Our Near Death Experience :)

**Note: In no way was this story made-up or exaggerated. This story is meant to supply us with sincere sympathy for our near tragic experience. :)**


Sam and I had a near death experience last night!! We were getting ready for bed, I had just finished reading my scriptures and then we said our nightly prayer. I hopped back into bed and then Sam went over to his side of the bed, opened up the covers and then freaked out. I of course jumped out of bed to see what he freaked out about. Then I saw it. . . the BIGGEST black widow spider came crawling out from under the covers of our bed!! Talk about terrifying! Anyone who knows me KNOWS that I have arachnophobia! I had just been in bed, under the covers for about 10 minutes, unknowing what lurked under the covers. *shiver* We quickly killed the little critter, and then put all new sheets, blankets, EVERYTHING on our bed. After that little incident, we freaked out over any itchy feelings or sudden movements. Let's hope we don't relive that experience. If that happens again, we'll definitely be calling the Orkin man! :)

BTW- I'm wishing I had seen the cartoon spider at the beginning of this post instead of the actual spider. *shiver*

Holy cow! 4 Years?!?!?!

No, we were not abducted by aliens, but our phone & internet haven't worked in 2 weeks! GRRR!! We called the phone company and they finally sent someone out to fix it. How much I have missed you internet!! :)! Now I have some updating to do!

Not too much is going on with us. Sam and I just celebrated our 4th anniversary!!! I SOOO can't believe it! It seems like just yesterday. Since our anniversary landed on a Wednesday, we decided to celebrate on the weekend before. We went down to LA and saw the Getty Museum. We enjoyed the Getty Museum. It wasn't as good as we thought it would be, but we still had a good time. It's just difficult to go to any art museums after coming back from some of the greatest art museums in the world (The Louvre, the Musee D'Orsay, the Orangerie, etc). I'm sure we'll go back to the Getty Museum though.

The gardens were just beautiful! Everything was in bloom and it was a beautiful day! It was soo cute seeing people carrying their sun umbrellas as they were strolling through the garden! So cute!

More of the gardens.

After the Getty Museum, we went to Santa Monica beach. We were a little bummed because it was WAY overcast and cold at the beach (cursed June gloom!!). In fact, Sam and I were both huddled in our beach towels, because of course we didn't bring any sweaters! Sam took a nap on the beach and I was able to read Twilight! What a life! :)

I was pretty happy just being at the beach. Can ya tell?!?


What a cutie! Hands off girls . . . he's all mine! :)

After the beach, we went to dinner at Red Robin and then we came home. It was a short little trip, but I can't complain since our big trip was, of course, Paris. It was nice just to get away and spend time together. Now it's back to the world of Sam studying and me packing up my classroom. Only 15 more school days left! I'll be happy to have a new group of students, but I'm really sad to leave all my co-workers! We'll see what happens!

Paris Trip, Part Trois

Sorry it's taken me so long to post . . . it's been SUPER windy at our house and our internet doesn't work when it's windy out (it's on my list of things to fix this summer!)

Ok, before I go into the rest of our week at Paris, I wanted to post some pics of our 3-course meal because we had never had one before! The food was all SOO yummy! Look at it!

This was our salad course. We had potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and various meats over the salad. Yummy!

The main course was really yummy too! We had a hash brown, which was pretty random, if you ask me. We also had chicken in this awesome sauce, with a side of vegetables.

My favorite course. . . dessert and cheese! We had 2 kinds of pieces and 2 kinds of cheese along with some AWESOME rice pudding! I'm salivating just thinking about it! :)

On Thursday, we went to the Palace of Versailles, which is about 30 minutes outside of Paris. The palace is, of course, beautiful! This is where the famous Louis XIV lived at the height of the French empire. Everything was coated in gold and the rooms were just spectacular! This is also where Louis' grandson, Louis XVI lived along with his infamous wife, Marie Antoinette. It was a pretty interesting place surrounded by lots of history!

This is the Hall of Mirrors. The room was just filled with gorgeous mirrors and chandeliers. This is also the room where they signed the end of World War I. As I was walking around the palace I was thinking, "If I was a French peasant eating rats off the street because my rulers squandered all of my money, I would revolt too!" Eating rats of the street, what a disgusting thought!

