Natalie Joy

Natalie Joy Nickell was born Thursday June 26th at 11:15pm, 9lbs 11ozs, 21 inches long. She is a sweetheart and we are excited to have a girl, she is so cute in her pink onesies. Unfortunately, Heather had a hard time after she was born here at home and we had to call 911. They took her to the hospital for a D & C, but she was still bleeding so they ended up performing a hysterectomy. That was Friday and since then she has been recovering in the ICU. They are planning to move her to a regular room today. Obviously, this has been a hard time for all of us, but we have had a lot of support and prayers and that makes all the difference. Michelle and Jonah were able to come up and it is wonderful to see them and have them around for a few days. Here are the boys playing with the timer, they were cracking up. Juan came by on Sunday with some delicious apricots, it was fun to see him too.

Back in California

We enjoyed breakfast with Janna, Dawson, and Tatum Wednesday morning and had a good time sharing our stories and pictures. Snack time was out in the log cabin, it was beautiful and sunny.

We said goodbye and left about 4:30pm for our hot drive home. Jaime's Jeep doesn't have air conditioning, so the first part of our drive we were hot and sweaty. Thankfully, it cooled off and when we got on the road again after dinner (Carl's Jr., can't help missing American fast food), it was quite nice. We made it home just after 9pm and it was good to be back. Michelle and Jonah were there too and it was great to see everyone. Mom, Heather, Michelle, and the boys were leaving to go on a walk, so I joined them and it felt good to stretch my legs and catch up a bit.

Why I Want to be Like Yvonne

Tuesday was a beautiful day in Pennsylvania. We slept in, then had breakfast on the patio and talked, it was wonderful. Kim and Yvonne’s home is one that you walk into and relax, they are welcoming and make you feel at home. It was so nice to have a place to rest as we adjusted to leaving Paris and returning to our homes and jobs. I would like to have a home like that where people can rest and enjoy good food and fellowship and laughter. We got to take real showers and have a tour of the garden, which is big.
We picked up some good tips, like freezing pesto when you have a lot of basil. Mmm, I love basil. Brenna had told us about Wawa, which is a glorified convenience store that is popular back there. So, of course, we had to make a Wawa run. Jaime and I got snacks for our plane ride back to good ol’ CA. Then we returned to the house for a good lunch before heading back to the Philadelphia airport. Brenna dropped us off and we got checked in and boarding the flight. The in-movie was Chocolat, which Jaime and I thought was appropriate. The flight was good, except that because Jaime had a cold she almost had her head explode as we landed. Janna picked us up and we had a good night sleep at her house.

Goodbye Paris

We did the rest of our cleaning and packing when we woke up, then we said goodbye to Meghan and got on our bus. We had a couple buses before we got to the airport, but we made good time and got there earlier than we had planned. That ended up being a good thing because check in and security took a long time. We almost didn't get to sit together on the plane, but Brenna did some talking and was able to switch to the row Jaime and I were in, whew. We decided to watch Fool's Gold during our flight because it was a long one, almost 8 hours. The funny thing is that we left Paris at 1:15pm and arrived in Philly around 3:30pm, that's a long afternoon. Our flight was good though and we made it. Brenna’s bag, however, did not. It was left in Paris, so we had to stand in a short line that took forever to get that taken care of. Finally we got to meet up with Yvonne and she took us back to their house where we had dinner and looked at pictures with Kim and Yvonne. Again we managed to stay up until a regular bedtime to help fight jet lag, but it was hard.

Yop!

We got to have lunch with Meghan today, and yes that's how we started our day. We ate at an Italian place and it was fun to hang out with her because she has had finals this week so we didn't get to do much with her. After lunch, we walked through some gardens and had an Owen Wilson sighting! (Jaime swears it really was him).

We saw the outside of the Pantheon and part of the original Roman wall around Paris. We also saw another little church that was cool looking inside. Then Meghan went home and we did some tourist shopping and a ton of walking. We saw the outside of the opera and ran into a huge crowd, which we avoided by quickly jumping into a side street. There are repeating billboards all over Paris and one of them is for Yop. It is a gross advertisement in our opinion, but we had many talks about it so we had to remember it forever with a photo. We got back to our room around 7:00 and had dinner, mostly trying to eat up the food we had left from the week, with some fresh tarts for dessert (notice my new Parisian earrings). We worked on cleaning and packing for the rest of the evening and generally were being goofy.

