MERRY CHRISTMAS 2011!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone! If we didn't have your address, you didn't get a Christmas Card, but we wanted to include everyone else, so we thought we'd post it here. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Season’s Greetings from the Tuutaus!

This has been an exciting year of changes and adventures for us and our little family. In June we said goodbye to the beach and moved from Santa Barbara to Salt Lake City. We put our stuff into storage, and after Daniel spent 2 ½ weeks in France, Brandy and the boys flew out to meet him and spent another 3 ½ weeks travelling all over Western Europe. We put over 4,400 miles on our rental car, and passed through 9 different countries! Literally the trip of a lifetime –especially taking 2 kids under 3yrs! We’re now in Salt Lake playing the waiting game while we try to buy house… yup, with the housing market being so low, even we can afford it. So, here’s a little what’s been going on with each of us:

Daniel graduated with a Master’s of Music degree in Vocal Performance in June. At the graduation he sang the national anthem with one of his classmates, and he was the first name to be called. He started at the University of Utah in August, working on a Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA… it’s like a PhD but more performance based than research based) in Vocal Performance. He’s loving the program, and being very successful. He has an assistantship as a member of the Graduate Vocal Quartet—a brand new ensemble created to do outreach and recruitment. He’s singing all over the place and loving it.

Brandy has had her hands full with two growing boys. She finished up her term as the Tenant’s Association President of Family Student Housing at UCSB. Her newest endeavor has been cake decorating. She started taking classes in Santa Barbara, and since moving to Utah she’s already done wedding cakes for two different friends! She has also made some awesome looking birthday cakes for different members of the family throughout the year.

John is a little ball of energy who’s always on the go. He has been having speech therapy since he turned two, and since his 3^rd birthday in October, he started going to pre-school twice a week for a couple hours. The big school bus comes and picks him up every Monday and Wednesday (even though the school is only a mile and half away). He’s starting to speak a bit more now, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

Joshua celebrated his 1^st birthday in Paris on August 1^st. He decided to take a bit longer than his brother did to start walking, finally taking his first steps in October. But he almost has a full mouth of teeth at the age his brother got his first. He is finally starting to grow some hair (maybe next year we’ll be able to put him in a Halloween costume that doesn’t require a bald head), and he is always curious and adventurous!

So we hope your year has been as fun and exciting as ours has, and we hope that next year will be even better. Keep tabs on us by checking out our blog…

A Short Update

I'm still alive everyone! I realize it was Oct 3 the last time I wrote anything on here and now it's Dec 2....fail! I thought I would just update everyone on how we are doing here...

Once we got back from Europe we moved in with Daniel's dad and stepmom. They were so sweet to give up their room to let us stay. We were only planning on being there for a month or so and they were still in Tonga so we had no problem taking their room and staying there. Joshua had his first birthday (which was a lot of fun and I made a cute cake), then Daniel started school (which he LOVES and he's doing great in his program) and before we knew it a month went by and we were still there. Daniel's parents came home from Tonga and they moved into the small bedroom to let us stay where we were and we before we knew it another month had gone by. The problem was we needed to have all sorts of paperwork and signatures for us to apply for a loan to get a house. Here in Utah housing is relatively inexpensive (the housing market is seriously messed up!) so when considering what to do about housing we determined that it would be a better fit for us to buy a house instead of renting. It took what seemed like FOREVER to get all of the paperwork together to get pre-approved and we finally got that in the middle of October. We immediately started researching houses and found a handful that we liked. Since the middle of October it seems like every time we have our eye on something and try to make an offer we either get outbid or we're like a day or two too late to try. It's been a very VERY frustrating process and again on Wed we found out they accepted the other offer on a house that I REALLY wanted because they had cash and we had an FHA Loan. I was pretty bummed out because I really liked this one and we had been waiting to find out their decision for over a month. So now we're back to square one. Our realtor is a really nice guy and he has been so incredibly helpful to us not just to help us find a place but to let us know every time we don't get something that everything will be ok and that the right home IS out there for us and to keep trying. I'm getting more and more frustrated but I think the Lord might just be teaching me patience....maybe...or some other important attribute that I'm severely lacking. I've been trying to keep my spirits up but each day it's getting harder and harder. If anyone has ever had to live with family you will know a little of what I'm going through. Currently there are 6 people (on the occasion up to 8 people) living in this house with 1 bathroom. Nothing is mine and all of the stuff that I do have here is piled on top of my father and mother-in-laws stuff. We are STILL living out of suitcases and pretty much my entire life is STILL in a storage unit. All day long I am trying to keep my kids out of stuff that isn't theirs and trying to clean up their messes so they don't get too annoyed with us. We have already had to deal with a major plumbing problem, rat and mice issues, cockroaches, spiders, broken washer and dryer, and then last night because of a severe wind storm our power went out for 16 hours. I'm cold. I'm tired. And I'm totally just venting. I really want to blog more and record things but every time I take out my computer the kids get to it. Currently my "N" button is not working so I've had to plug in an extra keyboard in just to type properly. Also, I know I haven't finished putting up pictures and my story about Europe (which I really want to finish so I don't forget anything) but I've hit a snag. My account is almost full and I don't have anymore room for pictures. Has anyone else come across this problem? How did you fix it? I know some people have started new blogs but I don't even know how to do that.

