Au revoir, Paris!

Here's an overview of our last two days: We went to the Musee d'Orsay (pictured below). It is a large collection of mostly Impressionist work: Monet, Manet, Renoir, etc. It was housed in a converted train station and this is the view from the 6th floor.

After we visited this museum, Josh went back to our room to rest (he developed a sinus infection our last few days) and I went to the Pompidou Centre, which is their big modern art museum. This is the 'triple crown' of museum tours: the Louvre (ancient Greek to pre-Impressionist), Musee d'Orsay (Impressionist), and the Pompidou (20th century and contemporary). It was really facinating to be able to visit all three within such a short time span to get a broad view of the historical spectrum of Western art.

Our last evening, we had a picnic by Notre Dame and watched it light up as it got dark.

We have finally arrived home (in Little Rock) after a mere 14 hours of travel. I say that in all seriousness because the trip going to Paris took almost 24. We had a 10 hour flight from Paris to Dallas (3 movies, 2 meals, so it went by rather quickly). We got delayed at U.S. Customs (their computers were down--although they didn't even seem to use the computer when they processed us through...), so we missed our connection to Little Rock. Fortunately we made it through on stand-by for the next flight, only an hour delay. It was so great to see Benjamin and to be back in the U.S. B had a wonderful time with Big Bill and Essie and was full of stories to tell us (through Essie) about their adventures while we were gone.

This is the last picture from our trip taken in the Dallas airport. The only thing we really missed in Paris was large cups of coffee-to-go. Parisians do not walk and eat or drink anything and their coffee cups are small. So we were actively searching for a Starbucks as soon as we landed!

Thanks for sharing our trip with us! We have many, many more pictures to share, but we hope to show you those in person soon.

Almost at trip's end

Our second-to-last day and we packed it full. In reverse order:

In front of the Louvre. Larger and even more intimidating than Versailles, but it turned out to be much more enjoyable. We stuck to the Denon wing--Greek and Roman classics, Middle Ages, Italian Renaissance, French Neoclassicalism and Romantism. Josh's highlight was the Grand Gallery (we saw 5 da Vinci's and several Raphael). Emily's was Venus de Milo and the Botticelli frescos.
In front of my favorite of Monet's Waterlillies at L'Orangerie. This was a smaller, more relaxed musuem just off the Tuileries garden between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe.

A shot of the Arc de Triomphe from the middle of the Champs Elysees. We climbed to the top of the Arc for a great 360 view of Paris.

One more day to go and then we'll be ready to get home!!!

Bonjour deux!

Hello, again from Paris. I'm having trouble loading pictures, but so I only have a couple. Today we visited Notre Dame cathedral and tomorrow we're hoping to hit the Louvre and Champs Elysees.

Below is a picture from the gardens at Versailles, which we visited on Sunday--spectacular, but exhausting.
Here is Josh in front of the fortification for Germany artillery at Point du Hoc in Normandy. On Monday we took a train to Normandy (2 hours north) and toured a German cemetery, Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the American cemetery. An amazing experience.

I wish I was able to load more pictures, but I've been trying for 90 minutes and am now giving up. More soon!

CKS European Tour cont.

First, a disclaimer: we're new to this blogging thing and have yet to work out the technicalities of posting photos and the like. So please forgive any awkward blank space...

This is Split, a town just south of where my parents live. Croatia is breathtakingly beautiful; we highly reccomend it as a vacation destination.

Keri with the artist of our favorite purchase. Red poppies were blooming all over Europe, so we brought home our own permanent poppies!

Dubrovnik is famous in the Wright family as the city Bill and Sarah didn't visit on their honeymoon. We spent an amazing day there, wandering at our leisure while Grandma and Opa went at Sophie's pace. You CAN do Europe with a two-year-old if grandparents are along for the trip!

O, G and S on a glass-bottomed boat. Apparently the sea life wasn't all that impressive from an adult perspective, but Sophie saw enough fish to be very excited about the whole prospect.

One of my favorite pictures of Cody!

Long promised pics

AT LAST WE ARE AT GRANDMA AND OPA'S HOUSE!!!!

This is the entrance to Freud's office/home in Vienna. We had such a wonderful time in the city, we had trouble leaving. I felt I couldn't go back there (previous trip had been spent forced to visit musicians' graves) without going to see his house. What was supposed to be a brief in- and-out ended up being very interesting.

