Do you know what one of my favorite things we have done yet is?  Zip-lining through France!

We were at a castle and Mom and Dad were saying things to each other like, “Are you sure its open? Its starting to sprinkle.” I asked them, “What are you guys talking about?” Dad answered, “Its a surprise!” I was very exited after that. Later on that day, we drove to a hill and at the top of the hill, there was a bunch of trees. We started walking up and by then, I was DIEING to know what the surprise was! When we were half way up the small hill, I saw a kid fly through the trees. “WOAH!” I yelled. I ran up and saw things like rope ladders, tight ropes, and zip-lines going from tree to tree! I had been waiting for this for months, but thought wed have to wait until south africa!

The man strapped me, Ellie, Mom and Dad in to the gear. It was pretty hard figuring out how to strap ourselves in but we got the hang of it. There were 4 levels: Green (easy), Yellow, (intermediate), Blue (hard), and Red (extreme)! By the time we finished green, we all said, “This is supposed to be easy?”

In yellow, my favorite part was sort of a rope swing into basically a giant spiderweb! At the end of yellow, there was 2 ways to go: To the left to exit or to the right to do blue! We thought for a few minutes. It had already been over an hour. Mom, Dad, and Ellie were really thinking about what to do while I was jumping up and down saying, “BLUE!!! LETS DO BLUE!!!” We decided to do blue.

At the end of blue, there was a zip-line that went 30 seconds long, over a lake to a whole other island! That one was so cool because you saw the view of the water! There was another one going back and I tried to touch the water but I couldn’t. When Dad went, his hand was almost a centimeter away from touching it! It was so much fun! I will never forget the first time I zip-lined in France!

Sorry there are no pictures. We didn’t want to risk dropping our phones into the lake. We did get a hat though!

The last week, we have been on the road a lot. But we finally made it to Les Eyzies! We have been exploring lots of castles and a cave where we saw sixteen thousand year old drawings on the walls but me and Ellie’s favorite parts is staying at a wonderful bed and breakfast with Soccer (Football in France), Swing pole (Tether ball but with a tennis ball and you hit it with rackets), a pool, six swings, croquet, badminton, bocce ball, Chickens, Guinea pigs, bikes, and more! But the funnest part is the people! Everyone speaks english and there are two six year old twins, one eleven year old girl, a twelve year old boy, and a one year old baby! It is so much fun playing with everyone and talking to them! Tomorrow, we leave for the South of France but hope to make more friends soon!

We’re leaving tomorrow for a couple of days in Normandy, then a week in the south of France.  Before we leave tomorrow, we’re going to repeat what we did our first day: visit the top of the Arc de Triomphe down the street, and eat lunch at the overpriced hotel next door like the rookie tourists we were/are.

During dinner, I asked the fam what they’d like me to include in the final Paris post.

Ellie:  I will REALLY miss the Nutella crepes.  And the people are so much more relaxed here… they don’t all seem like they have somewhere to be in a rush all the time.

Marcy: Paris is the most beautiful and magical place I’ve ever been. It exceeded all my expectations, and I hope we all come back soon.

Chris: I wish Austin had subways. I don’t feel like we’re on a trip anymore; it’s starting to feel like we’re living in Paris. I’m very sad to leave.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, so I’m not even going to try.  But I will let the final Paris pics speak for me.

The ladies’ with their hip hop dance instructor (they are VERY sore!)

Chris’s sketch drawn by an artist in front of the Centre Pompidou (he is VERY proud of this)

Dad at his best

Will miss you Paris!!!!!!

By popular request, a post on our food experiences in Paris…..

First thing we have learned: the food here is RICH.  Second thing we have learned: ….sorry!  you’ll have to read through to the end of the post.

FAVORITE FRENCH FOODS:  Chris’s favorite French food: Croque Monsieur (a broiled ham and cheese kind of thing).  Ellie’s favorite French food: Nutella Crepe.  Jeff’s favorite: Croque Monsieur plus Nutella Crepes.  Marcy’s  favorite: anything from the chocolate shop around the corner!  Are you starting to see a trend here?

Wow, we have been eating some good food.  However, our first couple of days, we were not thrilled. I think it was a combination of factors: we were just going to the wrong places, it was 95 degrees out with no air conditioning, and we were sitting next to a lot of smokers.  A few days in, the weather turned perfect, we started looking for places that seemed to be busy with locals, and we got a lot better at avoiding the smokers in the restaurants.

Ellie and I are loving the quiche.  And, boy do the French know how to put together a nice salad.  And they do NOT skimp on the dressing.  Yummo.  I have to admit that we have not been extremely adventurous – not much escargot or organ meat.  However, I am proud to have tried beef tartare (the verdict: “Eh…”)

A big part of the enjoyment of Parisian food for me is the setting:  lots of lovely cafes and bistros.  I mean, LOTS of them.  In the midst of beautiful parks, on every corner of busy squares, and down quiet side streets, they are everywhere. Each one unique, and each feels so very French.

One thing we can’t quite get used to: the French have a thing for over-easy fried eggs. Runny eggs have appeared on our Pizza, on top of perfectly yummy grilled ham/cheese sandwiches, and in the middle of soups. Hmmm….something is not quite right about this.

However, we had a great meal tonight (with no runny eggs) – probably the best one yet.  A restaurant called “Bon”.  Delicious asian food, super cool decor, and an arm wrestling match(???)…check out the photos below:

So, time to reveal the second thing we’ve learned:  (an idea I picked up from my friend Kimberly, also searching for the “healthy” food in Paris….)

!!better put Jenny Craig on the speed dial when we get home!!

Tour of the Louvre!