The gardens outside the Palace of Versailles were just as impressive as the palace itself! But by this point we were all pretty tired. We took a few pics and walked around like a tenth of the gardens before we decided to head back to Paris. The fountain behind us was BEAUTIFUL, but covered in naked people so I couldn't post a more detailed pic! :)

After the Palace of Versailles, we went to the Orangerie to see Monet's greatest masterpieces. . . his water lily series. It's pretty awesome because the whole museum is in the shape of an oval, so the pics are conformed to the oval walls. It really feels like you're surrounded by water lilies. I LOVED it! :)

Later on Thursday evening, we went to St. Louis Isle , which is a part of Paris. It has the cutest shops there, and some not so cute shops. We did see a dead chicken with its head still attached. Talk about gross! Then we saw some cute gadget stores along with lots of bakeries (yum!).

A gorgeous view of the Notre Dame cathedral. I just love the clouds in this pic. Surrounding the River Siene, there are TONS of book sellers. You can find some really old and out of print books there. . . none of them tempted me because . . . I can't read French! :)! It was still fun to look!

This is one of my favorite pics from our trip! Way to go camera man Sam! This was taken from the Place de Concorde.

A pic of a fountain at the Place de Concorde. Just to the left of this pic, there was the best place that sold crepes and waffles. Sam had never had a crepe before, but once he did he was hooked! :). The chocolate crepes were SOOOO delicious! Part of that was because of the yummy Nutella that the French put on almost everything! We fell in love with the Nutella. In fact, as soon as we returned home to the US, the first thing we did was buy some Nutella at the grocery store. Yum!

We began our Friday by going to the Luxembourg gardens, which were of course beautiful. Then we wandered over to the Latin Quarter to see the Pantheon. I guess that no one really knows what to call the Pantheon. It was once a church, but now it's a cemetery for Joan of Arc (how they know that I'll never know!), Victor Hugo, and lots of other people.

But the reason why we went was to hike up to the top of the dome and experience the view. Boy was it a view! It was pretty odd walking on the dome, but it was worth it.

Next, we went over to the Montmartre area for a guided walking tour. Unfortunately our tour began at the base of the hill, just outside the Moulin Rouge. I have never wanted to leave a place so badly in my life. There were all these people posing in front of the Moulin Rouge and I was too scared to even sit on a bench in fear of getting an STD. That area was SOOO dirty!

Once we had walked 2 blocks away, I felt MUCH better! We saw some really cool sites on our tour. Our first stop was at the cemetery. It was the coolest cemetery because it seriously reminded me of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Look at that pic and tell me it doesn't look the same. In fact, the whole time we were at the cemetery I kept singing the Haunted Mansion song to Sam!! Hahaha!

Montmartre is famous for its artists from the turn of the century (Van Gogh, Degas, and several other well known artists). But my favorite part was just all the ADORABLE neighborhoods, complete with cobblestone roads and beautiful flowers!!

Sam and I in Montmartre.

Montmartre is also famous for all of the painters who just hang out in the streets painting lots of pictures. Sam and I bought a few small paintings there and my parents bought a BEAUTIFUL painting (which was a pain to haul home! :)).

At the top of the Montmartre lies the Sacre Coeur cathedral. It is built out of travertine which gets whiter with age, and it's pretty white. The inside wasn't as pretty as the outside, but the view outside of the cathedral was just astounding. It was quite the cake topper for the ending of our trip!

On Saturday we woke up early (3AM) only to have our prepaid shuttle not arrive (they told us the night before that they would show up at 4AM). Luckily, we were able to get a taxi there, but we almost missed our 7:30AM flight, thanks. In fact, we had just gotten through security when our flight started to board. We had a pretty miserable flight. It was bumpy, we had a 5-hour layover in London, plus an 11 hour flight and it just wasn't enjoyable. By the time that we got home, we had been up for 26 hours! We were pretty happy to see our bed! :)

All in all, we had a great trip. The people were generally friendly, the food was great, and the sights were beautiful. I wouldn't mind going back. In fact, my Dad was talking about going back to Strasbourg, which is where he served his mission and it's right on the German border. Now that would be a fun trip! I think I've had enough flying for now. We'll see where we go next!

Paris Trip, Part Duex

Ok, I think I'm ready to post more pics (it takes FOREVER to upload our pics! It's worth it though!)

On Tuesday morning, we headed straight to the Eiffel Tower. We arrived at 9:30AM, and it was already packed! We bought our tickets and took the 2 elevators to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Holy cow, it's pretty high up!! While at the top, Sam was clenching to every wall that he could, just to stay away from the edge! My hubby is a little scared of heights! This pic was taken from the top of the Eiffel Tower. . . how romantic!! :)

Although Sam's pretty scared of heights, he had this horrible habit of sticking our camera over the edge of anything tall and taking a pic of looking down. So in this pic, Sam stuck our camera over the edge (I was cringing the whole time in fear of him dropping it!!) and took a pic looking down. You can see how tall it is!