Sorry everyone, I know this isn't the happiest of posts but I mainly just wanted to say I'm still alive, life is hard but I know there is a reason for it. It's hard to see the silver lining right now but I'm sure something great will happen soon....right?!

Other cool things that have happened recently:
-Johnny's 3rd birthday (I made a cute Toy Story cake for it)
-Johnny started pre-school
-Joshua started walking
-Daniel had his first performance at the University and it was amazing. He also auditioned for the two major productions at the U (that will be performing in April) and amazingly he got major roles in both!
-I made my very first wedding cake for my mom's friend. It turned out alright and I learned a lot from it. I'm going to be doing another wedding cake in December for one of my friends.
-I was called to be a Beehive Advisor in our Wards Young Women and Daniel was called as a Primary teacher.

Europe Trip: Florence

Florence was gorgeous. It was only about a 45 min drive from Pisa so we managed to arrive at our campsite BEFORE it got dark...which was a first! The drive through the Tuscan countryside was spectacular and I didn't even bother trying to take pictures of it because I knew the pictures couldn't capture the beauty I saw, plus it's hard to take nice pictures from a car window. We arrived around dinner time and decided to eat at the little restaurant in the campground. We ordered a pizza with pineapple and spaghetti. It took a while to get the food so we ordered it to go that way we could set up our tent before it got too dark. We didn't have a table or chairs so I pulled one of the suitcases out and set up our dinner on the ground. A family saw us from their camper and brought over a card table and a few chairs for us to use. It was so nice of them to let us borrow it. We set up the tent, ate, then got the kids ready for bed. The kids fell asleep and we figured out what we wanted to do in Florence the next day. We laid down to go to sleep and all of the sudden we heard music coming from somewhere. We realized after a while it wasn't coming from the campsite it was coming from one of the Chateau's on the next hill over. Whoever it was was throwing a party and had a live band who played ABBA songs the whole time. It was GREAT!! I got to hear the whole concert from inside my cozy tent for free :)

The next day we packed up, filled up our tank, and headed into the city. Daniel had been to Florence before (singing) so he knew a lot more about the city than I did so I let him pick where we should go. The only thing I really had on my "list" was to see the Statue of David and that was about it. It took a little while for us to find a parking place but it gave us a chance to drive around the city a little. Once we parked we started walking and made our way over to The Duomo which for those of you who don't know what that is it is the Cathedral in Florence. It has a big dome on top and is really famous. Another famous thing to see (right next to the Cathedral) is the Gates of Paradise at the Florence Baptistery. They are they really big bronze doors that have panels depicting stories or instances from the life of John the Baptist. They were really cool to look at but there were so many people there that day that we didn't really get to see it all that well.

