Rachel is just moving from one lovely question to the next. Her current favorite question is, "What time is it?". She constantly asks it. As a matter of fact, I've been known to tell her that if she asks again she's going to time-out. What a wonderful mother I am, huh! :) I've been known to also say, "It's time to get a watch". She doesn't exactly like this answer. Sometimes we'll be upstairs and she'll ask what time it is and then we'll head downstairs and she'll want to know what time it is downstairs. She thinks the two clocks are somehow different. The only time she really knows is 8:30, because that's bedtime. Occasionally, when I have the patience, I try to make a teaching moment out of it and show her the numbers and how I read the time. But since she asks about 100 times a day, I don't make a teaching moment out of it every time. Oh well, I guess this question is a lot better than some of the questions we'll get from her in years to come. :)
Here we are at the Arc de Triomphe. This time we decided to go to the top and here are some pictures of the view from the top:
Here's a picture of Champs-Elysees. We took quite a walk down Champs-Elysees to get to the Arc de Triomphe. We didn't get off on the right stop and we figured it didn't look like too far of a walk. Later we found out we had gone 3 stops too many on the metro. Oh well, it was fun to walk anyways. 
After the Arc, we headed to the Eiffel Tower. We didn't go up this time, but we enjoyed some ice cream at the base of the Eiffel Tower. 
We then took a 1-hour cruise down the Seine River. Everyone enjoyed the cruise, even though it got a bit windy, because we had the chance to rest our feet. Here's Rachel playing with her friend Ashley:
Audrey enjoying her cruise down the Seine River. Such a cutie! 
A great picture that Andy took while we were still on the boat. 
Strolling through the metro system after a busy afternoon/evening in Paris. Paris isn't that stroller friendly, so we didn't haul the double stroller. Rachel was good about taking turns with Audrey in the stroller so I didn't have to haul Audrey around the whole time in the Beco. Here's a picture from our hotel room that evening of the Arc lit up. We realized that it was probably a shorter walk from our hotel to the Arc than what we had done earlier that afternoon! :) 
We purchased some delicious strawberries from one of the fruit stands. And then we couldn't pass up a banana/chocolate crepe as well. Here we are enjoying our spoils:
We then hopped back on the metro and headed to the Latin Quarter. We walked around a bit and came across the Pantheon. 
After much deliberation we decided to head to Luxembourg Gardens. The kids would be able to play and we would be able to see the Statue of Liberty. The kids played for a good hour on the grass and then a park worker came and told us they weren't supposed to play on the grass. I guess that explains why no one else was playing on the grass! Oh well, we got a good hour in and the kids enjoyed themselves. 
Rachel had fun kicking an empty water bottle around with Chase. It's amazing what can keep kids entertained. 
Audrey enjoyed some much needed wiggle time. Two days of car seat, stroller, and baby carrier can get old! :)
The State of Liberty in Paris.
Rachel loves her dress up dolls and she loves brushing their hair. :)
This morning after having blueberry muffins for breakfast (thanks Mom!) we gave Rachel one of her first presents. Her uncle Jeff got her scooter. She has figured it out pretty good and enjoys riding it around the house. 
After lunch and naps Rachel was busy, busy busy. She got lots of phone calls and she was actually really good about talking on the phone. Rachel was able to open her present from Papa and Grandma Michaelson while they were watching on Skype. She had fun talking on Skype with them, but once the present was open she had a one-track mind. 
After one of Rachel's favorite things for dinner - rice and meatballs - she opened up the rest of her presents. She was definitely spoiled and was excited about each and every one of her presents. 
We then had one of Rachel's friends over for cake and ice cream. Rachel had a pink heart-shaped cake, which she picked out herself. And for a Dutch cake, it was actually pretty good. For some reason Rachel was a bit shy about blowing out her candles, so she blew out 2 and I had to blow out the 3rd.
Audrey enjoying being strolled across the bridge.
Rachel enjoying lunch at a cafe right along the Ruess River. We have decided that the Swiss are obsessed with pizza and pasta (or else they figure tourists are and they want to keep us happy). We had a difficult time finding anything different. I guess since they are neighbors with Italy, they enjoy Italian food??? Who knows.
Lucerne's Lion Monument. A little bit of history: "The Swiss have a long tradition of supplying mercenaries to foreign governments. Because the Swiss have been politically neutral for centuries and have long enjoyed a reputation for honoring their agreements, a pope or emperor could be confident that his Swiss Guards wouldn't turn on him when the political winds shifted direction. The Swiss Guards' honor was put to the test in 1792, when--after trying to escape the French Revolution--King Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and their children were hauled back to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. A mob of working-class Parisians stormed the palace in search of aristocratic blood. More than 700 Swiss officers and soldiers died while defending the palace, without knowing that their royal employers had left the building. In the early 1800s, the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen was hired to sculpt a monument to the fallen Swiss Guards. The sculpture was carved in a sandstone cliff above the city center." 
We ventured across one of the many bridges in Bern. And discovered that the Swiss definitely have a sense of humor, even though it's a bit morbid. There were footprints on the bridge and on the edge of the railing right above this: 
I would seriously run out of space on the blog if I posted all the beautiful pictures we took. So, here are a few of my favorites:
Audrey definitely enjoyed being able to spread out...
The next day we headed to Interlaken. On that drive I officially decided that Switzerland is the country of tunnels. We drove through so many tunnels that day. The longest one was 5200 meters (roughly 3.2 miles) long. The Swiss name their tunnels. It definitely made the drive easier going through the mountains, rather than over the mountains. We walked around Interlaken for awhile and got some lunch, then we headed up the Lauterbrunnen Valley where my ancestors had their dairy farms and where my great-great grandmother was baptized. We went to Trummelbach where we were able to see 10 waterfalls inside the mountain that were reachable by a tunnel-lift. Here is a view of the Lauterbrunnen once we had gone up the tunnel-lift: 
We then went through several tunnels and checked out the waterfalls. Audrey was put to sleep by the noise of the water. Even though it was quite noisy, Andy said the noise didn't compare to Niagara Falls. We definitely enjoyed exploring the tunnels and checking out the waterfalls.
After we had explored the falls we realized that the clouds had cleared up and it was a really nice day. So, we decided to drive a little further up the valley and go up to Schilthorn. Schilthorn has the world's longest aerial cable-car system. We had to transfer and take 4 different cable cars to reach the very top. We had beautiful views as we were going up, but once we got up to the tippy top (9,744 feet) things were pretty cloudy. Supposedly on a good day you have panoramic views of over 200 mountain peaks, but we weren't so lucky.
The higher we went things went from green to white:
Here's a sneak peek at what things could have looked like:
And here's what things looked like once we were up at the top:
McKinley's Sixth Birthday
7 years ago
