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!