Birthday trip - part 2

The next morning we woke up bright and early (there was not a lot of sleeping in on this trip) and drove north to the Luberon region.

We stopped for breakfast at the cutest, tiniest little town called Lourmarin, where we bought some pastries at the local patisserie and some of the best apricots and raspberries we've ever had at the farmer's market.



Then we headed further north to the lovely town of Bonnieux. Seriously, nearly every town in this region is picture perfect.



We rented a pair of e-bikes (for my benefit, since I haven't ridden a bike in years and definitely wouldn't have made it up and down all those hills without it), and then set off on the most gorgeous ride. We passed sunflower fields, lavender fields, more adorable towns, and just the most beautiful scenery. It was delightful.







Saignon








Part of our bike route took us over this ancient Roman bridge called Pont Julien.




What you can't tell from these pictures is that the e-bikes were really cumbersome and too large for me. After falling multiple times in my first attempts to get started that morning, I ended up having to rewind my life about 25 years and have Chase steady my bike and give me a little push to get started. It was slightly mortifying, but mostly hilarious. I therefore stopped as little as I possibly could that day!
Chase, of course, is amazing and never turned the assist on, meaning he was pedaling a massively heavy bike up all those hills, and I still never even passed him until the end!

After returning our bikes in Bonnieux, we drove west to Arles. This is where Van Gogh lived for quite some time and did many of his paintings here. We both love Van Gogh's artwork, so we enjoyed coming and seeing all the plaques and tributes they have up around the city.

The hospital where Van Gogh stayed for a time.

Les Alyscamps. We have a print of the painting he did here in our entryway, for those who have been to our house.

Cafe Terrace at Night

There is an ancient Roman arena here where they still hold events. So cool. 

So we went to one! They have bull "games" in Southern France, where some strings and things are tied to the bulls horns, and a whole bunch of teenage boys run around trying to get them off and not get hurt in the process. It was pretty entertaining for awhile, but by the end it had gotten a bit repetitive. If you ever go, you can leave at half-time and miss nothing.


Jumping over the wall to escape the bull.

After the bull games we ate a delicious meal and then wandered around the city some more.

Rhone river

We found the "Starry Night over the Rhone" plaque just as it started getting dark enough to actually look like the painting. This one was my favorite of all the painting locales we saw that day.

It was a long, full, fun day. 

Birthday trip - part 1

One thing you might not know about me is that I always remember my half birthday. We don't really celebrate, per se, but I do rather expect Chase to at least acknowledge the event. I know it's kinda silly, but growing up with a summer birthday, my half birthday was when I was celebrated in class, the day my mom would bring in cupcakes, etc. So the date is pretty ingrained in me.

Anyway, so this past January, Chase handed me a card on my half birthday, and I was pleased that he'd remembered. But when I opened it I was shocked to see what he had written: We were going to France!

Turns out he'd been secretly saving for the past several years so that he could take me to France for my 30th birthday.

I know, right? He's a keeper.

Thus began several months of planning and over-researching because that's what I do. Finally, on July 4th, we left our kids and America behind for a couple of weeks and headed off on our adventure! (Many thanks to both sets of grandparents for helping our kids have an absolutely fabulous time while we were gone!)

I love London, and I couldn't resist spending a day there first, since we were going to have to have a layover there anyway.

We started out at the British library, which has one of my favorite special collections displays ever. We also went to King's Cross station, right next door to it, because one must take a look at Platform 9 3/4. Unfortunately there was a long queue to take your picture there, so we skipped that and went for a nice long walk all around the city, stopping at All Hallow's by the Tower, the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge.


Then we went and attended evensong at St. Paul's cathedral, which was lovely. I may or may not have dozed off in the middle, but hey, I was going on less than two hours of sleep.

After dinner we attended a play at The Globe. It's such a cool place to see a Shakespearean play, but man, were we disappointed. They had modernized the play, complete with added musical numbers, and it was rather horrific. We left at intermission. I heard other audience members grumbling about it too, so I know it wasn't just us!


















But that gave us extra time to walk around some more, so it all worked out.

The next morning we left bright and early for a flight to Toulouse, France.

We ate lunch there and spent a little bit of time walking around.

Then we drove east to Carcassonne. If visiting a castle is on your list of things to do in life, this is a good one to go see.

Walking around the castle ramparts at night was particularly magical, but we had fun during our daytime audio tour as well. 

 

Catapult stones:

     



After checking out of our hotel, we made the rather lengthy drive to Aix-en-Provence, where we hurriedly dropped our bags and then caught a train down to Marseille. Why, you ask? Because the semi-final game of the Eurocup between France and Germany just so happened to be that evening, and Chase had gotten us tickets!

The fans on the metro were really excited. And loud. I loved it!

Outside the velodrome

The crowd was loud and boisterous and no one ever sat down the whole time, and it was so exciting to be there, especially since France won! People were celebrating in the streets way into the wee hours of the night. By 3:00 am the constant honking and shouting was getting a little bit annoying, though. :)

Chase caught one of the goals on video:

It was a great start to our trip!

