Day 2: Alençon

May 21

We stayed the night in Alençon-- a city where Nathaniel served on his mission. In the morning when we went to check out, Nathaniel realized that it was the exact same hotel where he used to attend church (with a whopping other nine max other members). 

My love-- a little emotional. This was a hard city for him to serve in.

Downtown Alençon.

We're so cute. :)

EVERY cathedral that we visit, William asks to "make a fire". We visited so many on this trip that we let him every other church or so. :)

Local chocolaterie. Chocolate iPhones. Awesome.

After wandering around some more, we found the beautiful building where N lived winter of 97-98... 2nd floor, both windows. :)

ha! I got a good laugh out of this, but apparently "tampons" just means stamps.

Breakfast of champions! This is just what you do when you're in France.

The "famous" chocolate-butter hot chocolate of that shop. It was amazing!

A chocolate chicken for breakfast-dessert for William. Hey, it's vacation. 

Travel to France!

May 20

Before leaving Europe (in less than a month!!) Nathaniel and I wanted to have one big last trip! Our original plan was to go without our kids and we quickly found a willing friend to take the little two, but had a harder time with William. No one within walking distance of the school could really take him and he can't get on at a different bus stop/route. We had offers from friends just to take him and keep him out of school, but if he was going to miss school- we decided to just take him with us! He's an easy kid (especially when he's not around his brothers) and being six he will also likely remember some of the trip. 

  

 The drive through Paris... it rained the entire drive from Frankfurt to the Northern coast of France. 

We stopped outside of Paris to meet some dear friends for lunch, but didn't go into the city; here's our view of Paris. ;)  

View of the Chartres Cathedral. 

When we showed up we were baffled by all the flags and choral music we heard floating around outside... only to realize that it was a major Catholic holiday (Pentecost Monday-- whoops!) and there were people everywhere... kneeling! We felt rather irreverent with our boys, but still had to get a peek inside:

Some very elaborate service happening here...

Beautiful! *Maybe* one day we'll visit again and actually get to wander around.

William was happy to reach the hotel and to finally have some romping room. :) He was such a good boy!

Sundays in the park

May 19

We were so spoiled to have Grandpa and Aunt Abby fly in a couple weeks ago. We killed time Sunday morning before church at the park, since the weather was actually decent!

Abby and the Rhein River. :) 

The boys were SO hyper! Cameron seemed to be the instigator of most of it. I think they were just excited to have new people on hand to show off for. ;) 

 Thing One and Thing Two. 

Busy!

 Things 1, 2, and 3.

 Little crazy boy! 

 Aww, belly shots. 

 Photobombed by Cameron. I could edit him out, but what fun would that be? 

 Before church the park the boys badgered their artist Aunt Abby to draw some pictures on their white shirts. She's so talented! Cameron wanted a horse, and William's has a picture of fire, his portrait, and a camel... I have no idea what connected the three for him. haha!

Horrifying Entertaining strolling Germans with a goofy dance/song on the bench.  

 Seriously, they were crazy! 

 Grandpa was rather entertained, I think, with their... energy. 

A near miss!