Vieve's Place...Enjoy Your Visit
I tell you, this guy is just days away from talking. Basically he does a lot of yelling and noises right now, and I’m just waiting for real words to come out, and for his first words to be Vieve. I’m just waiting.
He was so sleepy this morning when he visited that he just stood here and held my hand. What a great guy.
Just thinking about baby stuff.
Trying on daddy’s clothes.
Well, I did something new today. And on the water. The combination of those two things are enough to send me into an anxious spiral, but I lived! It’s my friend PJ’s birthday today, and for her birthday, she wanted to go stand up paddle boarding. As part of her gift, I reluctantly agreed to it. We booked a spot at Jordanelle Reservoir for an hour (plenty of time) and off we went.
It wasn’t too bad. I had small panic attacks while getting in and standing up, but once you’re standing up and stable, it’s not too bad! But every time a small wave would come, I would just hug the board on my knees and pray I wouldn’t fall in. By the end of the hour, my legs and feet hurt from being so tense and standing in the exact same position. But I looked pretty cool:
And obvs PJ looked cool too:
Shout-out to the random stranger in a kayak on the water who took the picture of us and sent it to my phone. I may do this again in my life, I may not, but at least I can say I tried it once and I didn’t die! (or cry, that’s important too)
I have safely returned from girls camp! Yes, you’ve read that right. It was an all right week. It was pretty fun, for the first part of the week, and then the second park went downhill, and no fun at all. But the beginning I will hold dear in my heart.
We dressed our YW president, Sis C for the Miss Shalom pageant (we were robbed!)
And we got together for a big group picture right before we left today.
I’m still trying to decide if I’m glad I went or not. I bet in a few weeks, when the feelings of camp aren’t so raw, I will be grateful that I went, so I look forward to that. The greatest thing though, was coming home and taking a shower. After 5 days, I was filthy! It took 3 washings to get my hair clean, and then I scrubbed every inch my skin, but then I felt fantastic, and ready to take on the world.
Technically, I got these while at camp, so I just backdated a little. Look how great he is.
Fantastic.
Just a-smilin’ away.
He likes to carry sticks around while he walks.
My friends, I am going to girls camp this week. I am nervous, and terrified, and I’m hoping it’ll be a good week. I’ve borrowed a cot and sleeping pads from Chelle (she’s a pro at girls camp) and I have all the camping stuff I need elsewise from Husband. I guess you could say I’m ready, but I really am not.
Baby went back home today. It took him 4 days to warm up to me, and then he leaves right as I got him to like me enough to come to me when I called him. They’ll be coming at Christmas, but I feel very confident that in six months’ time, he’ll have forgotten me once again. Gosh darn it. But hopefully he’ll remember me enough to want to snuggle me, that’ll be nice.
I feel like I didn’t have enough time to be home after my vacation before girls camp. As soon as I got home, Sister came, and then today she left, and then I leave early tomorrow. I am just exhausted already, and I haven’t even gone camping! I just need to get through this week, and then I can have a few weeks of rest before school and everything starts. Oh man, school. Oh man. It’s coming.
Today is Darth’s first birthday! Look at this guy.
I made him a tiny, ugly cake.
It wasn’t supposed to be ugly but turns out, it was hard to frost. But no matter. We set that thing in front of him, and he ate, tentatively at first, but with more gusto as he went on.
Right as he was sticking his face in, we cheered for him, and :
It scared the crap out of him, and was so funny. He ate himself into a mess, and then fell asleep shortly after. What a great baby.
So the other day, I was driving my sister and baby to my house from the airport. On the way, my car decided to die. While driving. On the freeway. My engine just stopped. Luckily I was able to maneuver myself to the off ramp, and then spent some time waiting for a tow truck…Husband to get us…many much things. After getting it towed, and then waiting a day for the car place to call us back, we found out that the car was a goner. The price of fixing it was about as much as the car is worth, so we just went, well, it doesn’t make sense to fix it if it costs that much. So after much deliberation, we decided instead to just buy a used car. I sold my old car for basically nothing to a guy at the shop, which was about as much as I was going to get for it. Then we looked for the car. After a lot of looking, I found my car:
A Chevy Equinox. It’s much bigger than my car, so I’m still getting used to it, but I’m enjoying having a nice car. Not that my 2001 Toyota Echo wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t. It had nothing automatic, neither windows nor doors, so the automatic stuff here is nice. I can’t wait to drive this guy everywhere.
We have a special treat in that Darth is here right now! He and his mama are here, saying holla, and so I get to spend a few days with this joker!
He’s walking around! I love it.
What a great baby.
His little face…awwwww.