Livia's baptism

Livia turned 8 years old this past April, which meant she was old enough to be baptized into our church! We were so proud of her for choosing to be baptized, and she was so excited about it. 

She was also pretty excited about the dress she picked out. :)

We had fun taking pictures of her in her baptism dress.

The day of her baptism was lovely. We had family come into town for the event, and seeing everyone is always so wonderful. The program was great, too, and Livia came out of the water positively beaming. It was a good day.

Thank you to everyone who could come and share this wonderful occasion with us!

Winter break - February 2016

So, clearly it's been awhile since I've posted anything. I'm just going to catch up on the big stuff.

Back in February we all took our first trip to Hawaii. We had a blast!

Here, watch a slideshow.

C'est fini

Last week was my deadline for my 101 in 1001 goals. It's funny, even though it was a completely arbitrary deadline, I really felt the pressure to get everything done by midnight on December 3, 2015!

I was able to cross off

12. Organize my recipes into a binder

13. Update our will

14. Read "Anna Karenina"

22. Visit Hearst Castle (We did a quick trip one Saturday, and it is definitely worth a visit. I want to go back sometime without kids and do the additional tours we skipped)

52. Begin PAF (So, over the course of these past three years, Personal Ancestral Files kinda ceased to exist. Everything is just on Family Search now. So I altered the goal to find someone to input into our family tree. It helps that one side of Chase's family tree is virtually blank, so I didn't have to go back too far)

80. Take a free online class (I took a class on the psychology of play on futurelearn.com. It was great!)

You're probably wondering, "okay, but how many did you actually accomplish?! What is the final count?!" 

So, without further ado, I give you my final score....

99/101

Not too bad, eh?

The final goals I was not able to accomplish were

62. Learn to do a backward walk-over
To be honest, I never even attempted this one. It was probably over-ambitious.

83. Learn to do the splits
This is the only one that makes me sad, because I wanted to do it SO BADLY! And I really tried. I stretched regularly, and even on that final night spent a solid 2 hours stretching. But I just can't get past those last 2 inches. Yet. :)

I have always been a goal-oriented person, the go-getter type. And it was really quite fun and satisfying for me to be able to make all these goals and then accomplish them. I'm not going to start another list soon, but I would absolutely do it again someday. Some of these goals I would have accomplished anyway, but many would not have happened. I know this for a fact because it took a lot of hard work for me to get them done in time! Putting my recipes into a binder, burning all my home videos onto dvd, scanning my journals, prepare my 72 hour kits, taking a free online class, setting up off-site storage for important photos/documents, and finishing my London album are all things I had been wanting to do for some time, but which took a LOT of time and effort, and would simply still have been sitting on the back-burner were it not for this exercise.

I was also so pleasantly surprised to rediscover through these goals some things that I really love. Number 37 was to go see a musical or play. I had not been to a musical in years when I made this goal. Guess how many I've been to now? Actually, I can't even count, but it's been at least half a dozen. Same with going to the opera and ballet. I love these things! I would so much rather go to this kind of performance than see a movie, and I don't know that I would have remembered that had I not had this push to spend the money and try them out again.

In summation, this was a fabulous experience. If you are at all the type of person who likes to make goals, I would highly recommend it.

It also taught me how important it is to make very specific goals. So instead of saying, "I'm going to get in shape," or "I'm going to exercise more," making goals like a number of push-ups you can do, or how fast you can complete a mile, or being able to hold a handstand for 5 seconds allows you to measure your progress and gives you actual, attainable goals. Not, "I'm going to be a better mom," but "I'm going to spend the last five minutes at bedtime sitting beside my kids and talking to them every night." That's something you can measure. Time limits can be helpful, too: "I will read 3 books by March."

Just something for me to keep in mind as I make my new year's resolutions in a few weeks. :)

101 in 1001 update

There are only three weeks left until the deadline for my goals, and I've been hard at work trying to get them all accomplished! In the past couple of months I've been able to cross off

21. Visit Napa

28. Sew new pillow covers

29. Sew a skirt (turns out this was harder than I anticipated. It was originally supposed to be a skirt for me, and ended as a skirt for Livia because I botched the measuring so badly. Clearly this is an area I can keep working on. In the meantime, Liv was pretty excited about it!)

51. Organize my e-life (itunes, computer folders, bookmarks, etc.)

53. Try to get old family pictures from Self, Baldwin, and Adamson side  (I still don't have a lot, but I at least have something from each branch of the family now)

57. Prepare 72 hour kits

67. Learn two new embroidery stitches

71. Buy lipstick and wear at least once

74. Attend the temple at least 10 times

85. Go on a double date (okay, so it was more of a group date, but I'm counting it!)

89. Put emergency supplies in both cars

94. Ride a trolley in San Francisco  (my girls loved this. They said it was like a roller coaster)

96. Re-read the New Testament

That brings me to a grand total of 93 goals accomplished, and 8 more to go!