We then headed across the central part of the city, gawking at the cathedrals and massively impressive government buildings. We ended with just an hour for the Belvedere, which is famous among other things for its Klimt collection. We saw The Kiss and others. We then headed out of the city and stayed the night at a horribly overpriced Marriott in Graz that was not as nice as they seemed to think it was. But we were really tired.

After our chat with M&R, we have been strongly motivated to get some of our European pictures on the blog. J&E, your photos also provide inspiration. Have a wonderful trip!!! We wish we could be there too!

This is our first day in Germany at the Ernst Ludwig House in Darmstadt (I have a poster of this house behind me in my office). I was so excited to take Keri and Sophie there as it was one of my best memories from my Glee Club trip. There is an entire "colony" of houses there, all Art Nouveau, and beautifully preserved.

Bonjour!

As promised, here are some pictures from our first 24 hours in Paris. We had a bit of a rough trip getting here--bumped from the Chicago to Paris flight, flew Chicago to Boston, delayed 3 hours, flew Boston to Paris on a 747 (Josh was very excited.) We have wifi access here (they call it 'weefee', but not in our room, so we probably won't post a ton while we're here. We miss you all, especially our little sweet son!

A view as we deplaned at Charles de Gaulle.
Where we're staying, the hotel de nevers in the canal st. martin district.
We went to see the eiffel tower our first evening!

A Hearty Welcome Back to the Bible Belt

This afternoon an elderly woman at the grocery store (H.E.B.! Tortillas made in the store!) stopped to admire the boys, commenting on their superior cuteness (surely she said that - I can't quite remember), then left us with,
"I hope you have them in Sunday School, Dear."
"Oh yes, m'am. Thank you."
"Well, I'll be over at Hyde Park Baptist, and you are welcome at any time."
"Thank you very much. We're members at Redeemer Presbyterian."
"Well, it doesn't matter the name of the building, just that we all love Jesus."

Driving home I was reminded that although we're back in Texas, we are in Austin, Texas, when I spied the bumper sticker, Cheney, Satan '08.
Other scenes from our first week back:
- Sunday night greeted by friend Kevin who helped unload the minivan after a great trip down (highlight - stopped in Waco & had homemade ice cream with Simone, David & little David)
- Heather, the college daughter of the family we're housesitting for, was here until today. Jackson kept calling her "Mr. Feathers".
- Tuesday night Laurel brought dinner & delivered a cowboy hat/sheriff badge/handcuffs from Aunt Bethany. He loves it all, Bethany!
- Wednesday re-met up with our old playgroup buddies.
- Jackson looks like he has chickenpox, he has so many mosquito bites on his body (in the car today every time we stopped at a red light he wanted me to scratch the spots he couldn't get to)
- Harry is working really hard on crawling. Not too close, but he's giving it a go.
- Tonight Jackson had wet feet from playing in the sprinklers and kept slipping on the tile floor. Though this visibly hurt, he kept asking, "Is that funny?" with a strained laugh. Oh, if it could just be funny maybe it wouldn't hurt, seemed to be his look, although he did genuinely seemed to think it was funny; we explained to him that this is called "slapstick".

Tomorrow night friends are coming for dinner and Saturday night Redeemer friends are having a Welcome Back potluck for us. Even with all that's going on, I'm feeling the loneliness of a "new" place and anxious to feel more settled. Matthew is working like crazy on summer Latin class, but we're hoping it'll slow down as the building blocks are laid. Welcome back to us!

Along the lines of what Emily just wrote, I want to record another cousin teaching scenario. . . A few days ago I had both boys outside by the front pond, which has a small platform next to it, on which a board is loose. Benjamin had been walking back and forth on this just fine, stepping over the loose one without a thought (and it was perfectly safe). Cautious Jackson arrived, examined the board, and then attempted to pick Benjamin up & hoist him over it. When this elicited protests from Benjamin, he got on his hands and knees and slowly backed over the board, showing Benjamin how to do this. This worked, and both boys backed off the platform on hands and knees. Good thing Benjamin has a cousin a whole 4 months older than him. How would he survive otherwise?

Cousin Fun

Jackson and Benjamin have been keeping us (and each other!) entertained since we arrived in Hot Springs last week. As oldest cousin, Jackson has been living up to his responsibilities by teaching Benjamin the fundamentals. Conversation overheard while the boys were eating a snack at the table:

J (to B): Fire hot!
B: Firetruck?
J: No! Fire hot!
B: Oh... okay.

Another favorite activity is making faces at each other and laughing. While engaged in this activity for several minutes and laughing hysterically, Jackson would occasionally turn to me and ask, "Is this funny?" before resuming his antics.