Family

At the start of August, my Mom's extended family gathered at Pacific City

for a rip-roarin' Finn-style extended weekend.

These are my favorite photos from that weekend.

My favorite Baby Girl:

The Stuff Sundays are made of....

Well, that, and lots of coffee, pajamas, holding the couch down and snuggling.

The Church of Baseball

Last week, Nathan introduced the boys to the Church of Baseball by

drawing and creating scenarios with the diagram he made.

It was about the cutest thing I've seen

and I have a feeling I'm going to be a member of the congregation for a long, long time.

Trying to find our way

We are back, well, we've been back a while, and trying to find our way to life back at home.

I miss Europe for so many reasons, but mostly miss the quality time we had together while living in Holland. We'll keep digging and figure this out eventually.

Sunday in Paris

Sunday morning we checked out of our 10x10 box with a toilette,

filled the kids with their American Pancakes soaked in Aunt Jemima

from Breakfast in America down the street and walked the streets of Paris for the last time.

The streets were quiet, church bells rang and beautifully dressed moms

held and rocked beautifully dressed babies in front of the churches as they listened to the French sermons from the open church doors.

It felt like another world. Oh wait.

Speaking of beautiful babies....

We stocked up on Herbs de Provence and Vanilla Sugars here:

Which I later accidently dropped in The Metro station and broke the beautiful ceramic

holders, which Nate then "fixed" with a bandaid. No, with a real BANDAID - which held long enough until we got home and I could pour the contents into ziplock bags.

They don't taste or smell the same.

But I'll always have the photo, I guess.

We wound around the small cobble-stoned streets

And then hit the tourist jackpot of shopping.

We found streets filled with people and cafes and bakeries

and Paris trinket stores - where you could buy everything Paris - scarves,

shot glasses, eye glasses, ash trays, key chains, and the same damn Eiffel Tower snow globe for 3 Euros that we just bought at the Eiffel Tower for 10 Euros.

This actually ended up being a blessing. Before we went to Paris, we read that one of the "must buys" was an Eiffel Tower Snow Globe from the Eiffel Tower gift shop.

Henry was fixated on this for weeks leading up to our trip and did not stop asking for it every 10 seconds until we finally bought him one at the Eiffel Tower.

He was so happy to finally be the owner of this snow globe. So happy, in fact, he insisted on carrying it everywhere that day. We warned him of the fragile nature of the gift and told him that if it broke, we would not be able to replace it.

The snow globe lived a very short 19 hours.

But it didn't break out of Henry's carelessness. He was actually wrapping it up in a blanket, but when he went to remove it from the blanket, it rolled off of the slanted "bed" in our 10x10 matchbox and shattered on the floor.

When we saw the exact same bargain snow globe for 7 Euros LESS, we stocked up on them.

This rotisserie was right on the street and they had just

put the pig on the stick to roast.

This was somewhat concerning to the kids, but they easily moved

on when they saw the shiny Eiffel Tower key chains next door.

SHINY....

I thought this cafe and its chalkboard menu was a good

photo backdrop, until the boys leaned on the menu which was only wedged

in a gourd for stability. We cleaned up our mess, like we always do, gave our sappy apologetic

eyes and moved our clown car along to the next vendor.

Mmmmmmm.....

For our final hoorah, we took the boys to the Museum of Natural History.

Or as Henry called it, The Bonzy Bones Bones Museum.

It actually was a very accurate description.

There is a certain distinct smell that comes along with this museum.

Fossils so old, I couldn't even do the math and all within a 2 year olds reach.

What were they thinking....

Nate had a "Here are the Rules" talk with the boys once we saw

how accessible these bones and fossils were.

A vision of Charlie touching ONE bone and seeing the entire room

collapse like dominos flashed through my head the second I entered this room

filled with dusty death.

Henry & Charlie, however, would probably have chosen this over

Disneyland. They loved this place.

A wooley mammoth.

Or Elephant, as Charlie insisted.

Our final meal in Paris just happened to be the best one we had all weekend.

We wanted to have a French Food experience (this was our guilt talking for having ate 2 meals at the American restaurant while in PARIS) and French Food Experience we had.

Salmon, Tagliatelle and the best bread I've ever tasted.

Its true that anything probably would have been amazing with all of the dinosaur dust that caked our tongues, but it really was good.

No plastic cups and straws for these practically French boys....No sir re....they drank out of stemmed glasses as I frantically tried to assist them with each sip.

I'm proud to say we walked away leaving the same number of glasses as were there when we sat down. That is unusual.

Back on The Metro to Paris Nord for a 3.5 hour train ride back to our

life in Amsterdam. It was an amazing weekend, one I hope to experience again, but maybe

next time, without strollers.

Thank you, France. You are beautiful.