We walked over to the the backside of the Galleria dell' Accademia where the Statue of David is. The line to get in was literally around 2 sides of the building going on to the 3rd....it was REALLY long. Daniel decided to go find out how to get tickets and I got in the back of the line. I fed the kids while we waited and barely made it 10 feet after about 20-25 min of waiting when Daniel finally came back and said there was a 3 hour wait and you're not even allowed to take pictures when you get inside. Thumbs down! There was no way I was going to wait in line for 3 hours just to glance at something I can't even take a picture with so we decided to go find lunch instead. Little did I know that not too far from where I was standing was the Palazzo Vecchio that just happens to have a replica of the Statue of David at its entrance. BAH! There were just so many people all over the place and it was really hot that day that I lost all interest to walk around and site see. I wish I would have known but that's ok. It gives me an excuse to want to go back to Florence some day. We found this really cute little food place that barely had enough room to order food and leave again but I got to eat my first lasagna in Italy. I really liked it but it tasted so different than what I am use to eating. Authentic Italian food tastes really different than Americanized Italian food....I still love Olive Garden though!! Down the same street that we found our lunch we found a "99 cent shop". It was so cool finding an actual 99 cent shop there. Not everything was 99 cents but stuff there was pretty cheap. Daniel bought some sunglasses and these weird stretchy squishy toys for the boys. We walked back the way we came from and found a cool little shop that sold ties. I found one that had pictures of Euro's on it and made Daniel buy it (I thought it was a cool lookin' tie!) We made our way back to the car (thank goodness we had underground parking so our car was cool because it was a really hot day) and realized we still needed to find the Hard Rock Cafe. We put in the address into our GPS and started driving. As it instructed us to go this way and that way through the streets of Florence it started taking us into areas of the city where the streets are blocked off for pedestrian use only (some of the streets were way too narrow for a car to enter). We tried for what seemed like a long time to try and navigate our way through the streets to try and find the Cafe without success. We finally pulled over and found a parking place not far from the underground parking we had just left and Daniel decided to find it on foot. Luckily we parked in front of a Gelato shop and I managed to use the little Italian I know (mostly pointing to the flavors I wanted then saying "Grazie!") to order a delicious chocolate and mint Gelato while we waited for Daniel to get back. It took him an hour to find the Hard Rock Cafe, buy a pin, then find our car again. The annoying thing was we were just a few blocks away from it when we were walking around the Duomo but we didn't know where it was. It had only opened a month before so it was pretty new to the area.

Before we left Florence we drove up to the Piazzale Michelangelo which is a famous square up on a hill that gives a panoramic view of Florence. It was beautiful up there and the perfect ending to a great day in Firenze!!

Utah vs. BYU

We interrupt our journey through Europe to bring you our victory dance...

UofU- 54
BYU- 10

Daniel and I watched the Utah/BYU football game tonight and I have to say I quite enjoyed myself. I have been having mixed emotions about this game all week because as some of you know I grew up in Orem, UT which is about a 10 minute drive from the BYU campus. I grew up cheering on the cougars, singing the songs, and proudly wearing blue and white all football season. I even dated a BYU student once and attended my fair share of games and performances there. Once Daniel was accepted at the University of Utah I knew this day would come when I would have to choose between the ultimate rivalry (...in Utah anyway).... RED or BLUE. Was I to abandon all that I had grown up loving and cheering? Or was I to abandon the school that has so graciously taken in my husband and is paying him to do what he loves...sing....? I decided before the game started to secretly cheer on both teams but once the game started that all changed. Within the 1st 2 min of the game BYU turned over the ball and Utah scored a touchdown...HA!... Daniel was so excited and there was a great energy in our home. We watched as BYU made mistake after mistake and Utah just kept running with it. I really don't think Utah really played great tonight but BYU was playing terribly so it all worked out. Utah ended up winning by 44 points. When the 4th quarter started many of the BYU fans left the stadium. It was 30-10 at that point and by the end the stadium looked like a ghost town and the Utah fans were going crazy.

I'm glad Utah won (mainly because it made my husband happy) and also because we had fun coming up with these....