We learned that when the Eiffel Tower was first built, all these rich people moved away from Paris because they thought that the tower was going to fall over. We thought it was pretty funny!

Looking up from the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.

Us in front of the Eiffel Tower. No joke, as we were walking down the Champ de Mars to take this pic, there was a cute old man playing French music on his accordion. It was the cutest thing!! I took video of it, but it's too big to post. I'll let you imagine that the old man playing his accordion is this background music! :)

After the Eiffel Tower, we went to The Invalides. This is where Napoleon (not Dynamite, but Bonaparte) is buried within 6 coffins. Yes that's right, 6 coffins. The French are pretty obsessed with Napoleon. After we saw Napoleon's coffins, we went to the World War 1 & 2 Museums. It was pretty interesting hearing the French's version of the war. They also slightly underestimated our country's contributions to the war. . . ok they TOTALLY underestimated our contributions. But it's their museum, so I guess they can tell the story any way that they want. It was still awesome to see all the artifacts and pics!


Next, we went to the Musee D'Orsay. This was one of my favorite museums that we went to. It was made out of an old train station and the building is just beautiful! This museum was less crowded, had a better layout, and more of the art that I'm more interested in- the Impressionists, because let's face it, I can only stand a naked Jesus Christ for so long (that seems to have been the subject of many paintings in the Louvre). So we really enjoyed this museum!

They have this whole Impressionist wing at the Musee D'Orsay and they had many works from my favorite artist, Edgar Degas! I was pretty excited! I just LOVE his ballerina pics! They even had his bronze statue of a ballerina (it's a pretty famous statue)! I was in heaven!


There were also many works by the sculptor, Rodin. His pieces are amazing, but usually totally naked. This door was the only piece I could show you where you can't see naked people on it. You can also see "The Thinker" at the top of the door.

To complete our jam packed Tuesday, we went to the Arc de Triumphe, a monument created for who else but Napoleon. It also is located right in the middle of the Champ de Elysee, an awesome shopping area. We took the elevator to the top and took lots of great pics there!




I had to post a video of the traffic that surrounds the Arc de Triumphe. Around the Arc, is the largest round about that I've ever seen. As you can notice, there are no lines within the round about. It looks like absolute chaos, but I guess it's not. As you'll see, the cars that are entering the round about have right of way over the cars that are already there. They're REALLY aggressive drivers though, so it looks like there are going to be tons of accidents there. I could've been there for hours just watching the traffic and the almost accidents. Plus, it was so beautiful to be there at dusk. Alas, we had to get back to our ghetto hotel! :)

Wednesday was probably my favorite day of our trip. We had arranged to take an excursion to see the countrysides and WW2 battlefields in Normandy. We traveled for most of the day in a bus, but it was nice just to sit back and let somebody else take us around! :). On our way, we passed by so many cute villages. They all just looked so picturesque! I was loving it! We also saw lots of cows and believe it or not, but their cows look totally different from American cows. I can't tell you how they're different, but they definitely are!



Our first stop was at the Point de Hoc. This is where the Germans had lots of canons that were overlooking the ocean. In the first part of D-Day, a special unit had to get to the shore, scale the HUGE cliffs, and then dismantle the canons. They were able to accomplish the task, but we lost lots of men!

Before the Americans came to shore, we bombed that area heavily. There are the biggest craters at Point de Hoc, created from these bombs. Most of these craters are taller than I am. You can see how tall they are in this pic. They also had bunkers that were totally ripped apart by the bombs. It was weird to see concrete totally blown apart and thrown around like nothing! It was neat to see!

Ok, I actually lied because our first stop was at the Peace Museum, where they showed this really emotional video about what happened during the Battle of Normandy. After the museum (and an awesome 3-course lunch. . . I guess we're pretty uncultured because that was our first 3- course meal!), we began to see the battle sights.

This pic is at Omaha Beach, where 3,000 American soldiers died. It was such a terrible battle and totally unfair too! Surrounding Omaha Beach are huge cliffs where the Germans had bunkers and weapons that were dug into the cliffs. Those poor American soldiers were just sitting ducks! We would have lost that battle, but the Germans ran out of ammunition. Lucky for us! It was very humbling being on that beach, and thinking back to that video at the Peace Museum where I had seen actual footage of American soldiers being massacred. It was very emotional!

Next, we went to the American Cemetery, where most of those who lost their lives during Normandy were buried. It reminded me a lot of Arlington Cemetery where all you can see is a sea of crosses, reminding you of people who died to fight for our rights. I definitely got very teary eyed when I thought about all that these men went through so that I can could stand and observe the beauty of this country. To think that could've happened if that war would've gone the other way! It was truly a humbling experience that I don't think I can quite capture correctly into words!

