Thursday, September 19, 2013

Back To Real Life...sorta

Upon returning to Utah we had a week of fun with our families before packing up our home yet again, and moving to the other side of the country to our new home in Spokane.


Moving and driving. So much fun!!! ...not really. Driving through Montana and Northern Idaho was beautiful though.

And we LOVE our new rental house. My favorite craftsman style, cheap, a big back yard, basement storage for all of Josh's project stuff, and even a dog door for Fiz. :)

Upon arriving we set a record unpacking and decorating the house. (We're getting really good at it now.) And then got to work making ourselves comfortable...


And getting to know our city.


We also took the opportunity to use our new, first time as a married couple, health care coverage and got ourselves some spectacles like the oldies we are.

After a little over a month of Josh working at the hospital for hours on end, and not being able to find a job for myself, Fiz and I decided that we would head back to Utah two weeks early for Adam and Amanda's wedding. (Josh's little brother.) I felt incredibly bad leaving Josh all alone in Spokane while I left to go have some fun, but I really only got to see him maybe an hour a day because he was working nights, and needed some distraction. So... Fiz and I packed up our stuff again and drove the 10 hours back to spend a weekend of fun in Bear Lake with the Christiansens...
along the way, acquiring a ganglion cyst from some epic water wienie riding (which my husband so lovingly popped this morning by slamming a dictionary down on it. Thanks Dr. Josh)...

 and torching my nose in the hot sun. (Small prices to pay.)


I also spent a whole week with my family down in Mapleton, hanging out in the beautiful Utah evenings, antique shopping with my mom, a day at seven peaks, and several days helping redecorate the kitchen.


After the fun in Mapleton I headed back up to the Christiansens to help with wedding prep and to hang out with some cute babies.


All the while in Spokane Josh was having the time of his life working on his new/old truck...


And riding everywhere on his bike because he was working on his truck. (Notice the Five Guys in the bottleholder. :)) 

In his little free time he also managed to put together THE most amazing gifts for our five year anniversary, which we celebrated late since we were in different states on the actual day.
He got two new batteries for his cordless drill. Woohoo!! So exciting. Not.
And I got decorations, a barf bag love letter, a giant stump (pics of that to come later) scrap wood for other projects, and 75 surprise pre-planned dates in the form of dating Bingo! Amazing I know. I still can't get over it.


But before I got to see all those amazing things we had a week still left in Utah, together this time. We spent one night in the same hotel where we spent our wedding night to celebrate five years of amazingness. Then we went camping with my parents for two days. Then went back to the Christiansens to help more with the wedding which included creating this absolute gem. 




After which we actually attended the wedding of the love birds which was amazing.

One last fun date at a Real Soccer game with my parents and Todd and Amanda, and then the next day we were back to this..


Thanks family! It was a fun time!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Number 4...Finally


Can you guess where we landed next? 


That's right. Paris! After our few days with the Jorgensens we hopped on another plane for the short flight over to France. We got there in the evening and, after traversing via subway and by foot through the uber confusing land of the french, we managed to find our way to our hotel. Then promptly left to find a place where we could fill our ravenous stomachs. No pictures sadly, because we were feeling tourist-ied out, but we ate at an AMAZING restaurant called The Classroom. Seriously one of the best meals I've had in my entire life. Those French sure know how to cook. Side note: Most people we'd talked to about France forewarned us that they don't care for Americans. They speak hardly any English and couldn't care less about trying. Josh and I agreed with those perceptions. Whatever. We were expecting it. Just be prepared if you head for France any time soon.

After our meal we headed home to rest up and prepare for the next day. It was going to be a long one. (Apologies in advance. There are pretty much zero pictures of Josh because I apparently turned into the worst picture taker-er ever. It was not my intention at all to make you look at a million pictures of me...or maybe it was... ;) but either way, sorry.)

The next day began with our walk to Notre Dame. Super impressive cathedral, which I'm sure everyone already knows, but a little too crowded for our liking. We did learn that they hold services during the day right in the middle of all the milling crowds, which was interesting. (You can see the little priest guys finishing up in the picture below.)