Europe Trip: Pisa

We arrived in Pisa at about midnight after driving most of the day. My first impression: Too many prostitutes! I'm not kidding you there was a prostitute on just about every street corner. We even saw one getting in a car with a couple of guys. I couldn't believe how many prostitutes we saw from our short drive from getting off the freeway until we arrived at the campsite. Pretty crazy.

When we arrived they showed us a place to camp and we set up our tent and air mattress as quietly as we could (this time they let us park our car right next to our tent so it made things easier). I laid out the big blanket because I was afraid of getting cold like I did the night before but the weather was really nice and by the time the sun came up it was HOT inside the tent. One stupid thing that we did when we were still in Paris was we decided to do a load of laundry (since we had a washer in the flat) and we were planning on taking it to a laundromat somewhere on the way to have it dried. We honestly didn't see anything from the time we left Paris until we hit Pisa. So by that morning our clothes smelled SO bad and we ended up having to rewash everything. Doing laundry in Europe is SUPER expensive so instead we brought with us a laundry bar and some washer/dryer sheets (all in one!) from America and we washed our clothes by hand in the laundry facilities at the campsite then paid the extra money to have them dried properly (so we wouldn't run into anything like that again).

Another thing that happened while we were there was Daniel and I were taking down the tent and getting everything in the car while John and Josh played in the grass. In these campsites they have bungalows or small cabins for people to rent. In one of the bungalows next to where we were set up there was a little wiener dog on a leash sitting by the front door. While Daniel and I were distracted with the tent John noticed the dog and went over to pet it. The dog freaked out and bit John right in the leg. John came screaming as the dog barked after him but neither of us realized that the dog actually bit him. We just thought the dog scared him or something. The owner of the dog apologized and took the dog inside. About 20 min later after John calmed down a little Daniel noticed his leg swelling up and tiny little teeth marks. My protective motherly instinct was to kill the stupid dog for biting my son but the people had already left....stupid dog. (I know it's kind of John's fault for approaching a random dog and probably scaring it but still...it irritated me)

The best part about this campsite was the enormous pool we got to play in. They required you wear a hair cap thing in order to get in the pool so we spent a few Euro and bought a red one and a yellow one. Since Joshua is still a little baldy guy he was exempt! John was a little nervous about the slide in the beginning but as long as we held his hand while he went down he loved it and went over and over. When we were finally done and ready to go he didn't want to leave at all. We ate lunch at the restaurant by the pool (I had pasta and Daniel had a burger) then we got ready to leave to see the tower.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa was literally a 5 min walk from the campsite but we had to check out by 2 so we spent the morning doing laundry, playing in the pool, and having lunch then we drove over and found parking. We actually found a pretty good parking place not far at all from the Tower in a little alley way. They had dozens of tourist shops where I found my keychain (I collect keychains so I needed to get one from each place we went), a spoon for my Grandma, and we also bought a cool picture frame and a leaning mug for us make oatmeal in (I ended up forgetting it at my uncles house in Scotland). The tower was cool and it was great to get a cheesy picture trying to "hold up" the tower. It was so much fun watching all the tourists doing it. We felt silly at first but then realized that everyone looked silly so we fit in normally!


Daniel went to find a bathroom at one point (which was clear on the other side of the building so it took a while for him to get back) so the kids and I decided to try a real Italian Gelato. We ordered a chocolate and mint flavored gelato and it was delicious. I was tempted to order another one just for me because the kids liked it so much they wouldn't give it back once I gave them a taste. Joshua loves ice cream so he adored the gelato and cried his eyes out when I made him give it to John to have a turn. John was such a cute big brother and kept leaning over and giving Joshua a taste.

Pisa is only about 45 min to an hour away from Florence, Italy so we decided to leave after a little while of walking around the square so we could set up camp in Florence before the sun went down.

