Trip to Pomideau Museum

Fountains near the Pomideau


outside the Museum

What can I say, but this piece of Rothko was stunning.

This picture says it all.

The Louvre

Here are some pictures:

The Building itself is beautiful. I tried to capture some of the details of the building. It truly was amazing!

The second part of the trip"Paris"

After spending 3 days in Southern France, we took a train back to Paris. I loved experiencing two different parts of France. I loved both for different reasons. One of my most Favorite parts about Paris was ridding bikes all over the city. They have an awesome public transportation system, and it was so liberating riding a bike everywhere you went. In Paris, EVERY building looks important, and there are so many little monuments. I think if you take the subway, or trains, you miss a lot fun stuff.

We arrived in Pairs in the late afternoon, and checked into our hotel that was near the Eiffel tower. That night we toured the Eiffel tower and sites around it. Call me a tourist, but I really enjoyed it. The next couple nights we stayed near the Momantre area. I didn’t want to have a cramming session of every museum, so we only went to a few. We saw the Louvre (which I really, really enjoyed. I thought I wouldn’t like it as much as I did, but even though it contains almost all of the art I learned in Art history 100, the artworks are still pretty amazing in real life). We saw the Pompidou (it was ok… which I thought I would of loved it. Funny I know). Rodin Museum, and Versailles (very cool).






*Side note: I think the coolest thing, I didn't mention this before, but whenever we took the Subway, they were always musicians playing the according, violin, singing,ect. And they were actually really really decent!

Pictures from Aix

In the next couple of days I will post pictures of our visit to Paris.
Here are just some photos of our visit to Aix en Provence:

Domain Genty Bed and Breakfast





Domain Genty Bed and Breakfast—check out the view! Every morning we had fresh squeezed Orange Juice and the best bread you could imagine! So fresh so good! My fav thing for breakfast was a rectangular croissant with dark chocolate in the middle of it. I could eat that the rest of my life and be happy!





Picasso's Chateau




The Alley to the Museum that was showing the Art exhibit



Traditional French Meal
The last night we were in Aix rob treated me to a very nice restaurant. We had a 5 course traditional French Meal. It was pretty good--- lots of goat cheese

On a side note: can I just say that driving and parking a car in France is a rare art form--- really!

The Flight, and Aix en Provence

My flight out of Houston Left at 3:05 pm. My mom and Benjamin drove me to the airport 2 hours before my flight left. Maybe that was a little too early, but I always get nervous about missing my flight, and flying in general. I was sad to say goodbye to my little Benjamin, but I knew that he was in good hands. Benjamin wasn’t even fazed when I left without him.
The flight was a direct flight to Paris, and it was the first time that I had ever flown over the ocean. I’ll admit I was a little excited about the plane meal and endless entertainment. I was lucky to have a window seat, and was so close to having the seat next to me empty, but 5 mines before we flew off, a couple came rushing onto the plane, and my hopes of sitting alone were dashed.
The flight was a little long—9hours to be exact. I think the anticipation made it seem long. I missed Benjamin very much and was anxious to not be flying.
In fact I was feeling very anxious. Lets just say while we were flying over Illinois, we hit some MAJOR turbulence. It was a little nerve racking--- shaking plane, lights flickering, stewardesses flying all over the place. I nervously laugh and asked the guy next to me if this was normal--- he looked at me and shook his head. I felt a little emotional afterwards --- I laugh at this story now, but remember I had just left my baby for the first time, and flying all night long.


I arrived in Paris, Monday Morning at 7:45 am (which was about 1 a.m. Houston time). Customs in Paris was a breeze—all they did was stamp my passport and I walked away. If only crossing the American border was ever this easy ☺
Rob picked me up at the airport. We had two hours before we left to take a train to Aix en Provence, France. Robs Proff told him about this great little bed and breakfast on the top of Mount Saint-Victoire. Aix en Provence is famous for the artist Cézannes and Picasso spent the last years of his life living in a chateau around this area.
We arrived in Aix around 4pm and then drove out into the countryside to our bed and Breakfast. The countryside is so beautiful. We ate dinner at the small village, called tretes. It was this amazing 4-course meal. It was fairly cheap gourmet, and we had the best chocolate mousse ever! Amazing! This meal set the standard for our trip, so we assumed that all restaurants served only the most excellent meals, unfortunately, the next day we had the worst meal of our life.




We spent the first 3-½ days of our vacation in Aix en Provence. The next day we spent driving around the mountains and countryside. Wednesday we went to the Cezanne and Picasso exhibit, and then toured Picassos Château, which apparently was open for the first time, and they say will never be opened to the public again. It was really neat to see Picassos castle, and to see his studio, and to see where he is buried. I thought the coolest part of the tour was the never before seen silent home video of Picasso and his last wife, and children at the chateau. It was cool to see him working on his paintings.

Afterwards, we drove down to this little town that was about 45 mins away from Aix, towards the Mediterranean ocean. The ocean was beautiful with rocky cliffs surrounding it. The ocean was the beautiful turquoise and dark blue. It kind of reminded me of scene out of the Count Of Monte Christo.

