Our days in sunny Provence came to a close in the lovely way that they began. We spent our last full day exploring some of the smaller towns near where we were staying. That is, after our daily stop at the boulangerie for a brioche or eclair and before our daily swim in the pool. Y’know, Provence priorities.

We first headed to Orange to check out the Roman theater. It’s still a working theater and they were setting up for a show while we toured the panorama. It was pretty cool to explore a theater that has been showing performances for nearly 2,000 years.

One of our strongest memories of this day will be the Mistral winds, which came up in force that day. It was a little freaky to be so high in the air with gusts of winds blowing at you. But we all survived and made our way to lunch in a cute little plaza.

We drove up to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse to check out a little town that a friend told us about. The town was up tucked into the side of a cliff in the Luberon region. It was as gorgeous as advertised (if a bit touristy) and we walked up the path to see the headwaters of the river come out of the rocks.

Good hikers, on every continent.

The water was really that tourquoise. It was unreal.

Our sixth day was sadly our last day in Provence, for now. I think we all plan to come back at some point since we were so taken with the region. But we made our way to the train station for another travel day. The train took us to Paris for the last leg of our McFourson’s European Adventure.

 

Oh Provence. You are beautiful. Tu es belle. Nous t’aimons. 

We started off on Wednesday at Pont du Gard, which is about half an hour from where we’re staying. By this point J was getting used to driving, we were all getting used to being language-impaired and we could really use an outdoor adventure. Pont du Gard provided it.

Pont du Gard is a pretty well preserved Roman acqueduct. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has an impressive museum for us culture vulture types (J and I), and also has a lovely swimming spot on the river for us active types (the kids). It may have been the perfect place for our family to spend the day.

We came back to our Gite for a mid-afternoon swim and then headed to Chateneuf-du-Pape for dinner on top of a hill with a view of the Rhone valley.

After dinner we hiked up to the top of the hill and watched birds fly out of the castle ruins at sunset. Was this the perfect Provençal day? We think so.

UNESCO World Heritage sites are everywhere you turn down here, so on our next day we headed to another one in Les Baux-de-Provence.

Les Baux is a castle ruin that you can explore. Ther’es a guided audio tour, signs and some demonstration areas, but it’s pretty rustic. It’s also gorgeous and was really fun to explore and imagine knights and royalty from the Middle Ages living there.

We headed out when the heat got to us. Of course we stopped for ice cream on the way down and finished the day in the pool. As one does when they are in Provence.

 

 

 

Early on Monday morning we all hopped in a black cab to the train station to board a ‘bullet train’ from London to Avignon. It was a long train ride, through the Chunnel and across most of France, but we arrived in sunny, warm Avignon in mid-afternoon. We got settled into a rental car, J re-acquainted himself with driving a stick shift, we all starting learning French road signs, and we headed North to our Gite. A Gite is like a farm stay, or a VRBO in the country rather than the city.

Our Gite isn’t so much on a working farm, but it is next to a lovely home and is surrounded by wine vineyards.

Best of all, it has a pool that we can use! We were in it within about half an hour once we arrived.

On our second day in France, we headed to the nearby town of Avignon. On our way we stopped at the local boulangerie/patisserie

for some eclairs, brioche and other tasties. Sam decided that we should make a daily visit to a boulangerie every day that we’re in France. We all agreed.

Avignon is a beautiful old city that is surrounded by a wall. Inside is the Palais de Popes, or the palace that the popes lived in during the 1300s when they decided to move there from Rome. J and I geeked out on the architecture and history. The kids played a game on the tablet guided tour through the Palace. So everyone was happy.

We finished on the original ‘bridge to nowhere’ Avignon Bridge, a stone bridge that only extends halfway across the river.

Southern France is hot, so we’ve pledged to finish up our sight-seeing by mid to late afternoon so that we can finish the day with a few hours by the pool. If you’re counting, we’ve decided to eat pastries every day and go swimming every day. Yep, France is treating the McFoursons just fine.

 

On our last few days in London, we cultured it up. On Saturday we got a late start (still recovering from our long day in Warwick) but we finally drug ourselves out of our flat and braved the British Museum to check out antiquities. J and I were really excited and spent most of the Tube ride explaining what the Rosetta Stone is to the kids and why it was so important.

Sam was impressed…

While I might not recommend going to the British Museum on a Saturday afternoon with two squirrelly children, we did have a good time. The Museum has some pretty good kids activity guides where you pick a topic and it gives you a route through the museum to go on and things to look for in each room. J and Clare took Ancient Greece and Sammy and I went looking for Creatures. It was actually pretty cool and and we saw snake sculptures in the Central American room, totems in the North American room and dragon carvings in the Chinese room.

But, if you’re counting, that was our billionth museum in London and the kids were done with them. So we ended up a playground while J went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street.