Europe Trip: Switzerland

We left Paris and headed south towards Italy. The countryside was beautiful. We spent most of the day driving only stopping for gas and a few potty breaks. (Note: Before we left we went to Carrefour and bought camping gear...a pop-up tent, air mattress, blankets, pillows, and a few other small things we could use.) By the end of the day we found ourselves in Switzerland and decided to find a campsite for the night. Our GPS found us a campground but by the time we got there the office was dark and no one was around. We got out anyway to stretch our legs and try to decided what to do next (sleep in the car or try to find somewhere else). While we were letting John run around a guy rode up on his bike and told us he was the campground manager and he would show us to an area we could put up a tent. We carried our stuff from the car and set up camp. The weather felt pretty nice outside so we didn't think to bring the big blanket we bought just the smaller blanket. It rained ALL NIGHT LONG!!! I woke up a few times freezing but I didn't want to walk all the way to the car to get the big blanket so we all just cuddled into each other and waited it out. It was still raining when we woke up so we packed up the best we could and decided to drive into the city to say we've been there!

We stopped off in what seemed to be the center of the city (according to our GPS) and found this really cool park with HUGE chess sets on the ground for people to play. They were so amazing. There was a small group of people watching these 2 old dudes playing a game of chess with each other and they kept yelling at other every time they thought the other one was about to make a wrong move. It was hilarious watching these 2 old men going at it playing a huge game of chess.


It started to rain again so we decided to go and kept driving through the Swiss Alps down to Italy. We hit major traffic going through some of the passes so it took us most of the day to drive from Geneva to Pisa, Italy. It was really cold in Switzerland but absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. I kept trying to take pictures but my small little point-n-shoot had no chance to capture the beauty of the Alps!

P.S- We stopped off at a rest stop when we were entering Italy and the bathrooms had squatter toilets!! I was SO excited. Took me back to the good ol' days in Indonesia.

....I'm weird I know!!

Europe Trip: Last day in Paris

Before getting to Paris I came up with a list of important things I wanted to do while I was there: 1-Get an Eiffel Tower keychain, 2-listen to Quasimodo ring the bells of Notre Dame, and 3-See if Mona Lisa really does smile. Since this was our last day in Paris and the only one we had done so far was #2 (I vaguely remember hearing bells while I was locked in a bathroom!) so we decided today was the day to hit up the Louvre and Eiffel Tower...again, but for real this time!
We took the Metro down to the bottom entrance of the Louvre. You seriously cannot imagine how big this place is until you have been there and seen it for yourself. It's HUGE! We heard rumor that entering from the gift shop entrance is less crowded and easier to get in so we made our way to the gift shop next to the Inverted Pyramid. The line to get into the entrance was about 200 people (this was just to get into the entrance not the actual museum itself). We were expecting long lines but I didn't realize how long. We cued up at the end of the line and one of the workers spotted us and came over. She asked us how old John was and we said 2 then she said "Come with me" and ushered us to the front of the line and through the security check point no questions asked! It was so great :) Some people thought we were crazy for bringing our kids on this trip with us but they came in very useful at times!

We waited again in a smaller line to get tickets to enter the museum then checked out the map to find the famous points of interest. Since I only really knew about the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo we headed towards that. We did see a lot of cool stuff at the museum but I was not interested in wading through the sea of tourists to try and look at art work I hardly know anything about...especially with a double stroller.
We left to get some lunch and stopped off at to take pictures at the Inverted Pyramid before leaving.We then made our way to the Eiffel Tower and stood in line to go up to the top. There are 3 or 4 elevator entrances to go up to the first level then I think 2 elevators to go up from the 1st stop all the way to the very top. The lines were really long for everything but we decided to wait anyway because how many times in your life can you say you've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower? At least for us not many!
We waited about 45min outside to get on the first Elevator then another 45 min on the 1st level to get to the elevators that take you to the top. It seemed like A LOT longer when we were actually waiting but it did have it's good points. While we were in line Joshua started flirting with a group of girls in front of us and they and a bunch of tourists around us started taking pictures of him. It was so strange but really funny. He was hamming it up and everyone thought he was so cute.

Going up the elevators was really cool but kind of scary. At the top, Joshua only cared about playing with the bolts on a sign and John just wanted to push the buttons on the telescope things. They had signs all around stating how far away you were from different countries and we took a picture next to the Tonga sign. Turns out we were 16,918 km from Tonga.