Back in Paris

We finally got to walk around a French market on Saturday when we went to Rue Cler. They had lots of delicious food and we had fun walking around and looking at all of it. We got fresh fruit and pizza for lunch and had a picnic by the river. That was fun.

After lunch we went to Sainte Chapelle, a small church by Notre Dame. The inside is painted, as most of the cathedrals were originally, and it was neat to get a feel for that.

Upstairs there were incredible stained glass windows. They made up most of the walls and it was beautiful and unbelievable. Next we went to Notre Dame. That was cool just because it was Notre Dame and we had studied it, but overall the experience wasn't great. There were tons of tourists being noisy and taking flash pictures, so it wasn't a sacred atmosphere. When we were in Marsaille and went to the church there it was really neat because it was quiet and in the background you could hear someone singing Gregorian chant, that was a spiritual atomosphere. But the architecture and windows of Notre Dame are impressive. It was a beautiful day and after seeing the cathedrals, we got Italian gelato, which was good. We walked around awhile and had dinner at a place that had cheeseburgers and fries, which were good.

Chartres

Friday was the day we went to Chartres and saw the cathedral there. It has original stained glass windows from the Middle Ages and that was crazy. The inside was really dark and the windows of course were bright, so it was difficult to take pictures. They supposedly have the veil of Mary but we couldn't really see it because it was in a decorated relic box. The outside of the cathedral was cool too, ornate of course. Chartres is also interesting because most of it burned down and they rebuilt it in only about 50 years, super fast for a gothic cathedral. After looking around the cathedral, we wandered around the town. It was cold so we had soup and tea for lunch, which was nice, especially because I had a cold. The town was cute and had a fun feel. We did some shopping and a lot of walking. Jaime and Brenna got some dessert and this flan was huge. It took 4 of us 2 days to finish it. Thankfully, it was tasty too.
We made it back to Paris in the evening and Jaime and I stayed home and had cucumber sandwiches for dinner while Brenna went to eat with her host family.

Mmmm, Food

We walked around Versailles after leaving the chateau and found a crepe place to have dinner.  That was good, especially the dessert. Then we headed to the train station and had to wait for our train to leave for about 20 minutes. So, naturally, we took some pictures with our bagettes.  I just have to take this opportunity to say that bagettes are quite a staple in France, it is really rather amazing how many there are, probably enough to build a bread castle the size of Versailles. 

Versailles

In a word, ornate. Versailles is amazing in its extravagance, it is crazy. We went Thursday and had a good time. It was busy and the chateau was crowded, but we had a fun looking around. Then we went outside and wandered around the gardens and that was much more pleasant for our tastes. It was beautiful. There was a little hamlet because Marie Antoinette wanted a peasant village built so she could pretend to be a peasant. That was a bit weird but it was neat to walk around and look at it. There was also a little theater and tons of beautiful flowers and plants. We also walked by the canal and around the more controlled gardens and fountains. It was cold and raining off and on, but we managed to see a lot without getting wet, for which we were thankful.

We're Not in Cassis Anymore

It rained during the night so it was a beautiful morning and we had breakfast on the patio. Dany came back and after eating we had to say goodbye to our host family and we headed back into the heart of Marseille.  We went to a church and saw the crypt which had many layers, some dating back to around the 4th century BC. There was an old palace, called Palais Longchamps, that was now a park and museum with a huge fountain that was neat.  Dany had made ham and cheese quiche for lunch and it was good. We also went to a history of Marseille museum and my favorite part of that was the old kilns.  Then we walked around the city a little and saw a bunch of boats.  The walk back to the car was a bit long and hot, but we made it and got our bags and walked to the train station. We got sandwiches for dinner and talked a while. Jaime & Brenna got some gifts from one of the shops there then we said goodbye to Dany and boarded the bullet train for our 3 hour trip back to Paris.