Stay Awake

After an unbroken stretch of sleep, we awoke at 0600 to see snow falling. After that, there was no going back to sleep for the children. They wanted to go outside. I had forgotten how time consuming it was to make sure the kids were dressed to go out in the cold. At 745, we finally made it out the door to visit the bakery across the road. It was still pitch black and by this time, the snow had turned into miserable rain and grey skies.

We brought our loot of an assortment of croissants and pastries back home and demolished it very quickly! We then made use of the apartments included free calls to Australian landlines to call as many people as we could! We only made it through to both parents before we had to leave again to buy provisions, as well as to meet up with Alex, our previous au pair. First stop was the tourist information office where we collected our pre-purchased Museum Pass and Paris Visite Card. Then it was into Monoprix next door to get supplies. The 1L of milk purchased earlier in the morning would not last long in a family who goes through 10L per week. Trying to buy conditioner and sorbolene took longer than expected! And the biggest bottle of milk was only 1.5L...As we walked out the door, who should we see but Alex coming out of the metro. Talk about good timing! Her train from Germany had been delayed because of the snow early in the morning. She had never been to Paris and will spend the weekend with us. I would like to report that the TravelSim that we bought worked perfectly both in Dubai and here in France. So far, we have successfully sent and received text messages as well as making and receiving phone calls. We walked back to the apartment to dump our stuff and start some serious sightseeing.

Snowing on our fist morning in Paris

The children ready to go out!

The entry of our apartment building

The views from our apartment

Jonah enjoying his croissant

Yay we're in Paris!

Alex baked us some vanillekrupferl

The mission today was simple. Stay active, stay outdoors as much as possible and do as much as we could that did not involve too much thinking or concentration, so as to get over any possible jetlag quickly. The weather though, was not on our side. It rained almost continuously. We were prepared for this and soldiered on. Our plan to walk through the Tuileries Garden had to be modified somewhat. We walked under the shelter of Rue de Rivoli instead admiring the wet and soggy gardens from afar until we arrived at the Champs-Élysées. There was a Christmas market lining the avenue all the way from the Place de la Concorde to where the cinemas, luxury shops and theatres began. The rain couldn't dampen the joy of listening to Bing Crosby styled Christmas carols sung in french whilst perusing the goodies. We bought ourselves crepes, gluhwein (which was an absolute must whilst one was a Christmas market never mind that we were in France and not Germany), and had soup and corn for lunch. What more could a family ask for?

Beautiful architecture everywhere

Christmas market in the rain. Fun!

Gluhwein to warm the insides

The most delicious corn ever says the children

He was not giving up that piece of corn for anyone

A very chunky mushroom soup

Well, seeing as the question was asked...The Disney Store of course! We walked in and proudly used our shareholders card to get a 10% discount on our fridge magnet and carry bag. No shame here. Any discount, however we can get it, is a good discount! We pulled the reluctant children out as we had to keep moving to get to our target which was the Arc de triomphe. We climbed all 284 steps to the top of the landmark commissioned by Napolean in the early 1800s. My state of fitness was questionable, lagging behind all three children rather significantly. Luckily Alex was young and fit and could keep up with them...When we arrived at the top, we had a fortunate break in the weather to enjoy the views of the twelve radiating avenues. We may have even had a brief glimpse of a patch of blue skies.

The famous avenue of Paris

We are a rainbow of colour in the sea of trendy Parisians mostly in black or navy.

A most treasured shopping bag

The arc de troiomphe

Oh those painful steps to go up

The monument serves as a tribute to soldiers who served France 

Looking back at the avenue which we walked on. It was a long walk!

Is that...sun?!?!?

What goes up must come down. Legs felt like jello...

A few more shots before moving on

We pressed on and caught the RER to Auber so we could visit the Palais Garnier, the magnificent Opera House of Paris. Even the children could appreciate the grandeur and opulence. All three stood and looked at the auditorium for a long time with Jonah finally asking if we could stay and watch "a show". Unfortunately, there was none scheduled at that particular auditorium during our stay in Paris. We have found our first reason to come back! By now, the rain had returned with a vengeance and so we retreated into the nearby Galaries Lafayette. We briefly admired the huge department store before buying ourselves some food at the food court on the 6th floor. With a view of the Paris skyline, we enjoyed an interesting array of food. One was poached eggs on a bed of green lentils served with a mustard sauce. Sounds odd but tastes good! By this stage, the children were worn out. Something is definitely not right when Jonah looks at ice-cream and doesn't move. He became comatose 5 seconds later and that was cue for us to end the day. He couldn't be roused even with an unceremonious dumping on the couch back at the apartment. An hour and a half later at 5:30pm we lost Lara and shortly after Elliot!

Palais Garnier

Famous composers everywhere

The grand marble staircase

Ornately detailed ceilings

The ceiling inside the auditorium

The crystal chandelier that weighs 8 tonnes!

The velvet lined boxes within the auditorium

Gold!