We went back and started getting all of our stuff packed up so we could leave in the morning. It's much harder to pack than to unpack.

Europe Trip: 4th Day in Paris

This was my favorite day in Paris...and most exhausting. We woke up late making us a little bit late for church but at least we made it to sacrament meeting which happened to be the last hour. It was much too early for John and Daniel and they fell asleep for most of it. Joshua on the other hand was throwing fits and only wanted to be outside.

The church had a really interesting design. You can see in the picture above the building is kind of in a square and the cars are all parked in the middle. You also had to walk down a little alley way to get inside. It was pretty cool, and it was only a few blocks down from the Notre Dame Cathedral. While we were there I got to say hi to someone who was on the same Delta flight as me. He and his wife and little 5month baby girl were here for a business trip. We waited for our luggage and started talking and mentioned "I'll see you at church on Sunday then!" but didn't actually think we would see each other again. It was kind of cool to see them and show Daniel who I was talking about when I told him about a nice couple helping me get my luggage off the belt.

When church was over we met up with one of Daniel's French friends just outside the church entrance and we walked over to the Pompidou Center in between the church and the Cathedral. Daniel's friend Pier sings with the Notre Dame Choir and became friends with Daniel during the tour. One of the days while Daniel was having lunch with Pier and some other friends from the choir they were talking about food and Pier mentioned how much he liked Peanut Butter but it was so hard to get in France. Daniel e-mailed me the next day and asked me to bring a jar of peanut butter in my bag. While hanging out at the Pompidou Center we gave Pier the peanut butter and he just started to laugh. He thought it was so nice of us to go out of our way to bring him something like that. He's a really nice guy.
We made our way over to the Cathedral and took a few pictures outside. Pier told us that he could get us in the employee entrance (since he was an employee of the choir) but we couldn't take our stroller. There were about 400 people waiting in line to get into the Cathedral and this was our last day to see it so since Daniel had been inside plenty of times rehearsing then performing during the tour he decided to wait outside with the boys while I went inside with Pier. He took me to the side entrance and punched in a code to get us in the big gate. He told me to look like I was suppose to be there. We walked into the side entrance and started making our way towards the inside of the Cathedral when a lady stopped us. She was speaking rapid French with Pier while I stood there quiet but confident that oh of course I was suppose to be there! Pier gestured to me a lot while talking to the lady and all of the sudden she motioned with her hands to follow her. I had no idea what was going on but I played along. She led us into a bathroom and locked the door behind us. Confused I turned to look at Pier and he said, "Oh I had to tell her that you had to go to the bathroom or she wouldn't have let us in. Do you need to use the bathroom?" "No" I said. "Well I do!" and Pier went into the stall to use the bathroom while I sat there with a red face waiting for the lady to come back. When she came back to let us out she started leading us back to where we came from but Pier told her that we could find our own way out and she said goodbye and walked off in a different direction. Pier detoured me off into the main part of the Cathedral and let me look around a little bit.

...How many of you can say you were locked in a bathroom with a French guy at the Notre Dame Cathedral?!!



After we said goodbye to Pier we started to walk back to the Pompidou Center to find somewhere to eat. We sat down to eat our sandwiches and noticed some really weird looking people dressed up in Alien costumes. Then we noticed a camera crew filming what looked like some low-budget French alien movie. They did a whole scene right next to our table the whole time we ate. I'm curious to find out what movie it was so I can see if we are in the background during that scene. What a random thing to happen while eating lunch huh?!


We watched the street performers at the Pompidou Center for a while then we kept walking to find the Hard Rock Cafe in Paris. Daniel's sister Rose and her husband Rod collect glasses and pins from the Hard Rock Cafe's. Since glasses are hard to keep safe while traveling we decided to get her pins from every Hard Rock Cafe we crossed in Europe. Our first stop we found a pin that looked like the Eiffel Tower. On our way to the Hard Rock Cafe we passed some cool looking museum thing that I'm sure is famous but I have no idea what it was called. The picture I took of Joshua was while we waited for Daniel to come out with the pin. He was so happy and smiley! It was still early enough to do something else so we decided to take the metro to the Eiffel Tower again. When we entered the Metro we saw this cool weird statue of a lady with her arms up carved into the wall. Random, but cool! We also saw this REALLY cool HUGE picture of Voldemort advertising the Harry Potter movie. Daniel and I are huge Harry Potter fans and we were holding out to see the last movie until we got to England but it was so much fun to see all of the posters all over the Metro stations advertising it. It got us really hyped up to see it.

