Off to France

We just returned from a long Europe trip, in fact, I've never taken this much (unpaid) vacation time ever before, although it really was only 18 days, but nonetheless, it felt like we've been gone forever. 

The reason for our trip was Katie's mom's wedding. She decided to get married in France and since that's only 5 driving hours from my home town, I visited my family after the wedding. 

But let's start from the beginning!

We flew from Phoenix to Salt Lake City and then to Paris. For Christmas last year, Katie's mom gave all of us kids first class tickets for the trip. I had never flown first class and really didn't understand what all the fuss was about, I told her, I would fly coach, but she insisted.

And let me tell you, after this trip, it will be hard to go back, because it was such an amazing experience! (Although I could never justify spending this kind of cash on flights)

It was crazy. Starting with the water, down comforter and full size pillow that awaited you when you boarded the plane, you got greeted by name, there was a menu to pick your 4-course meal (heck, they even had ice cream!), they served warm roasted nuts and warm chocolate chip cookies, we had outlets for our phones, but I guess the best part were the seats that fully reclined! Like you could literally make it into a full bed!

It was Fox's bed time when we boarded the second flight, so we figured he would probably sleep the entire nine hour flight there, but while he went to sleep great and on time, his eyes popped open after 2.5 hours and he was awake for the rest of the flight. So needless to say, none of us got much sleep that night. I do have to say though, he is a great little flyer. He was happy as can be and never complained or got grumpy.

Until we got to our rental property and he had just fallen asleep in the car. I have never seen him like this, poor guy was so tired, he screamed for an hour straight, until we could distract him enough to go outside and play with us. We didn't get to the house until 3pm (France time), so we wanted to keep him awake until 6pm, so we could go to bed and hopefully beat the jet lag.

If you recall, traveling to Germany two years ago was one of the most miserable experiences for me, because Fox was up from midnight until 5am for a week straight, due to jet lag and I had no intentions in putting myself into that hell hole again.

This was a little church, right next to our house, it was so cute and I loved hearing the bell ring every day, because it reminded me of home. 

There were many people coming to the wedding, so Rene' had rented a huge chateau for (almost) everyone to stay at, I think there were 10 bedrooms. She had also rented an apartment in downtown Paris where some people stayed at. The chateau was about an hour away from Paris and it was such a gorgeous property.

The yard was huge and it even had a full size playground for Fox!

So after the hour screaming ordeal, Mr. Fox bounced right back into his cheery old self and had fun exploring the house and playground.

Love these two!

The house had so much character, I loved it! Katie and I were talking about how it reminded us of a haunted house.

The house had three stories and a basement. They was big tape warning signs on the stairs to not walk with socks down the stairs, but I thought I'm a big girl and I can handle it. Turns out I couldn't and I fell down the stairs. Two other people did as well, so I guess I wasn't the only stupid one...ha!

I think we made it until 7pm before we finally fell into bed, super exhausted but way too wired to go to sleep!

Jet Lag started to rear its ugly face at 3:30 am, when Fox was done sleeping and we went downstairs to have breakfast. We ended up going back to bed from 7-10am, so it wasn't too bad. 

Stay tuned for our day in Euro Disney!