Admiring the building

Alex hit it off with the children, it was almost as if she had never left

Glorious costumes. So many I would like to wear...

A Disney promotion at the Galeries Lafayette. Lara was happy

Yet another impressive dome, this time within a department store

A huge Christmas tree

Eggs and lentils anyone?!?!?

The comatose Jonah who stayed asleep even after being dumped on the couch!

Whilst we are on the topic of getting back to the apartment, I still can't get over the ridiculousness of the lift. It was advertised to fit three adults. What?!?!? Our record with that particular lift consisted of Malcolm, myself and Elliot hugging each other with great vigour with NO space to spare. It was bad enough with wet coats on. I would not want to share that much love with a stranger, nor in hot weather with someone who is stinky or sweaty. Perhaps this why Parisians stay skinny...

Unfortunately, the rain made it difficult to take photos as I had to protect the camera. It was literally flash it out and shoot before retreating it back to its protective waterproof case.The photos taken today really didn't do any justice to the beautiful architecture we saw today. I fear that this would be the case for most of the trip. Its too hard to see the quality of my photos on my little notebook so they are all being uploaded straight out of the camera. I would like to apologise in advance for quality...

As we retreat for the day, we noticed something that was rather sweet. Our soon to be 23 year old aupair still sleeps with her teddy bear!

Let The Adventure Begin!

After nearly 30 hours of travel from door to door, we have finally arrived in Paris! I am exhausted and in a bit of disbelief that we are finally here!

We left home at 3am for the airport. Emirates check in service was fast! We had to wait  until 4am for immigration to open. Once through, we got ourselves the first of many caffeine shots to inject energy into our already flagging bodies.

The children very excited and waiting for their smoothies to go with their breakfast

Our awesome parents bought some ham and cheese buns because they knew we'd be too disorganised to do anything ourselves...

The only place open at 4am. Smart McDonalds. The other shops opened about half an hour later but it was too late, Most people had already acquired their caffeine boost at the golden arches

Malcolm completely zonked. Waiting to board our plane for Duabi

Our flights thankfully were uneventful. I might even be brave enough to label it highly successful! The children behaved unbelievably well, including young master Jonah. That is until we got off our 14 hour flight to Dubai and realised that we had lost him! He had decided to hide in between the seats on the way out. So embarrassingly we had to re-enter the plane to retrieve him. Our transit at Dubai airport went very quickly, so quickly that I didn't have time to take the camera out. That as it turned out will become the theme of our travel today.

This is our first time flying Emirates and I must say, their service is excellent. The economy seats are no better than others and their isles actually seem a bit smaller, but I love their staff! EVERY single staff member were so warm and friendly. The food and drinks were offered many times throughout our long flights but we had the option to NOT be woken up for meals which I loved. The meals were decent! The children got some pretty cool stuff and were treated like royalty. We will certainly put them right up there with Singapore Airlines.

Flying Emirates on a boeing 777

The kids knew what to do. It was straight to the games

I had my entertainment sorted out

The cabin crew organises a birthday place for Elliot complete with a chocolate cake with  berry coulis! They then took a picture and put it in a frame for us.

Another photo taken by one of many  friendly stewardess. As you can see, the children had no problems sleeping on the plane.

The Birthday photo

One of the meals came in a cool lunchbox...

...that had cool snacks inside it!

The children also received their own fleece blanket which had a monster soft toy to keep it together. I'm impressed!

Our arrival at Charles De Gaul also went super smoothly. We got off the plane at 7:30pm in Paris and looked with dismay at the lonesome 2 officers at immigration. To our surprise though, the lines moved very quickly and by 8pm, we had collected our suitcases, cleared customs and was in our cab heading for Paris. No time for photos!

Traffic was awful! And apparently that was normal. We arrived in our cosy apartment along Rue St Honore in the 1st arrondisement and were met by Patrick, the rental agent. He was friendly and took us through the impressively thorough manual including the all important nearby supermarkets, bakeries, restaurants and public transport. The loft apartment is very small but just enough for our family of 5. It comes complete with a kitchen, washing machine and free wifi.

The first opportunity I had to take a photo after landing!

The ridiculous lift that is so mall it fits only 1 adult.

Our apartment

The ktichen area

Going up...

The beds in the loft

We arrived in Paris to a chilly 3 degrees but our jackets must work because everyone felt hot despite wearing no other layers other than jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt! Let's hope the weather stays good for the remainder of our stay in Paris.

I want to change my date settings so that it displays correctly. However, I seem to be unable to do this despite having done it multiple times before. I am too tired to think. If you are friend reading, please kindly email me some instructions!

The Home Stretch

It is 1:45am. I have 45 minutes before I have to wake the children up. I don't think there's any point sleeping. So a blogging I will go!

