Paris Disneyland. I would recommend only one change to the place. The name should be called "Hemorraghing Euros-land". I bought a box of popcorn, not a large one at all, and it cost 5 Euros. That's over seven dollars! You learn fast to just pay quickly and be on your way. In fact, it's great that they communicate the cost in French and if you're smart you'll just always present the largest bill you have in your wallet so that you are assured to cover the cost and you know you'll get some change. Then you don't have to listen to the price and do the invariable currency conversion in your head to know the dent that anything will put in your wallet.

To be completely fair we had an awesome day at Disneyalnd today. Soph laughed and played and just had a great time. Dad did too. The park is very similar to those in California and Florida but with one notable exception. They don't serve those barbaric Turkey legs here. What a relief! The park itself is better, in my mind, than those in the US. The details in the buildings are great and the landscape is wonderfully grown in. I think it helped that the weather was absolutely perfect today. It was about 76 degrees and sunny with a very light breeze. It couldn't have been better.

I've vowed this year to write less and just post more pictures. I'll post some now from our departure to Europe, plus yesterdays travels out to Fountainbleau and Chartres and some from today at Disneyland.



Where's Sophie?


The Ballroom at Fountainbleau


Playing in the Queen's bedroom


The royal chapel at Fountainbleau


The palace




Magnificent Fountainbleau. These palaces make it a no-brainer that there'd be a revolution. They're so opulent. We're glad history has preserved them for us to see.






Hiking the steps to Chartres cathedral


Having a rest, that was a lot of steps!







Climbing the 300 steps to the top of the tower. Little miss Sophie climbed about 100 of them yelling her abc's. Then she suddenly turned to me and said, "Daddy keydo" (carry me).


I loaded Soph on my back for the ride down. I didn't want her taking a tumble since if she did we wouldn't catch up to her till the bottom. She hung on tight. Good for her, bad for me. I was only getting half the oxygen I needed. Amazing I didn't pass out and both of us went tumbling down. The view from the top of the cathedral was amazing and was worth every bit of the effort.




Resting after that arduous journey up the tower steps






Someone was sooo excited for this moment!


Soph's checkin' out the map, scouting her first ride.



Waited a bloody hour in line for Dumbo of all rides. But the smile makes it worth it!


Cruisin the hood.


This just might be the first time in her life she actually wore a hat for more than 10 seconds.


Cute girls of mine!


Mickey and Minnie are just coming around the bend during the parade. Soph's little face just lit up and she started waving frantically.







Love's from a Goofy. She saw Goof and said, "I want to see the other guys!". Thankfully more were right there.


Tigger was a bit on the frisky side.


Snogging Pluto



Fun on the roller coaster. This was the only ride she knew she wanted to do before we got there.





Hunting Zurg's ? at the Buzz Lightyear ride. I took Soph on this later in the day too and all she did was spin the little car around and around in circles the length of the entire ride.

I nearly vomited.

She giggled the whole time.



This is a picture of the picture they take of you as you cascade down in the little boat ride. Check out the little girl in the middle of the front row. No hands! and I didn't tell her to do it! You go girl!





Bone swa Paris Disneyland! Trey bien avec la fromage et le Mickey und Minnie!!!

Later everyone! We're off to see another grand Chateaux (sp?) tomorrow before hitting the freeway to Switzerland in the early afternoon. We'll post more soon.

Chris, Anneka and Sophie

Arrived

Well we arrived and make it to Paris. The flight went well except lil miss was so excited to travel she didn't want to sleep! I thought for sure she would sleep a few hours on the flight seeing how we left at 5pm and landed at 3am our time. Nope not tired, didn't want to sleep at all. She stayed entertained with the ipad and I bought her a few new coloring books and activities for her to do on the plane. Turns out that a sticker book where she could place stickers on certain pages and color the rest was a hit. She had stickers all over herself as well as the book (about 100 of them) At 3am when it was time to land the flight attendants did their final check and made her tighten her seat belt. She didn't like that and started to cry. She cried a few minutes then just as the wheels came down on the ground she fell asleep. (Go figure) We then sat on the tarmac for 30 minutes waiting for our gate so she got to sleep a bit more. She woke up when we got off the plane and sat dazed in her stroller while we made our way through customs and to the luggage pick up.