I might do a whole post about London’s playgrounds (because goodness knows I hung out in enough of them), but they were truly the most international places I’ve ever been in my life. Sitting by the sandbox was like a mini-UN meeting, only the people meeting were all under the age of 10 and they all could agree that water mixed with sand was a good time. It was fascinating, but also so very human, to watch parents and children of every nationality, religion and background come together to just play.

On our last day in London we were getting a bit tired of the hustle, bustle, noise and crowds. So we hopped a tourist boat to Greenwich for some green space, more museums, and a bit of (relative) relaxation.

We saw Big Ben! (Sort of)

“We’re on a boat!! In the Thames River!”

“Mom, can you give us your phone so we can make a phone call from an actual phone booth.” (My kids still don’t quite get the concept of phone booths… but why would they?)

So we weren’t done with English museums. We spent a few hours at the Cutty Sark. I wasn’t that excited about this stop, but it was actually pretty cool. You gotta love a museum that has something for everyone in the family.

We finished at the Greenwich Meridian with a view of beautiful London.

Cheers London, you beautiful, dirty, crowded, exciting, wonderful city!  The McFourson’s are out – but we’ll definitely be back.

We’re getting settled into the English part of the trip – riding the tube, eating fish and chips (Sam), drinking pints (J and I) and looking for traffic on the left when we cross the street (all of us). We’re all getting acclimated to the accents and languages around us all of the time, as well as the personal control that we need to get around in such a busy city. Clare can’t dance down the middle of the tube car and Sam can’t just leap on everything he sees (though they both try). But we’re out and about everyday. Here’s a rundown of our first few days in England.

On Day 2 we headed to the Natural History Museum. I’d heard that they had skeletons of dinosaurs and of a blue whale that I thought would be fun. The museum was cool… in a dusty sort of way. There were lots of taxidermied animals that probably would be cool if we hadn’t seen the real things in zoos or on TV. But there were some interesting parts about it. The dinosaur skeletons didn’t impress, but the animatronic Tyranisaurus Rex was pretty cool.

Hey look! It’s a blue whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling! It did actually show how huge a blue whale actually is.

But the best parts were the earth science section and the butterfly exhibit. We got to the earth science section with the coolest escalator that went into a giant red planet (pictured above). We also really liked the volcano and earthquake section with an earthquake simulation of the Kobe earthquake. And we finished in the tropical world of butterflies.

We finished our day with a bus ride to another playground. Our daily playground visits are essential for two kids who are used to having a lot of freedom and room to roam. I generally sit back and let them run, climb and shout to their heart’s content. I figure it’s fair since most of the day they have to stand still, keep their hands to themselves and use inside voices. My favorite part of this day was when Clare and Sam were playing with another brother and sister on the zip line and the climbing structure. When we left Clare told me “they didn’t speak English, but we figured it out. They were fun to play with.”

On our third day in England, we decided to leave London for a bit. We hopped a train to Warwick to explore the Warwick Castle.

The castle is quite the tourist destination and is owned and run by the same company that runs LegoLand and Madame Taussads. It was a bit more glitz than authenticity, but it was very family-friendly and accessible to the kiddos.

And it had ice cream. So that was good.

We saw a trebuchet fire, show arrows, fawned over princesses and watched falconry. We got home after 10 pm that night after a long day filled with 20,000 steps, memories, laughter, and some glitzed-up history.

We did it! We got passports, booked flights, pulled the kids out of school a week early, and flew to London. After years of saying “when do you think the kids will be old enough to take to Europe” we decided that 6.5 and 8.5 is the age to do it. (I’ll keep you posted on if we still think that when we are back home…)

We flew out from PDX on Monday night on a 10 hour overnight flight. I had no idea what to expect and was fearing the worst, but the flight actually went better than I expected. We all slept at least a few hours, watched movies, ate some food, and arrived in London without any tears.

We’re staying in at VRBO in Notting Hill, which is a few blocks away from the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens. We checked out the playground on our first afternoon and the kids declared it magical. It’s a pretty great place, with a pirate ship, sand pit, several hidey holes to play in, and the whole thing is fenced in so the adults can let kids have the run of it without worrying that they’re going to leave.

(Not pictured, a 6 pm bedtime where we all crashed HARD. Also not pictured, a midnight bowl of cereal when the kids woke up hungry and then had a hard time going back to sleep. Jet lag needs no pictures.)

We all woke up on our first full day in London feeling rested. So we decided to brave the Tube (England’s subway). We took the St. James Place and walked through the park (found another playground) and then checked out Buckingham Palace.

We didn’t see the queen, but Clare thinks that she and Queen Elizabeth would be friends if they ever met. “She’s a grandmother, so she probably likes kids. And I like grandmothers!”

We wandered through Trafalgar Square, spent about 45 minutes checking out art in the National Gallery, fought the crowds in Leicester Square and ended up in Covent Garden to watch buskers and eat ice cream.

(Sam is impressed by Van Gogh… not really.)

Cheers to successful first day in London!