Then we walked over to the pont de l'archevêché bridge, stopping on the way to buy a few souvenirs.The bridge is adorned with thousands of locks and looks even cooler in person. From a ways away it looks like a shiny gold bridge. And up close there are some awesome old padlocks.

 Next stop was the Louvre. I knew it was big, but I didn't really comprehend just how massive until I saw it first hand. Gotta admit, we didn't last very long inside. Sorry art folk. Old stuff is cool, but maybe tons of it makes it less cool somehow? We saw most of the more famous art pieces including the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, but were most impressed with this less known piece, Husband and Wife in the Louvre. ;)




Oh, and this statue that looked like it was taking a selfie with a phone. 

Following the Louvre, our now aching feet started the long journey to the Eiffel Tower. I think this part of the walk is important or famous or something, but I can't remember what it is. Here I am striking a pose just like the models were doing in the background by the white tent. America's next top model here I come!

 Finally making it to the Eiffel tower Josh and I decided we needed a break and settled on the grass for a little nap/people watching/resting our feet period. It felt like an appropriate French thing to do on the beautiful sunny day, though I could be very wrong.



After some rest for our feet we decided we could handle the walk up the tower, paid our fee, and took our merry time climbing up and taking lots of pictures. Well, I guess Josh took lots of pictures. (Bear with me. This is going in a blog book one day so I have to put them in.)


It's a REALLY tall tower. We didn't pay the full fee and were only able to walk up to about the 2/3's mark.

And I'm pretty sure Paris is THE largest city in the world. No joke. We couldn't get over just how big it is. (It looks like this on every side of the Eiffel tower.)

Look who it is!!

I just noticed it looks like the tower is leaning in this picture...

After hours spent on, under, and around the Eiffel tower we wrestled with the idea of whether to wait around for it to get dark so we could see the tower lights, or see more sights, or just go back to the hotel. We decided to eat dinner first and see where the light was at that point. Expecting to find a restaurant that was a little more English speaking friendly because we were so close to such a major tourist attraction we began the search for something tasty. I'm here to tell you, I don't think it exists in France. They really don't care. Anyhow, we picked a spot ordered some food, and about half way through our meal we overheard our waiter at the table next to us tell the people that they didn't accept credit cards. Wha?! It was a huge restaurant just blocks from the Eiffel Tower and they didn't accept credit cards?! Lucky for our neighbors, they had cash. Unlucky for us, as we'd been trying to get rid of ours so we wouldn't have a lot of left over foreign currency. We felt foolish so Josh sneaked away to find an ATM while I pretended he was going to the bathroom or something and finished my meal. An extra ATM fee, and a few minutes later, we were off to our next tourist attraction because it was still no where close to dark.


Our last stop for the day and our final site in Europe was the Arc de Triomphe, an ornately carved arch right in the middle of the world's largest roundabout ... or at least the biggest one I had ever seen. Finally exhausted beyond belief we began our hunt for the subway with which to ride back to our hotel. We'd walked a thousand miles that day to save money and to avoid getting lost, but decided our feet wouldn't be able to get us back without breaking. Unfortunately the station we were trying to find was the only hidden one, and our feet nearly fell off during the hunt for it anyway. Luckily we did eventually find it and made it back to the hotel to crash for a few hours, before leaving at 5am the next morning beginning our 27 hour journey home.





All in all Paris, you had some impressive sites. It was a great city to tack on to our Europe tour, but not our favorite stop. I'm happy to say I've seen it, but learned I would trade it a thousand times over for a place like the magical Gotland. Sorry if you're a Paris lover, but Josh and I are the learning fast that we're the more adventurous type. Besides, Paris probably wouldn't want us anyway. We're not fancy enough and do things like sing, "Pari holds the key to your fart." all day long. (Thank you Disney's Anastasia.)

In the the end, we couldn't have asked for a more well rounded and crazy fun trip. We're so lucky!!