We decided to take pictures underneath the Eiffel Tower this time. It was a really cool angle but the kids were not interested in getting their picture taken again. Which was totally fine because I got to take some one on one pictures with the man I love!


We decided to walk down to try and find the Statue of Liberty (I've wanted to see it since watching the movie National Treasure 2!). We started walking down what seemed like the right way to go until we hit a dead end. Annoyed we turned around and realized how incredible the Eiffel Tower looked from that angle. It was so gorgeous with the street lights and grass area that we decided to stop and take a few more pictures. We started walking again and after a while finally made it to the Statue of Liberty. My sister Brittanny was in Las Vegas with her family and she took pictures of her kids at the "Eiffel Tower" and "Statue of Liberty" all in one day. I decided to one-up her on that and we used the panoramic shot on my camera to take a picture with the REAL Eiffel Tower and REAL Statue of Liberty at the same time! Daniel's picture looks a little funny because there were cars driving by when I took it but you get the idea :)

We kept walking from there to try and find a Carrefour to buy some food. Along the way I got to try a Self-Cleaning Automatic Toilet. You go in, pee, wash your hands, then leave and the door shuts behind you and flushes the toilet and cleans the entire thing before letting the next person in. It was a little strange but kind of cool. We walked, and walked, and walked until we finally got to the Carrefour and found out it had already closed. The kids were going crazy being locked up in the stroller so we stopped off at the park next to the Carrefour and let them out. It was getting late and they were about to close the park but at least we had enough time to smell the flowers before we had to go.

I demanded we take the Metro all the way back because my feet were killing me and I was tired and hungry. By the time we got home we were all exhauted but happy with how the day went.

Europe Trip: 3rd day in Paris

Jet-lag= getting better...for Joshua anyway!

We decided to start out our 3rd day in Paris at the "Arc De Triomphe". I honestly didn't know anything about this place until we decided to go. There are no Metro exits next to the Arch so we got off 1 mile before and walked down to it. The moment we came up the stairs the Arch looked like it was right there. We started walking and walking and walking and the Arch stayed exactly the same size. It was so trippy because it was so big and seemed right there in front of us but no matter how far we kept walking it was never within reach. I can't really explain it but it was a weird feeling. This thing is HUGE. If you notice in the background of our family picture you can see how small the people look while they're standing right next to it. They have an underground walkway to get to the arch that was a little hard to go through with a stroller but we ended up making it no problem. We spent a little time walking around it and looking at the incredible art work on the walls then headed down the Champs Elysees.

The street was crowded but really fun to walk down. Their are so many different shops and theaters and cafe's that it was fun to just stroll. We even found a Disney store with a French Mater (Mater with a beret on!) in the window. Daniel took him inside for a little while to look at all of the cars stuff while I stayed outside with a sleeping Joshua. We ate lunch on our stroll down the Champs Elysees then headed towards the Musee De Louvre.

We let John play in the park/gardens just down from the Louvre and there was this really cool fountain that people were sailing small sailboats in. It was pretty neat to walk around and see so many statues and fountains and people everywhere enjoying a stroll. We walked down to the entrance of the Louvre (which took us a while because the Louvre itself is extremely big) and right as we got up to the front they told us it was closed for the day and to come back another day. That was the only thing I wanted to do that day and we didn't even get to do it! Oh well, it was much better going on another day anyway because we were able to spend more time. Plus the kids were getting tired and hungry so we decided to go back to the apartment and watch a movie.

