Birthdays!

We had super fun birthdays for Charlie and Diego back-to-back followed by a hellish week for Carlos with 3 sick kids while I was away for work.  Three sick kids!

For Charlie's birthday we did a dunk tank and a water balloon fight.  I thought it would be 'dunk-the-dads', thing, but instead all the kids wanted to get dunked.  I was totally wrong! I begged dads to get dunked so Carlos wouldn't have to spend 2 hours getting soaked in freezing cold water.  Instead we ended up having parents dunking their kids.  a bit cathartic I think....

 

It was chaos, but luckily we were contained on the Brent blacktop so I embraced the chaos.  My dad was there and help with Sofia which was great because I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to keep track of her.  She gets loose and just keeps going.  I was hoping we'd do some relay races, but we only got through one race before all the kids left the ranks and jumped into the dunk tank.  I turned around and almost all the kids were crammed IN the dunk tank.  I was so mortified - it looked like a sure way for someone to drown.  Luckily we had about 250 water balloons to draw them out.  Unfortunately 250 water balloons apparently only lasts about 3.5 minutes!  too funny.   The whole thing was fun and a really good way to stay cool in 95 degree heat.

  

For Diego's party we had Batman come through the back entrance and all the kids were transformed into superheros themselves.  The kids were very impressed that the real Batman actually knew Diego.  I was just happy that Diego didn't cry - I thought for sure he would scream and cling on to me when Batman came there the door.  I guess I can't be surprised that anyone dressing up as Batman is a bit quirky, but he certainly was quirky.  He called me when he was outfront and asked if I could lend him a safety pin to hold up a cape....The whole thing was pretty funny.  We had an awesome batman pinata to go with it along with my attempt to decorate the cake with Gotham City.

After Diego's party we got in the car and drove up to Philadelphia for my dad's birthday.   We met the whole family at my dad's school Germantown Academy for some tennis, soccer, frisbee and track.  Nothing beats playing a variety of sports on a beautiful afternoon on beautiful school grounds.  Clearly my kids agree with me: when we finally piled back into the car to go to dinner I asked the kids if they had fun and Charlie said, "No - that wasn't fun, that was AWESOME."  We got to see my mom's store which looks amazing and then back to GA for more tennis, soccer and races around the track.

I spent the last week in Atlanta and poor Carlos had to deal with three sick kids. It was insane.  He gets major points for surviving.

July 4th!

We had BEAUTIFUL weather on July 4th!  We walked along the mall and saw the inner workings of the parade marchers getting ready and then found a good spot along the parade route.  I thought the parade was really nice, but the kids were mostly intrigued by their new walkie-talkies that Grandma brought.  We made a BBQ feast, enjoyed a World Cup game and then went to watch the fireworks.  All the Brent kids go to the park around the corner to watch the fireworks so it's a very fun reunion.  Charlie played catch with Ian until it was too dark to see and only stopped when the fireworks started.

 We went to a "lavender farm" -  which sounded quaint, but it really just ended up being some person's house and they had a small patch of lavender, some scissors for you to chop away and some lavender lemonade.  The lemonade and the haystacks were the highlights...The really sad thing was how many people were there! I think we had all bought the same groupon in search of some respite from the city.


If we were in Provence it might have looked more like this:

Instead it looked like this!

It was painfully obvious that we weren't in Provence, but Carlos did accompany me on a work trip to France a few weeks ago.  I was gone almost 10 days from the kids!  The longest ever.  They survived - and more impressive is that Carlos' mom and Sandra survived taking care of them! Sofia was happy to nurse again as soon as I got home which was a relief because I would have been really annoyed had I pumped 4x a day in various locations for 10 days and dumped all the milk only to find that she stopped nursing.

I haven't spent much time in Paris previously and I kindof wanted to think it was passe to love the city.  But it REALLY is that nice!  We had an unexpected twist of events when we arrived to the hotel at 7am very tired and looking haggard.  I had used all my Starwood points to book a hotel in Paris because I couldn't stomach the cost of Parisian hotels during peak season.  When we arrived we were informed that there wasn't a room for us..."So when will it be ready and can we leave our bags while we walk around?"  "No - you don't understand - we don't have a room at all for you!"  To make up for it they treated us to breakfast, paid for a taxi to their partner hotel, paid for the room, returned my Starwood points and gave me points for our stay.  Not bad!

 

We walked around the city, visiting random museums we came upon.  We had delicious food and got to watch France beat in the World Cup.  One of our favorite stops was enjoying an unbelievable cup of hot chocolate at Cafe de Flore.  Again, I thought it was all hype, but it really was that good!

my lunch

From Paris we went to the Champagne region and stayed in Reims where my work meeting was taking place.  We happened to arrive during the music festival and got to enjoy a light show on the famous cathedral. It was crazy awesome.

light show on the cathedral

I know close nothing about Champagne so the various tours were quite enlightening.  We were treated to a tour at the meeting's host's cellar, Moet, and then dinner and 5 tasting champagnes in the cellar.  Despite my claustrophobia I couldn't help but enjoy it.  The cellar has 16 miles of underground cellar tunnels where the champagne is stored.  They aren't allowed to dig anymore as they'd likely hit another cellar's tunnels.  The entire city seems to have champagne tunnels under it!

down to the cellar....

the underground champagne highway 

they actually store the champagne this way - dust and all!

the end to our tough tour

From there I went to meeting on the outskirts of London.  It was my least favorite part of the trip - all work and no play.  I had to stay for a Saturday and miss a college roommate reunion which just made that part of the trip all the more frustrating!