Disney! (part 1 of 3)

yes, helen went on this ride that went WAY up in the air! she had a great time and i have come to realize that this girl has NO FEAR! ... but i think we all knew that already :)

we spent a lot of our time waiting in line for the rides..... for this being our kids first experience with amusement park-type rides they really didn't seem to mind too much standing in long lines... at first i kept saying to the kids... "don't touch that railing!".... "don't climb on that wall!".... "stop swinging that chain!" .... but after a while - i decided to just let them be..... i was armed with pleanty of purell though!

this first picture of the disney princess castle....slightly different than the one in orlando

jillian sleeping at the hotel.... after our 1st day at disney - we got back to the hotel at midnight after watching the night parade. don't you just LOVE the chubby-baby wrists! she is such a sweet baby and growing up waaaaaaaaay too fast!

with our family of 6 comes a TON of baggage for the luggage cart!

my helpers

it's really late here... almost 1am... but i had to share these pictures of the girls helping me plant some flowers. we are very late in getting the flowers planted this year..... i have some good excuses :)

in the video - i captured the tail-end of jillian laughing..... jillian thought it was funny when helen would dump the dirt in the pot and then bang the shovel on the side of the pot.

9 years!

Today Ross and I celebrate our 9th Wedding Anniversary!

I wish that I had some more pictures to share of our wedding - but all our photos are in storage somewhere in the US...... I did find this picture of us in front of the wedding chapel in Evanston, IL.

It seems hard to believe that it's been 9 years already! I am truly blessed to call Ross my husband. He is a wonderful father to our 4 beautiful children.... always putting me and our family first in everything he does!

Kind of ironic that we backpacked in Europe (England, France, and Germany) for our honeymoon and now we are actually living over here ! I would never have guessed that in a MILLION YEARS!!!

The 9th anniversary is to be celebrated with gifts made of pottery and willow. The flowers associated with the 9th anniversary are poppies and the gemstone is lapis lazuli and tiger eye.

As a family - we are going to go to the town in Holland on Saturday famous for pottery to celebrate our anniversary. On Friday night - 2 of the neighbor girls are going to babysit the 3 oldest children and we'll take the baby with us for dinner!

The Louvre

This famous pyramids were designed by a Chinese architect and this one is an inversion of the pyramid above that serves as an entrace to the museum (see my picture with the kids in a previous post). The Louvre was built in the middle ages and was used as a fortress. It was later modified and used as a palace and finally a museum.

it also has a shopping mall in it complete with the most luxurious bathroom i think i have ever seen in my life!

lunch in the food court of the Louvre shopping area!

yep - this is the luxurious bathroom i referred to above!!! this is actually a picture of the toilet paper that is for sale (5 Euros per roll!) displayed on the wall of the bathroom. this luxury does come at a price though..... 1 Euro per person to use this bathroom.... there was a very strict bathroom attendent there collecting money and directing you to the proper area. there was techno music playing in the background and the smell of cheap perfume was in the air. the smell was actually almost worse than a port-a-potty - i think. after each person used the bathroom - the stall was cleaned very carefully. Helen, Jillian and I got to use a special bathroom for toddlers and babies. There was even a little cushioned toddler seat carefully displayed for Helen to use. Although I didn't change Jillian's diaper - there was a very luxurious changing table available for use.... it was more fancy that my changing table at home :)

Ross - had the camera with him and snapped this picture of the men's room.....

the tour bus! speaking of smells - i promise not to get too graphic on this one... but life is about the adventure right?..... i want to look back on my blog and remember every detail about each excursion we take...so i have to tell you that while we were on this tour bus we were "fortunate" enough .... or maybe "unlucky enough" is a better description - to sit right in front of a little boy who appeared to have the stomach flu! ugh! at first, i just thought he may be "bus sick".... kind of like car sick :)..... nope - after lunch the same thing happened :) not the sounds and smells you want to think about .... but i have to admit that i have been there before ... with the sick child .... and it's no fun..... let's just hope we didn't bring the flu home as a souviner :)

My peeps on the Eiffel Tower

Jillian checks out the Eiffel Tower from my sling!

The Boys pause for a picture on the steps of the Eiffel Tower.