I decided to try and brave going to the Carrefour Grocery store (by myself) to buy some sandwich stuff for dinner. Scariest experience EVER! I felt like I was on my mission again not knowing ANYTHING anyone was saying to me but this time I didn't have a companion there to bail me out if I needed help. Thank goodness the cashier was nice to me (although she was probably thinking 'Stupid American' the whole time without me even knowing it!) and I went home with a few breakfast lunch and dinner items for us to eat. I have to admit that was one of the scariest/out of my comfort zone experiences I had the whole time I was in Europe.

When I got back this is what I found...

Poor John was getting mauled in his sleep by Joshua who was bored out of his mind trying to find someone to play with!

Europe Trip: 2nd Day in Paris

The next day, after a terrible nights rest, Daniel made me breakfast in bed (scrambled eggs and juice) then we got ready and headed out for the day. Note: This was my one and only “good hair day” of the entire trip! Daniel took the boys down to the small park right next to our apartment while I got our bag ready for the day. John was having so much fun that he didn’t want to leave until we mentioned we were about to go on the train. He then ran over to the stroller and buckled himself up.

We traveled to Notre Dame first and I got to ride on my first actual train (not just the subway). It happened to be a double-decker train which I was super excited about (I’ve always wanted to go on a double-decker anything since I was little). John had a blast looking out of the window and watching the opposite trains go by.

Notre Dame was just as beautiful as I thought it would be. The lines were too long so we decided to wait to go inside for another day. We stayed outside and let John chase the birds and play at a little park to the side of the Cathedral. We had plans on meeting a friend around lunch time so we just took our time walking around and Daniel finally got to tell me all about his trip with the choir. We walked over the bridge behind the Cathedral where they have all the “Love Locks”. Apparently people put padlocks (or smaller key locks) on the bridge to signify their “everlasting love in Paris”! It was amazing how many locks were on the bridge. Daniel (joking) said we should just take a sharpie and write our names on the backside of one of the locks so that way we can leave our mark but not have to give up one of our locks!! When we got to the other side of the bridge Daniel just happened to see one of his friends that he made in a Hostel in Tours, France a few weeks before. It was so random to see him there because Daniel never thought he would see this guy again. He was originally from Japan and was in Europe drawing pictures. He was an amazing artist and even gave Daniel and I free postcards that he had drawn himself.

We kept walking down to the McDonalds where we were going to meet Daniel’s friend that he use to be in the LA Children’s Choir with when they were little (her name is Julia and she is great!) and jet lag hit the kids and they both fell asleep. This was one of the only days we didn’t bring the stroller with us because Daniel thought it would be more difficult to get on and off the trains and subway with. It is more difficult that’s for sure but after carrying sleeping babies all day we were exhausted and decided to never forget the stroller again! We ate at McDonalds while we waited for Daniel’s friend Julia to get there. When she arrived we sat and visited with her for a little while then walked through the “Jardin Des Plantes” together (which is the main botanical garden in France). We walked through the garden (which was huge) and John saw a merry-go-round that he couldn’t pass up. We let him ride it once and he was ecstatic. Julia then took us over to a little café across from the garden for drinks. It was the cutest little place. There were these cute little birds that kept flying all around the café looking for crumbs. John was in heaven and wanted nothing more than to catch one of the birds. He never got close but he would get so excited when a bird would land close to our table. We walked Julia back to the Metro and said goodbye then sat in the garden a little longer to feed the birds some of the hardened croissant I had in my bag.

We decided to make our way over to the Eiffel Tower but didn’t want to go up to the top until another day because we were getting hungry by that time and didn’t want to be there too long. It took us a while to finally get a good picture there because the Eiffel Tower is so big we had to figure out a good angle for the camera. We ended up putting a blanket on the ground, setting the timer on the camera and then Daniel would move the blanket with his foot in order to get the right angle. Like I said, took a while but well worth the trouble! We bought a few souvenirs then headed back to our apartment. By the time we got there we were all really hungry so we stopped off at a pizza place on the end of our street. We decided to keep it simple and order just a cheese pizza and we both ended up hating it. They threw on a bunch of French cheeses that smelled like stinky feet. I was definitely not a fan of the French so-called “pizza” so we decided never to order pizza in France again!