We went to a little super Marche for some food to eat along the ocean. We then scouted out a nice place to swim. Apparently rob did not know that nude beaches existed. I did, and was on the look out. I found this--what looked to be a family friendly beach where everyone had bathing suits on. Rob didn’t feel comfortable and informed me that there was one woman lacking some important clothing. So we hiked up further for a more private place to swim. Rob found some pathway to the cliffs, and suggested that we head over there. I saw a group of people in the distance, and I was pretty sure that they were all in the nude. Rob didn’t think so—but yes---yes they were. There was a group of 5-6 old men, just hanging around in a circle talking and about 15 other people just hanging out in their birthday suits. We finally found a little cove where rob could dive in from the rocks. I waited till we got back to the family friendly beach, which ended up not being as bad as rob once thought for dress standard.


While we were in Aix, I had so many people just chat away to me in French, I guess they assumed I was French as well. I was really good at smiling and pretending to know what they were talking about. Rob couldn’t believe how many people would just start talking to me as if I was one of them.☺ It was fun to use my limited French (hmmm you would of thought that taking 200 level French classes at BYU I would have been pretty good at it, but no. Sometimes I could understand what people were saying, thats if they were talking slow enough).

ANYWAY, I was so glad that we got to spend time in a different part of France. South of France is very beautiful, and worth visiting!

Our First Vacation away from Benjamin.

Robert surprised me a couple of weeks ago with a BIG surprise. Rob was going to be going to Morocco for a geology field trip. I know, he always gets to go to cool places all in the name of school work! Not to many majors in university I know of are able to pull that off-- all in the name of education. Anyway, he was going to be gone for 2 weeks. He found out that a couple of other students were going to be postponing their return flight to travel around Europe. Robs original flight was leaving from Paris, France. Well lo and behold, there were some freaky cheap flights round trip to Paris for about 400 dollars. Rob surprised me with a 7 day trip to Paris, France. Being an Art major and never have been to Europe, this has always been one of my life long dreams. I gave up an opportunity to do a Painting study abroad in England right before we got married. It was either a study abroad program or a teaching internship--- and well, I couldn't pass up the latter. (Which turned out to be the smartest decision I have ever made-- besides marrying Robert).

Anyway-- I apologize in advance for the length of these posts-- this is more journaling, but I promise that there will be lots of pictures!
All I can say it was more amazing than I could of imagined, and that it was worth every penny. I am glad that my husband was smart enough to snatch up this once in a lifetime opportunity, because I don't think that we will ever be able to do it again for so cheap!

It was also the first time that we were without Benjamin! Don't worry; our child didn't miss us at all. My mom came down to take care of him for 9 days (thanks so much AGAIN mom!). Lets just say Benjamin had such a great time with my mom! They went to the park EVERYDAY; Benjamin learned how to say grand-mamma-mamma- lets just say a dose of grandma Gail is good for any child. My mother works miracles with children! My mom even got him to stop throwing his food on the floor (thank you a million times over). And started planting the seeds of potty training (ever time benjamin poops, he runs to the toilet and flushes it). He even learned how to whistle-- really I am not over exaggerating! The only thing we need to work on now is teaching him to sit still for more than 1 min.

A BIG personality stuck in a little body...

Here are some pictures that I tried to take of Benjamin-- as you can see.. he didn't have any time to stop and strike a pose.


Benjamin was officially 15 months on the 15th of this month :)
Its amazing to me how much he has learned or is learning these past 2 weeks. It seems like he is trying to talk a lot more. But has been really amazing is to see his little, or should I say Big personality coming out.
He is FULL of energy. He is such a happy kid, who loves to make friends with everyone. He likes to be independent as possible. He doesn't like me to even try to feed him food. He can only do it. He is very good at asserting himself. When he doesn't want to go somewhere, he flops down on the ground, limp/stiff. To describe him in one word would be BUSY.
Just to give you an Idea-- here is what today was like:
Today he was so fun! This morning when he woke up he had alot of energy. He was running around the room in circles, shaking his head and slapping his stomach and laughing up a storm. He'd fall down, and laugh and laugh, and then get up again to do it again. He was just being so silly. Lately he has started to help me "pick-up" around the house. While I was cleaning up some shredded paper, (that he had drawn on and later tore) he came over and started handing me pieces of shredded paper to put in the garbage. He even grabbed little tiny pieces of paper and handed them to me. It was wonderful to have him help me.

This afternoon, I missed the window of opportunity for his afternoon nap, but tried to put him down anyway... at least to have some quiet time. On the baby monitor I hear this chatter, chatter, squeak squeak squeak (him turning the bars on his crib), chatter, cry, cry, chatter for about 35mins later. I go in his room to find this naked baby leaning on the bar of his crib-- smiling at me. I find all of his toys, blankey sippy cup-- everything (included the diaper, which was thrown half way across the room) on the ground. Surprise, surprise--- his sheets were soaked with, I can only guess what.

Dinner time rolled around- I asked Benjamin if he was hungry. As soon as I stepped into the kitchen to pull out left overs for dinner, Benjamin comes speeding in, pushing his highchair right to me!

Its been fun to see him grow so much these past few weeks. I am sure Rob will be surprised to see how much he has changed!