We picked up our rental car again I thought she would fall asleep in her car seat but aparently she was to excited to fall asleep. We drove for about 30 minutes to our hotel, arriving around 1pm was told by the reception that check in wasn't until 3pm. Sorry... I've been up all night on a flight and have a very tired 3 year old. Plus I emailed you in advance and told of our circumstances to allow us an early check in and the person who replied to us said they would do all they can to get us checked in early. They finally took pity on us and found a room that was ready. We got to our room, showered and took a nap for about 3 hours then made ourselves get up to go get some dinner and try to stay awake for a little while.

We are staying out by Paris Disneyland and next to the park is a huge shopping complex complete with mall, grocery store and outlet mall. Did I say this place is huge? I felt like we were at a major mall in Southern California. The grocery store alone was 2 stories tall, groceries in the bottom level was as big as costco. Upstairs was electronics, baby items, etc. The cool thing about this place?? Electonic prices... yes they had little 1x2 inch LED screens instead of stickers on their shelves. The Euros got it going on. I could see how they could easily go in to their computer system to change a price or put something on sale and it automatically updates all these little screens. Anyway the place was packed! I hope all these people aren't here for Disneyland but I have a feeling they were. Couldn't even find a shopping cart because everyone else had them all. We picked up some cereal, juice and milk for breakfast in the morning as our hotel has a kitchenette. Got dinner at McDonalds (Chris' choice) then wandered through the mall a bit. Soph perked up fast as soon as she saw a kids play area with slides, a carosel and even the same darn train that they have at home at south town mall. Seriously it was the same train. (I kept wondering are we still in the states here?)

We then headed back to the hotel and crashed about 11pm local time and at 5am Soph was wide awake wanting breakfast. It's now 7:30am and since were awake I figure I'd update the blog since it's too early to go out still. So Soph's only had about 9 hours sleep in the past 2 days. I'm fearing a melt down anytime but she sure seems happy and perky now. Today we plan on going out to Fountainbleau Chateau similar to Versailles complete with gardens, fountains etc. We may head over to Chartres as well they have a famous Cathedral there. All these places are about 30-40 minutes away. Hoping to get to bed early tonight as we plan on going to Disneyland tomorrow. Will try to post some pictures later.

Gettin Ready

to head out to this place:




Oh and to spend a day here:




that is located here:


Were pretty excited. While most of out trip will be in Switzerland we plan on stopping at Disneyland Paris for a day as that's all Soph talks about, we will spend a day at the Fountainbleau chateau also outside Paris. Then drive into Switzerland where we will be spending a few days around Lake Geneva & Lausanne, a few days around Interlaken and the surrounding mountains/alps. Stop in Luzern for a day and Zurich for a day then head back to France where we fly out of Paris.

We'll try to keep up on the blog with lots of pictures. Trip starts in about a week.

June Happenings

A few things to catch up on this month. Sophie started Gymnastics class or "nastics class" as she calls it. She loves it and is getting really good at walking on the balance beam with various objects placed on it to make them step over and is learning to walk sideways on it. She does all sorts of front rolls, and hand stands (with the teachers help) her favorite part is when they take her little class out to the big kid gymnastics area and they get to jump on the trampoline and do front rolls into the foam pits.





We celebrated my birthday this year by going up to Sundance and spending the day riding the chairlift and wandering around the resort. All the hiking trails were closed since there was still a lot of snow up there.

Thomas the Train

For memorial weekend we went up to Heber on Saturday and visited Thomas the train.

Zoo

Chris went to track day with his shiney car so Soph and I went to the zoo. It was really crowded being a free day for Veterans and their families but we had fun. After a few hours at the zoo, we went out to lunch and did a little shopping.

Easter Dress

It's finally starting to get warm enough for Sophie to wear her Easter dress.