It has been a full day. On top of work, and taking the children to swimming classes, there were meetings with the builders, basins to be selected, electrical plans to check, garage doors to be fixed, paperwork to be completed for the banks, a certain GPS with European maps to be located and a necessary visit to the bank to acquire ourselves some Euros! We made it just in time before the banks closed. Luckily for us, the person at the bank seemed to have taken a liking to Malcolm's Egyptian T-shirt. She waived the $15 fee for our travel card. Bonus.

An even bigger bonus were our parents. Both sets had arrived whilst I was picking up the children from school and were seemingly having a party. However, they made themselves very useful...when we came back from swimming, they had taken in and folded my washing, emptied the swimming bag and hung out the wet stuff, mended Malcolm's most treasured travelling pants, and had dinner prepared on the table. On the menu tonight was Peking duck accompanied by wonton soup. My parents were worried that we might miss good Chinese food while we were away. I wasn't about to complain. Between our parents, they washed up after dinner, cleared out our fridge, cleaned our kitchen and took our excess rubbish away in their car. The list of useful things they did continued...bathing the children, putting them to bed, and my father volunteering to drive us to the airport at 3am! We really would have been in big desperate doo doo if not for both sets parents. We've also received an offer from our dear friend to collect our mail while we are away. God is good!

Peking Duck for dinner

Wonton soup

Unfortunately, there were some things that had to be left undone. Tours and transfers that were meant to be booked didn't happen. We nearly forgot to check in for our flights! For the first time in a long time, we will be winging parts of our trip. There are probably a few other things I have forgotten, but I'm past the point of caring. I am just glad that it is finally time to go.

Au revoir!

Playing "match the lock and key" and "remember the code" past midnight was not  an easy task!

All packed and ready to go. 3 suitcases and 5 carry ons.

In Him We Trust

The days has certainly flown by and suddenly we have less than two days before we leave for Paris!

Much has happened since I last posted, with one of the most significant being Elliot’s confirmation of faith. As parents, Malcolm and I were filled with joy to see that he has indeed taken ownership of his personal walk with Christ. We are ever so grateful for our wonderful church community for supporting us and our children, providing help, guidance, and fellowship. Elliot’s growth in Christ over the years is a demonstration of God’s faithfulness and grace, that despite our flaws as parents and as humans, Elliot has developed a desire to learn more about God and get closer to Him. Most importantly, this desire is not borne out of the need to make us happy, but rather grew out of the realisation that he needed to constantly keep Christ as the focus in his life.


Elliot with our pastor



The children with their great grandfather

This led me to reflect on my personal journey. Do I lean on God in my life? Do I trust Him with all my heart, and submit to him in all my ways? What difference does Jesus make to the goals of my life, to what I’m looking forward to and working towards? Strangely enough, the devotions that I was working through asked the same questions, and yielded help in the form of guidance to the relevant bible passages.

I had become so focused on our trip at the end of the year that it had become my ultimate “destination”. How very shallow of me. If my life were to end, I would have had many regrets with how I spent my days! My head knew what to do, but my heart had slowly succumbed to all the worldly worries and materialism. I haven’t been living for Christ and His kingdom. I haven’t been leaning on God and truly trusting Him. Rather, I’ve been trying to use my own strength and taking things into my own hands. It was a timely reminder to reset my priorities.

I have done as much as I physically can and I must admit that it was a struggle to surrender the “outcome” to God, to remember that God will always provide us with what we need. And that need may not necessarily be one of comfort or relief but refinement! It was also a challenge with the chaos of life to remember to serve others ahead of myself, to respond with love and patience even when I’m tired.

God has been faithful and He has provided. Friends have stepped in and helped out with commitments that I was struggling with. Building glitches have been ironed out with minimal fuss. My sister-in-law has come up with amazing designs for our new home despite being time poor herself. With the lack of childcare in the past week, family and friends have stepped in cheerfully. My parents have provided meals and school lunches for the children. Malcolm’s parents have taken the children to their dental appointments and extracurricular activities. Even my brother is doing my laundry! I am blessed with a boss who trusts me to manage my work time at home and a husband who is proactive and takes a real interest in every aspect of the household.

There are a few things still unresolved. One of them is childcare for next year. We have been searching for a new au pair as the one who was going to join our family pulled out. It has been a frustrating 4 weeks trying to find a candidate. I had previously been of the mindset that I HAD to get it sorted before we left before I came to the realisation that I was trying to force something to happen. I needed to trust that I had done all that I could and that God will do the rest, bringing the right person for our family at the right time.

The late nights and early mornings trying to finish all my tasks have taken its toll. I feel exhausted. However, I am in good spirits! We have had great moments of celebrations with family and friends. How could I not be happy when my family gives me such awesome presents! Or I could simply be delirious after the hit in the head I received whilst trying to clean the car out! Either way, I am looking forward to crashing on the plane on the way to France and grateful to have been given the opportunity to enjoy the wonder and beauty of God’s creation with my family.

My collector's item - Royal Doulton's Snow White

Mickey Mouse by Jim Shore