Lastly, we saw the British and the Canadian Beaches. It seemed totally unfair when we saw these beaches! The British and the Canadians had totally flat beaches and they had a much easier time than the Americans. However, once they made it past the beaches, they still had huge obstacles with not knowing the land or where the Germans were.

I REALLY enjoyed our Normandy excursion. It was good to get out of the city and see some countryside. I also knew that Sam and my Dad are huge history buffs, so I figured they'd really enjoy it. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it as well!

Well, I'm going to stop and post the rest of this in a few days! Enjoy! :)

We're Back!! :)!!!

Well, we're back!!! We had such a fabulous time, but we're both suffering from jet lag MAJORLY (Paris is 9 hours ahead of us. . . talk about a time change!). So if this post is a little incoherent, that's why! :). We really enjoyed Paris. It's a BEAUTIFUL city! A little stinky and dirty(it smelled like urine in some places), but beautiful. The food was SOOO amazing! We didn't have a bad meal the whole time we were there! Amazingly enough, we found the French to be rather pleasant fellows. I guess it helps that Dad speaks French! Overall, we had a REALLY good time.

Well, I have SOOO many pics to post that I decided to do different posts over the next few days!

This is a pic of the fields of France as we were flying in on Saturday, April 11th. I didn't realize how much farming is done there. I guess I assumed France was mostly cities...boy was I wrong!

Once we got to Paris and got all settled into our hotel (which was a total dive, might I add. It was also in a non-touristy area, so I guess we got a more authentic experience), Dad, Sam and I decided to hike up to Montmartre and get some pics. Montmartre is the tallest hill in Paris and so it has some great views. It was raining so most of the pics didn't turn out so well. Montmartre is a REALLY cute area with lots of little shops. So we at least enjoyed the surroundings!

On Easter Sunday, we were suppose to go to church and we were all really looking forward to going. However, Sam and I set our alarm clock for PM instead of AM, and we woke up really late. We quickly got ready and called a taxi to take us to church, but of course the taxi never showed up. So we took the Metro (the subway) into the center of town and just acted like tourists. This is Sam and I at the Tuilleries (a garden) which surrounds the Louvre Museum.

Here is one side of the Louvre Museum

We also took a nice leisurely stroll next to the Seine River, which runs next to the Tuilleries.

Later that day, we took a bus tour of Paris. It was nice just to see the city and not have to be walking anymore! I LOVE this pic! This is one of our first views of the Eiffel Tower.

After our bus tour, Sam and I walked over to the Opera House.The Phantom of the Opera was set at this Opera House. It even has an underground lake! We didn't get to go inside, but it's gorgeous just the same!

Sunday night, Dad, Sam and I went to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up. Talk about amazing!

It also glitters on the hour for 3 minutes! So cute!

On Monday, we went to the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was, of course, beautiful, but VERY crowded. Notre Dame is called Point Zero, which is where the center of Paris is.

The detail around Notre Dame were just awesome. And to think that someone had to hand carve all of that!!

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral. You know, I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to see Quazimoto while we were there. Perhaps we'll have to go back to Paris just so that I can see him! Sanctuary!!!! :)

The back side of Notre Dame. Perhaps I'm just non-observant, but I just learned that most cathedrals are built into the shape of a cross! You can kind of see the top part of the cross in this pic. I was amazed to see how ornate this cathedral is!

This nice, retired French man offered to take a pic of the 4 of us. I'm not sure exactly what he said, but he seemed nice.

Also on Monday, we went to the biggest museum in Europe, the Louvre Museum. It was a pretty impressive museum with lots of famous pieces. However, it was CROWDED, hot, and the layout was very confusing. We saw some awesome art pieces, but it wasn't my favorite museum. Here Sam and I are in front of the pyramid at the Louvre.

Ah, the Louvre's pride and joy- the Mona Lisa. You know, it's really interesting looking at the painting because it's really quite small. I had always pictured it as a large painting, but it's very tiny. It's still a sight to see!

One of the rooms in the Louvre. Talk about a little on the ornate side. Look at all the gold and paintings! Just breathtaking!

Later on Monday night, we went for a river cruise down the Seine River. We went right at dusk and it was just beautiful. Sam took like 100 pics just while we were on the river cruise. There are just so many bridges and beautiful things to see, especially from the view from the river!

Another view from our river cruise. I just love how ornate all of the buildings are. The French really pay close attention to detail that it's just amazing!!

Well, I'm going to continue this within the next few days (I need to give my computer and keyboard a much needed break)!