Paris, Day One

After a 10 hour flight from Zambia to London, a quick 2 hour layover, and a 35 minute flight from London to Paris, we are here!! We had a little bit of a rocky start walking through the airport from 10pm to 11:30pm trying to find the hotel shuttle buses, but we finally made it to our hotel! We woke up ready to start our Paris adventures!

What I have looked forward to the most about this trip is getting to tell my kids YES. I feel sometimes like I am very hard on them and of course, as parents, we are constantly telling our kids NO. But we did a lot of research on Paris to find cheap things to do that kids will love, so we are focusing this trip on our 3 kids, and telling them YES. They don't know anything we are doing, so it is so fun to show up somewhere and see their eyes widen and hear them ask, "Can we do that?" And to get to respond with, "Yes - I think we should!" is an awesome feeling. :)
The boys ready to go!

Cambree was very concerned about what she would wear because she knows from her Barbie Wii game that "Paris is the fashion capital of the world!" (She told me she wants to go to Mumbai next!!! We have our hands full with this girl!!)

After another rocky couple of hours buying our subway tickets and getting where we needed to be, these golden arches had never looked so beautiful!

Then we were off to the Eiffel Tower!

This is the bottom of the Eiffel Tower that they all touched!

Of course we had to do the Eiffel Tower Carousel!

Then we took a Seine River cruise! The kids were not so impressed with an hour on a slow-moving boat looking at buildings, but we liked it! Here is Blu in front of Notre Dame!

This bridge was gorgeous!

Cason almost fell asleep :)

We rewarded the kids with some ice cream & popcorn :)

Then we headed to the Tuileries Garden. We knew it was a fun place for kids based on internet reviews, but we weren't expecting a full carnival!! When we came up out of the subway and the kids saw it, their faces were priceless! Cambree & Cason loved the big slide!

Caedmon chose the bumper cars with Daddy! He was very focused!

Cason also did the bumper cars and his reactions were priceless! Every time they got hit he made a shocked face like, "I can't believe they just rammed us!!" and then burst into the biggest smile!!

My FAVORITE picture of the day! Caedmon & Cambree begged me to take them on the log ride. As it started, they both started panicking. Caedmon said, "Mama I changed my mind. No Mama I really don't want to do this. Mama I AM SERIOUS. I don't feel good! I AM SERIOUS MAMA!!" This picture says it all at the end of the ride! At the end of the day they both said this was the favorite thing they did!!

Of all the things I didn't expect to see in Paris...

We finished off the day with some classic carnival food - a nutella crepe!

And paninis and hot dogs!

Cason didn't quite make it back to the hotel :)

And we thought the day was over but it is now past 1am and Blu is off to find an E.R. with Caedmon. He has something on his toe that is very infected - spider bite...thorn from Zambia...it started a few days ago and has gotten progressively worse and really took a turn for the worse tonight. We are praying he can get some stronger pain meds and some antibiotics to help fight the infection - he's miserable! We'll keep you updated!