Memories

So even though this trip was FOREVER ago, I thought I'd throw some on here just for good measure. Plus I'm ready to go back for more adventures:) Anyhow, my sister and I took this trip right after I graduated in 2005 from OSU and I can't believe it's been that long and how much life has changed since we took this trip. She has gotten married and is now 23 weeks pregnant. I survived 2 years of Nursing School and lived to tell about it. Lisa has switched jobs, I have 2 years of being and RN under my belt and both of us are trying to navigate the real estate world to buy houses!

I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane:)


We flew in to London and forced ourselves to go check out the city all day long. We got in to London around 7am after our forever long flight. Let me just say jet lag along with a new city and the most confusing bus system ever did not equal a positive London experience. We can laugh about it now, but we struggled that day in a big way. We were SO excited to get to France where things were so much simpler to us! This is me acting awake posing in front of Big Ben and you can see The Eye of London in the background.

Lisa and I mastering the art of the smooshy face at the 3rd deck on the Eiffel Tour. This was our first full day of being tourists in France.

What a glorious day to visit Paris:)

Here is a photo of the National Cemetary over In France where a lot of soldiers from WWII are buried. The next photo down is one of the beaches in Normandy where the last battle was fought. We were on a tour bus for the day, thankful we weren't having to navigate the back roads and we learned so much more from our tour guides than we would have on our own. Money well spent.

Here we are at Sacre Coeur, another beautiful day, yet extremely hot outside. We had already climbed endless stairs to reach this point. Then Lisa thought it would be great to climb to the top of the building, below I look happy but I was so hot and sweaty and not excited to be climbing even more stairs. That was a good workout that day. Ahhh, good memories.

View from our little room at the bed and breakfast we stayed at in Cinque Terre.

Pretty sunset in Italy. Gorgeous country and town, but impossible train system. We were lucky to make it to our destination at all.
Back in Paris, in a different part of town, this was our last Hostel we stayed in where Lisa's friend Amy joined us for our last days in France.

We went on a tour of castles for Lisa's birthday! It started out as a pretty day but in true June 30th fashion, it ended in rain. But not anybody can tour a castle for their birthday! When we returned to our hostel that evening, Amy was there to greet us with 3 little chocolate cakes to celebrate.

This is museum day. All day at museums. I think we tackled the Louvre, the MOMA, and Musee d'Orsay. We used Rick Steves' travel guides to help us conquer these huge tasks and see the best of what was there and what we wanted to see. There was no way we could see it all. Below is a picture of how the day went. Amy read the directions to us of how to navigate the museum, it even tells you which way to turn and then we would stop, she would read to us about what we were looking at and then move on. This picture is classic of exactly what we did all day that day.

Lisa and I outside Versailles on our last day of touring! This place is HUGE!


So after a full day of walking through the castle and the grounds and eating ice cream ( I think we had ice cream EVERY day on that trip some time between 2-3 in the afternoon) we layed down in the grass, listened to the Victorian music they had playing throughout the grounds and people watched. Amy took a little nap and we just enjoyed relaxing and being in France
So that is it! That is my trip down memory lane. I wish I had taken SO many more pictures. It felt like a lot when we were there, but not so much any more. Someday I'll make it back to France and Scotland and Ireland and so many more places I still want to go:)

Planting the Garden

Well this year Mom's 2nd Grade Garden Party took place at school, rather than at our house. PRAISE THE LORD! Memories of the last year trying to round up tarps and create shelters all over our backyard last minute when we got a surprise visit from the rain and making raincoats out of trash bags for 30 7-8year old kiddos came rushing back. It was SO nice to not have to make the yard perfectly beautiful and make lunch for 50 people. This year, WE got to plant our garden.

Instead of having to stick to the garden map that my Mom used to make with the kids, we got to rearrange where we planted stuff and it didn't take us 5 hours to plant the garden either. So although it's been about 10 years since we have planted the garden without the help from mom's class, I think it will turn out well:)

Dad was already started by the time we arrived and had the pumpkins already planted.


Here I am helping with the carrots. I did better with these than those horribly small snapdragon seeds. They were so impossibly small that even with my best efforts trying to scatter them, I ended up just dumping them and hoping that the wind will scatter them to their proper places:) So we thought that having us plant the garden the rows may come out straight this year and it won't look exactly like 2nd graders planted it, but apparently with me on hand spreading seeds it will still be a surprise to see where things grow!

And here is the finished product! Our Japanese Maples are getting bigger and bigger and prettier every year, but they are creating large shading problems this year. Those new houses built right next door don't help any either. The garden still grows, just not quite to the extent it did in the good ol days when there were no houses next door and the trees were smaller.