every so often. Again, the picture is fuzzy, but you can see that they are twinkling.


Needless to say, our opinion of Paris by this point was not very high.

It redeemed itself the next day, though. We must have been in a really bad part of town. The rest of the sights were pretty much what we expected.

The Eiffel Tower is huge, obviously!
There was a sister missionary from Paris, who served with my mom and Jim, and she was kind enough to give us a tour of Paris, which we needed to get through it in a day with a baby and not speaking French! Marie brought her friend Serial and we enjoyed their company.
Arc de Triomphe. (It was very sunny that day, lucky for us!)
This is the Royal Palace, where the Louvre is housed, though none of our pictures could capture just how gigantic this place is. It is 850 meters long, like 9 football fields, each wing! There are two wings and they're connected in the middle, making an "H".

Here is the famous triangle where you enter one of the world's largest museum (652,000 square feet of exhibition space). We didn't go in, due to lack of time, but I saw the Mona Lisa in a bathroom nearby, so, I'm good!

This is what Erik thought of all this.

Here is Notre Dame.
Check out all this detail!
Pictures just can't do the stained glass justice!
We parted with Marie and Serial after seeing the Luxembourg Palace. Jason, Erik, and I then went on a Seine River tour and got to see all the sights from the river and enjoy hearing more history and background on the buildings, bridges, and monuments we passed by.

We finished up just in time to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle again and then give off it's usual glow.

It was a whirlwind of a trip and we were exhausted when we got back to the hotel, and still the next day on our flight back to the states. Actually, yesterday was the first day in two weeks that I didn't have frequent moments in the day of exhaustion!

Thanks to my mom and Jim for flying us out and showing us around and my dad and Mary Lou for watching our kids while we were gone. I've got great parents, all four of them! We're glad to be back with our kids now. They all seem to be a little more independent!