We are home! After being awake for about 27 hours, and having to be on airplanes, and in airports, and all that jazz, we are finally home! Look who was super glad to see me:
I’m glad to be home, too!
Yes, that’s right. Today, we were going to experience Disneyland Paris. I was jazzed. We had to take a 45 minute train ride to get there, but worth it, to see:
We stood in long lines to get in, but once we were in, we did what you normally do, we rode the rides. We rode the Aerosmith Rock ‘n Roller coaster, an Armageddon ride (booooo), we went to Ratatouille land and rode the ride there, and did the RC Racer, which is a really awesome ride only at DP. Naturally, we also rode Tower of Terror, that ride was literally the exact same.
After being in the one side of the park all day, we went to the Disneyland side. Over there, we rode Pirates,
Phantom Manor (their Haunted Mansion), Big Thunder Mtn Railroad, and Crush’s Coaster. It was a heck of a day, and by the end of the day, we were exhausted. Luckily we made it to the train station before we collapsed from exhaustion. I can honestly say it was a great day, but I like California Disneyland a little better. It’s just…cleaner and the employees seem genuinely happy to be there, and stuff like that just makes me smile. The castle, however, was beautiful.
We were supposed to have a full day in England yesterday, to spend at the British Museum, and anywhere else we fancied. Unfortunately, due to some construction in London, we sat in traffic for 5 hours. It took us 5 hours to go about 11 miles. YUP you read that right. So we had about 45 minutes in the museum before we had to leave, we were catching a train through the Chunnel to Paris. We had some traumas getting to the train, but we made, safe and sound. We arrived in Paris at about 10:00, and walked in the dark about a mile to our hotel, which was in the sketchiest place I’ve ever seen. I was scared for our safety, but we made it.
This morning, we went to the Notre Dame first. We actually attended a service there, and it was pretty. I couldn’t understand any of it, since it was in French, and Latin, but that’s all right, they were getting their point across.
After the service, we walked around a bit, and then went to our next destination, the Louvre.
I could have an entire blog dedicated to the paintings I took pictures of in there, but there’s no space or time here, so just to say, I saw the Mona Lisa, and the line to see her was long.
You basically had to shove your way in for a pic. After we wandered the Louvre for like, 4 hours, we went next to the Eiffel Tower.
We waited in a line for about 2 hours, to get up near the top.
The view was pretty great. After wandering around a bit longer, we made the journey back to our hotel, and ate at a place near there called, no joke, Yummy Asian Food. It was really tasty, I was surprised. We only have 1 more day of vacation – and I’m looking forward to it!
Today, we went into England! We did all the regular tourist stuff, but the thing that made me the most happy was that I understood everyone! And they all have their delightful English accents, fantastic. The first order of business was to visit a castle – Farleigh Hungerford. We listened to an audio tour while there, that was awesome.
It was a really cool tour, and then we left, on our way to the bustling city. After getting into our hotel, and dropping off our luggage (something that’s fantastic, not having to carry it around with us) we went first to Buckingham Palace.
Sadly, the place wasn’t open to outside tours, not for another week, we just barely missed it! That’s my goal, to get a tour of the inside. After finishing up there, we saw Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey. It’s just regular tourist photos, so I’ll skip those.
We finished up our London day at the Globe, to see a Shakespeare play! It looks so old, it was so awesome to be there, in a part of history.
We saw As You Like It, which was so fun, but SOOO long. I say that because we were in the standing room only seats. So we stood. For 3+ hours. By the end, my feet hurt, my back hurt, my everything hurt. As soon as it was over, we got out of there, got on the subway, back to where the shuttle to our hotel was supposed to be…but we missed it by 10 minutes. So we had to find a cab…who only accepted cash, then an ATM…it was such trauma, but we finally got to our hotel at 1:30. We were exhausted!
Today, we left Venice, flew to England, and then drove to Bath. Driving here is crazy weird! Everyone’s on the wrong side!
On the way to Bath, we stopped at Stonehenge.
It was pretty, but kind of boring, if we’re being honest. There’s not much to do except for…look at these rocks. But that’s all right, another thing off the ol’ bucket list. We then got to Bath, where we had dinner at a house that was a few hundred years (I can’t even remember the name, the Sally Something house) and then we returned to our bed & breakfast, where all 4 of us were sharing a room. That wasn’t too bad, but the house is so old there’s no air conditioning in there, so we’re just boiling! Hopefully it cools down this evening.
Our final day on the cruise, and we are in Venice. We got off the boat, and just like everywhere else, we are immediately blown away by how hot it is. It’s about 98 degrees today, and there’s 95% humidity. Its HOT today. We started just walking around the place, there’s water everywhere, it’s nice.