 

The end of August means the first day of school around these parts. We walked an enthusiastic second-grader down the hill to her school.  She was a bit anxious on the first day of school with a new teacher, but quickly settled in once she saw a few smiling friends.

Her best buddy G is in her class, so the teacher will have a time keeping those two from getting into too much trouble.  Clare loves seeing her friend each day.

So far we really like her teacher.  He has a blog and updates Facebook, so I love knowing what’s going on in the classroom.  Here is a quotes from it, reminding me why elementary school teachers are special people:

“Now that its here, the first day of school is actually here, my heart’s beating a little bit harder, my palms a little bit sweatier.  It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement.  I want this year to go so well.  I want this group of kids to feel challenged, pushed to places they didn’t they were capable of going.  I want to push myself.  I want to bravely lead this new group and give them experiences that they won’t soon forget.  I want them to love school.”

The school year means a little extra push to our usual crazy schedules. There are endless lunches to pack, PTA meetings and Back to School Nights to attend, sniffly noses and colds to pass around, and permission slips to sign and return to school.  There is stress at school and work that makes us tired and cranky in the evenings, but there are also new friends to make, new books to read and new things to learn and discover.

Summer 2016 has been one for the traveling books.  It’s the first summer that we have taken trips with two full-on kids.  No diapers, no naps, carry your own backpacks, get dressed yourself, walk on your own two feet kids.  Sure there’s the occasional whiny fit, there are still meals and snacks that only Mom and Dad can take care of, tired feet call for piggy-back rides and the kids fell asleep in the car a few times (they are only 4 and 7 after all).  But traveling with kids is soooo much easier than traveling with babies.

We learned this on our big summer trip to Alaska.  We hiked, we explored, we stayed in a couple of different places, we ate at restaurants, took early flights and  stayed up late talking around the campfire.  We had long conversations about big issues.  The kids handled it beautifully.  I think we all enjoyed ourselves.  Not to mention, we all got to fall in love with one of the most beautiful places on earth – Alaska.

The flight to Anchorage started with a disturbance in the seat next to J.  Fortunately it was resolved quickly and efficiently and we continued on our way.

Where we were met by an enthusiastic welcoming committee and that beautiful Alaska scenery.

The reason for the trip was Grandma T’s long-awaited retirement from BLM.  We attended a really lovely retirement party for her and then got outta town to a little cabin in Hope, Alaska.  The cabin was appropriately rustic and relaxed, so we built a campfire and enjoyed long days and light-filled evenings of stories and laughter.

We drove out to Seward to explore the aquarium and the coast.  We took a train to Whittier and had clam chowder against a rainy backdrop.  We checked out Alaska wildlife at a rehabilitation center.  More than that, we soaked in the incredible Alaskan scenery and time with family.

It was a lovely time.

Summer 2016 – you’ve treated us well.  You didn’t stay long, but you were a good time while you were here.  You left us with memories of trips, hikes, bike rides, baseball games, BBQs, outdoor adventures and precious little time spent indoors.  Here are a bunch of pictures (and very few stories) to commemorate Summer 2016.

Our beloved friend Carrie (Auntie Carrie around these parts) had a beautiful baby boy.  So we spent as much time as possible snuggling with him.

There was swimming…

There was some time spent exploring our beautiful part of the world…

And some time relaxing on our back deck….

There was a trip to the baseball field.

There were lots of bike rides… (Clare now on a two-wheeler and Sam on the tag-along).

And there was ice cream eating…

All in all – it was a pretty perfect summer when you’re 4 and 7.

Oh there was more to it than that.  There were trips, there was camping, there was weeks spent with grandparents… But this a taste of the sun soaked days of an Oregon Summer.

Dear Clare,

Happy Birthday my darling!  Last week you turned seven years old.  In classic Clare fashion, you were the world’s most enthusiastic almost-seven-year-old in the world.  Unlike past year’s, you took an active role in planning your birthday party.  I can see in the next few years you will completely take it over.  This year you let me do the majority of the planning, but we discussed every single detail.

You spent your sixth year mastering first grade, which you did with flying colors. Your teacher loved you, you made great friends, and you excelled in reading and writing.  You were ready to finish the school year by the end of it, but you’re already starting to talk about second grade.

You are a voracious reader and are rarely without a book.  You like the Ramona series and books about princesses and fairies.  We just read the BFG together and we may get into the Roald Dahl books.

You’re still our girl with the big feelings, but you’ve worked really hard to work with them, communicate them and deal with them.  OK, maybe we all work on that 🙂

There’s been lots of negative and violent news in the world recently.  We’ve worked most of your life keeping you very sheltered from violence and hatred.  We’ve had lots of hard conversations this year and you’ve learned some of the worst things that people can do in the world.  It’s been very hard for Daddy and I to watch you learn that the world isn’t as kind and loving as you have thought, but we’re figuring it out together.

Through it all, you are a joyful rainbow in our lives.  I can’t wait to see what your next year brings.

Lots of love,

Mumslie