Rusty got the flu about 10 days before we were leaving on our trip. And by the day before it had settled into pnumonia. It was sooo miserable for both of us. I had to get the entire house and all the children ready without his help. And he has never been so sick in his life. Scott and Dom came and gave him a blessing a few days before and we were all praying he’d be well enough for the plane. We were scheduled to leave Denver about 10am. Our flight was delayed for about 40 minutes, which left us with a tight connection in Charlotte. As we approached Charlotte there was a storm blowing in and we had to circle the airport for about 20 min. Now our connection was REALLY tight. Like 10 min to run from one terminal to another. We were sitting in the back of the plane and the flight attendant asked everyone to let us off first, but that didn’t really happen. After what felt like forever, we got off the plane and started in a dead sprint toward our next gate. We were dodging people left and right, running down people movers and sweating bullets. Grandma and Grandpa were near the front of the plane so they got off a few min before us and they were trying to stall for us. With about 1 min to spare we made it to the gate. As we collapsed into our seats on the plane Blake said, “That was harder than the BolderBoulder! Mom, let’s not have such a tight connection ever again.”

The flight to Paris was uneventful, except for one thing–Josh lost his tooth! He bit into a Larry Taffy and out it popped. I was instructed to keep it in my backpack. On the Metro a few days later Natalie pulled something out of my bag and that tooth came flying out. We had a good laugh about it. No one slept much. But we did watch a lot of movies 🙂

Although we made our tight connection in Charlotte, my bag did not. Luckily, it got delivered later that evening, no problem.

Here’s the boys with their first passport stamps!

We had about 30 min before we could drop our bags at our AirBNB, so we went down the street to give the kids their first taste of Macaroons at Ladurée. Delicious!

After we dropped our bags we were ready for lunch. We stopped at a little bakery and grabbed sandwiches and Pain au Chocolat, Josh said the chocolate was too dark for him, but Halle said it was one of the best things she ate in Paris.

Now were were fueled to climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. What a spectacular sight that is! Blake is a little afraid of heights and so he and Rusty stayed at the bottom. Where he promptly fell asleep.

Natalie and Michael’s flight came in a few hours after ours and they met us at the Arc just a few minutes after we climbed down. So Rusty and I swapped Blake and he, Nat and Michael went to the top.

The kids have been really excited to see the Eiffel Tower up close. We went over to the Trocadero for the best views. After gazing at it from the plaza we started to make our way down to the fountains. We had been gone for about 5 min when I finally noticed Josh was missing. It’s hard to keep track of everyone when we are such a big group! I went sprinting back to the last place I know I saw him and he was just sitting there, his head in his hands, admiring the Tower. He didn’t even know we had left!

The Banks family never passes up an opportunity to ride a carousel. And a double decker carousel at the base of the Eiffel Tower is about as cool as it gets.

Because the 284 stairs at the Arc weren’t quite enough to make our legs shake, we also decided to climb the 674 stairs at the Eiffel Tower. That, and the line for the elevator was about 4 hours long :).

Mom really had to go the bathroom but was told that ALL the bathrooms were closed until 6pm. Which was about 45 min away. There was a pool of water nearby and the attendant said, “Well, you could go in the pool if you want.” We still aren’t sure if she was kidding or serious.

Josh and Natalie had a race to the top and Josh killed her! We have no idea how he had so much energy left in his legs. But he really didn’t want to climb back down.The view from the top was so beautiful. Paris is such an interesting city. Around every corner is some kind of spectacular and old building and seeing them all from above is breathtaking. Rusty was not up to climbing all those stairs yet. He was pretty weak still from the flu. Blake didn’t really want to go either, so they did 1 floor and then waited for us at the bottom.There were some cute little food carts down by the Seine where we got our first Crepes of the trip. They were delicious! At this point we’d been up for about 30 hours straight. We slept HARD that night. Nobody stirred until about 8:30 the next morning.