We made our way across the whole place, and then to St Mark’s Basilica. It was lovely. We couldn’t go in because of the shorts, but that’s all right. Pants would have been awful.
I did enjoy this sign:
“You are in a church. You are not allowed to behave indecently.” AMEN! After shopping a little bit in some shops for fun souvenirs, we landed on masks. They’re a lot of fun.
Now that the cruise is over, I kind of want to come home. We’ve had a blast, and I’ve seen so many things, but I miss home! I miss my house, I miss my Scootaloo, and I miss hearing English where I go.
Today was our final ‘At Sea’ day. We did have one more than originally planned, but that’s ok. The at sea days are relaxing, you’re not rushing around, trying to get places. But on the days that you stay on the ship, the cruise does a “fancy night” at dinner. We happily obliged, and I wanted to share the pics with you guys.
And then, one with the girls:
And then we got one with our servers for the cruise, Manuel and Predrag. These guys were amazing, they took really good care of us, and I loved them! And they never judged us for the amount of Shirley Temples we drank (which was a lot).
Tomorrow is our last day on the cruise, and I’ll be sad to say goodbye to these guys!
Yesterday was an ‘At Sea’ day unexpectedly. We were supposed to be in a different part of Turkey, Kusadasi, but the breaking of our propeller forced us to miss it, which was too bad. But then today, we made it to Athens! It was warm right from the get go – we got to the Acropolis at about 9:00, and already, we were dying, and the sweat was flowing. (you’re welcome) But the first thing we saw on our walk up was Baby Darth’s real name! I was so jazzed to see it.
We walked around the Acropolis, getting pics of the Parthenon, and many other things up there.
After wandering around this place for a good long time, we had to make our way back to the ship, so back we went. It was a nice day there, and I was so glad to find water bottles that cost $0.365 (Euros), because I bought as many of those bottles as would fit in my bag. I’m excited for our next stop!
Happy Independence Day! We spent this American holiday in Turkey…Istanbul, specifically, so not a very American place at all. This place is really beautiful, and there are so many mosques.
We got to the port a few hours later than we had been told we would, during the night, our ship’s propeller stopped working, so we had to slow down to about half speed. Instead of getting to port at 8:00, we got there at about 2:00, and had to be back on board by 7:00. Dang, only a half day. So we made the most of it. First, we went to the Blue Mosque, and since I was in shorts, I had to borrow a dress from them on my way in.
We all also had to borrow head wraps. Husband was the only one that didn’t have to put anything, lucky guy. After the mosque, a local fellow took us to his carpet shop (yes I was nervous he was kidnapping us the whole time) to get a good picture, and boy did we.
They tried to sell us a carpet next but the price they quoted us was so high, we just straight walked out. We then walked around the city, which was sort of difficult because there were some kind of protests going on, and the police was shutting down part of the city. But after we walked around for a while, we made our way to the Grand Bazaar, and that was something. So many things, so many people. We bought some Turkish Delight and a whole bunch of fun spices, and that was neat. Then, it was time to catch a shuttle to the ship – lest we get left behind again. Turkey was really pretty, but this city made me nervous. Maybe it was all the protesters, maybe it was all the police, but I was so grateful to get back on our ship and skedaddle out of there.
Yesterday was an ‘At Sea’ day, so nothing to report. Just much chilling, swimming, eating, etc. Today, we found our way to Mykonos! Really, this is a beautiful place.
We didn’t have too long in this port, just a few hours. We walked into town, and then just explored the whole place, which wasn’t very long. Naturally, we found a gelato place, what luck!
We just walked around, enjoying the view, and the wind that was blowing like, 50 miles an hour and being annoying.
Everything is painted white, and all the doors are painted the same blue. It was lovely.
Pompeii today! And Canada Day! We dressed to celebrate the occasion, in our red clothes.
Oh yeah, we’re a good looking people. We got to the shore (technically, we stopped in Naples, so that’s why Naples and not Pompeii), and boarded a bus to Pompeii. It was a great place, really cool. I’ll just post a couple of pics.
This second picture is an actual person, found like this. That was so sobering to me – actually seeing a person! Wow. We explored a bit more here, and then went to Vesuvius, the volcano. Mostly it’s just scenery shots up there.
It’s a pretty place, I enjoyed the view. Also, it’s not very close to Pompeii at all, so to think about how far the stuff from this volcano had to go to take out that whole city…man. This whole place was really awesome to take in. On the drive home down the mountain, our bus died. Of course it did! Naturally, as the driver is there, trying to get it started, the 4 of us are praying with all our might, praying we don’t miss the boat, or have any other issues. Finally, after the longest 10 minutes of my life, the bus started! Yahoo! We made it down the mountain and back to the ship with no problems. Hallelujah. Onto our next place!
