Home Sweet Home

We made it home last night around 10:30. Our little dog was so happy to see us - she wagged her tail so hard I thought she might break herself in 2! We were so tired that we slept very well. This morning we have been putting stuff away and doing laundry. It feels good to be home even though we will miss being on this wonderful journey together as a family! We will work on organizing our 6000 pictures we took this week. I thought I would write a last blog since we were unable to do it in Paris since the wifi wasn't working on our computer for some reason.

We left Switzerland on Wednesday. It was hard to say goodbye to Joe and Kristin - we had such a great time visiting with them. We drove to the Paris airport and dropped off our rental car - we had grown quite fond of it as we spent much time in it on our journey. It was a Chevy with good trunk space that we appreciated much with our luggage. It was a diesel and manual transmission which both are most common for European cars. It was larger than most cars in Europe so parking in the tiny parking spots was sometimes a challenge, but it served us well. We then took a train to near where we were staying and had to walk with all our luggage about a mile. We found out when we arrived that the air conditioning was broken, which was a  bummer since it was so very hot in Paris. We enjoyed a dinner down the street, and then rested that evening. The next day we took the subway to the Eiffel tower. We walked around taking pictures near there - we had to stop for a nutella banana crepe on the street for lunch. We stood in line for a while to take the elevator to the top of the Eiffel tower - what a view that was of Paris! We ate dinner on the river, then took an evening river tour which took us by some amazing buildings and beauty. It ended just as the Eiffel tower lit us with millions of twinkly lights - that was a sight to see! By that time it was after 10, so we headed to the subway, after taking 1 line, then getting on to the line we needed to switch to for our hotel, Scott realized he left our bag of souveneirs at the last stop, so he jumped of the train and said he would meet us at the hotel. We got to our stop (thanks to Adam remembering which it was) but when we got there, we realized Scott had 2 of our passes in his pocket, so we couldn't get out of the terminal. We sat and waited for him for about 45 min. until midnight - but by then we were getting a little freaked out and Ashley had to go potty, so we ducked under the things that stop you from going through (don't know what you call them) and started the 1 mile walk to the hotel in the dark! Not far into our walk Scott came running to us - he had found the bag - no one had taken it or thrown it away which is amazing! It was very late when we finally got to bed, so the next morning, we slept in and got a late start for touring. We went to Notre Dame, and missed getting to tour it by just a few minutes :( Then we walked to the lock bridge and we put our lock on it. We toured around for the rest of the day, then went back to our hotel. Paris was nice, but I have to admit I would have probably enjoyed it better if we weren't at the end of our trip and pretty tired. We had to check out the next day by noon, so we packed up and decided to go on to the airport since walking around the city with all our luggage didn't sound too fun. We arrived at the airport at 1ish and we found a Starbucks and had a drink. We had to hang out at the airport most of the day until our flight at 9:40pm. We arrived in Dublin at 10:30pm and checked into staying at a hotel there at the airport, but wouldn't you know, there was not a room to be found, so we found some chairs and settled down for the night. It was a long night without much sleep, except for Ashley and Madison who found a way to push chairs together to make a bed. We flew out at 9am to Newerk, then took a tram to another terminal, hopped on a plane to Cleveland, then had a 4 hour layover before our flight to PDX. So by the time we got into PDX, we figured out we had been in the airport or on a plane for close to 40 hours.

We loved the opportunity to go on this trip, and I know we will remember it forever! I plan to scrapbook it over the year so we can look back and remember all the fun things we experienced together. We were so happy to get to share our trip with all of you that followed along with us through our blog! Thank you especially for the prayers - we were covered by so many along the way and knew that God was going before us and protecting us. Here are some pictures from Paris!! Enjoy ~ Angela