Can you find the shape hidden in the picture? ..........hint....it's below the circle in the second rectangle...... found it yet? it's a heart shape in the grass (the grass is brown and outlines the shape of a heart).... after all - Paris is the city of LOVE :) ..... Ross pointed out this shape in the grass... took me a bit to see it. How long do you think it too Jayden to find this shape?.... I'll let you ask him!

Daddy and Helen give the Eiffel Tower - 2 thumbs up!

The kids looking up towards the top of the tower! Jillian is just trying to figure out what is going on :)

my paris

tons of vendors set up little "blankets" all around the base of the Eiffel Tower selling trinkets of many types... this "trinket" happened to be a train that said "WELCOME".... guess they were targeting those Crazy Americans!

This is the elevator that we rode to the second tier of the Eiffel Tower. You could not PAY me to go to the highest tier of the Eiffel Tower!!! Those that know me well know that I am terrified of heights.... I love to snow ski and the first few times up a ski lift are a nightmare for me (just ask Ross).... going down the slope - i take my time so the heights are not too bad. Well, this elevator acended at an angle first and then paused for a bit and started acending straight up. The elevator was pretty much glass all around. On the side of the elevator that I was on - I could see the pulley cord through the window... that is WHEN I had my eyes open. I started out carrying Jillian and at one point had to hand her to Ross - I was terrified! Funny thing - the kids were not even scared! The same thing happened to me on the way down.... we took the stairs. I was hanging on to the railing while the boys and Helen were running down the steps. At one point - I could feel my legs cramping up and I had chill bumps on my arms - I could not let go of the railing!! Thankfully once I got out of the elevator there were enough railings and fences at the top that I felt much better walking around!

Beware of Pickpockets!

I couldn't get close enough to this sign for a decent picture - but I still thought it was neat. The kids got some Kit Kat candy bars at the store today and later this week we are going to try to build our own Eiffel Tower model. (It took us about 10 minutes in the candy aisle at the grocery store to decide on the "perfect" candy to make the Eiffel Tower... Jayden suggested Kit Kat because the "sticks" looked like the metal on the tower!) I am going to have them do some "research" on the height and uses for the tower before they prepare their final project. (look for an update later this week!)

These "little guys" were for sale near the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. They are actaully just balloons filled with sand.... some googly eyes glued on and a tuft of yarn for hair. I didn't stop long enough to find out how much they actually cost!

as we walked around the area of the Eiffel Tower .... I captured what I thought were a few interesting views... these are probably not the "views" that you were expecting... you were probably expecting 10 different views of the metal tower standing tall above the city of paris :)

now here's your technical "lesson" on the Eiffel Tower (straight from the tour guide book that we bought!) - the Eiffel Tower was built for the Universal Exhibition in 1889 - the highest tower of it's time (320 meters tall) was meant to be demolished but was saved when it was taken over for miltary use as a watch tower. later and even today it is used for radio and telvision broadcast

we're baaaaaack!

family picture with mickey mouse!

total wait time to get a picture with cinderella = 2 hours..... photo of my princess with a princess = priceless!

Ross and I visited the Eiffel Tower on our honeymoon trip 9 years ago this week.... I never would have imagined at that time that I would be standing in front of the Eiffel Tower again..... with 4 beautiful children. We are truly blessed!

A quick shot at the top of the Louvre.... we took a bus tour of Paris on Sunday. We stopped at the Louvre with the tour bus for a quick lunch - 1 hour to be exact. Not much time for a family of 6 to use the bathroom and get lunch before getting back on the bus. Even though Ross and I actually spent time at the museum 9 years ago - I wanted the kids to see the glass at the top! We literally had about a minute to snap this picture and run back down to the basement to catch the bus! (well, it actually ended up being more than a minute... apparently the driver and the tour guide had a miscommunication on the time that we were supposed to be back at the bus... 30 minutes later the driver showed up to unlock the bus..... guess we could have taken our time upstairs for our photo.... i did hear lots of giggles from the kids as we ran up the stairs to snap the quick picture and back down the steps to rush to the bus! i think the picture turned out pretty good for only taking 1 shot and lining up the shot in about 10 seconds!!)

With every great vacation comes a big stack of laundry! (this picture does not include the load of laundry already in the washer). It was a great trip...... I learned some new things about Paris and saw some sites that we missed 9 years ago. I promise lots more pictures of our adventures at Disney and in Paris later this week! i downloaded 270 pictures off the camera tonight! i am not joking - i took 270 pictures.... that's crazy!