A few days ago, we were all extremely excited because today was the day that we got to go on a super cool, kid friendly tour around the Louvre that Mom had planned. We started off the day by going to the Arch De Carrousel which is right in front of the Louvre where we met up with our guide. Right away, we knew that this was going to be really fun and really educational for all of us. Soon after that, she explained to us how to tour was going to work. She gave us a booklet and told us that we were going to be able to fill in the clues from what we’ve learned on the tour and then if we get them all then we will get a hidden treasure! This ended up being absolutely amazing! We learned so much and had an amazing time! One of our favorite stories that we learned from the tour was that the Venus de Milo actually has a few imperfections like for instance she has a little extra fat on her neck and shoulders yet she is still known as on of the most beautiful things in the world so that is a great lesson for us to take away that we can have imperfections and still be beautiful.

Bike Tour Around Versailles!

Yesterday, we took a Fat Tire bike tour around Versailles! One of the first things we did in the tour was go to a Farmers Market which had great stores that sold bread, meat, cheese and much more! Everyone on the tour bought food at the farmers market to bring to the picnic we were going to have! We rode around the Grand Canal and in the middle, we had the picnic! Everyone had a great time but I (Chris) had a terrible Heart Burn throughout the whole picnic and I couldn’t eat anything even though I was starving. But everything else was great! We learned a great story during the picnic about how one of the King Louis’s had a private zoo in Versailles. He was given the gift of an Elephant. One day, his guards came to him and said, “We’ve lost the Elephant.” King Louis was so mad wondering how in the world they could lose at Elephant. He made everyone search for the Elephant but they still couldn’t find it. He just said, “You know what, I didn’t even care about that Elephant…” One day, he was in a boat with Gondoliers going down the Grand Canal when one of the Gondoliers said, “Hey, what is that little grey island over there?” The grey island turned out to be the Elephant that had drowned in the water. The elephants skeleton was placed in a museum but the tusks were fake. One day, a man broke into the museum with a chain-saw and cut off the tusks, not knowing that those were the only parts that were fake! The next day, everyone saw it and the owners put a sign that said UNDER CONSTRUCTION. The end.

Meeting Up With Friends!

Today we went to lunch with the Watson-Hemphill family! It was great being able to share experiences about France with each other! After lunch we went to a beautiful park and us kids were challenged by our dad to get to 25 hits in a row in paddle ball. It wasn’t easy but in the end we all earned a scoop of delicious ice cream. After that, Ian showed us one of his favorite parts of Paris, a giant playground with lots of cool things like a mini zip line and a life sized spiderweb! We played many rounds of hide and go seek tag! We had a great time seeing our friends in Paris!

-Ellie and Chris

Most of you know I am a huge Oklahoma Sooners fan, especially their basketball team.  As luck would have it, they just so happened to be playing a series of exhibition games in Belgium and France while we are in Paris.  (This was not the impetus for us being in Paris, I promise!).  But of course, since they were here… why not go?

Yesterday was the morning of the game, and Marcy and I were at the Musee d’Orsay looking at Monets and Van Goghs (kids were asleep at home). As I’m trying to figure out the difference between impressionism and colonialism, I turn to my left and five feet from me is the OU Head Coach, Lon Kruger.  Immediately I thought, “Vincent Van Who?”  I walked over to him like an 8th grader about to ask his crush for a date to the dance.  Once I told him I was a huge fan, and that I knew the difference between Blake Griffin and Taylor Griffin, he was incredibly nice and  accommodating.  I told him about our ATW trip, and he was genuinely interested (or at least a heck of a faker).  I told him we’d all be at the game that night, and he told us to come early and meet the team, get pics, etc.  Boy did we ever.

After an exhaustive Google search to locate the time and place of the game (believe it or not, the Sooners visit was not exactly the water cooler talk around Paris),   we took two trains and 20 metro stops to a gymnasium about the size of your typical middle school rec center.  We walked in and saw a bunch of French guys with 5 day beards lazily jacking up 3s. I swear one of them was smoking a cigarette.  After about 10 minutes, somebody put up on the digital scoreboard, “Welcome to the Sooners of de Oklahoma Universitee”.  Then I knew we had the right place. We grabbed four seats on the front row (two feet from the court) and waited, hoping we wouldn’t get flicked with ashes from the Euro shooting guard.

A few minutes later, the team started filing in.  Luckily I had thought to bring my OU cap on the trip, otherwise I would have looked like just another French shmoe.  The cool thing is, apparently Coach Kruger told the team we were coming, because ALL of them came up to us to greet us, and several of them asked about our five month trip and where we were going.   As I told him about where we were going, Buddy Hield (one of the nicest kids and best players on the team), kept saying over and over “Big time… big time…. big time…. big time.”  Big time indeed.  We were the only OU fans there (and we were LOUD), and I can’t tell you how great they made us feel that we were there. OU’s strength coach and former player Joseph Szendrei (YoYo) offered us tix behind the bench for the OU-UT game in January. You can bet we’re looking forward to that.

Needless to say, all of us were sky high.  The game was almost secondary, as we won by 40, and it wasn’t that close.  We looked great and I think we’re going to have a great season and be fun to watch this year,  but unfortunately I think that me, Zack, and any three other guys from my Try Harders  softball team might have been able to take these French guys to OT. Just kidding. Kind of.

The Sports Information Director also took a video of the four of us, and interviewed us about our visit.  Click the link for the article and the video… it’s pretty cool.

http://www.soonersports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=31000&ATCLID=209140418

Finally, this morning I woke up, and got a text from my buddy Greg who lives in Norman. It read, “You made the news!!!!”  And he sent me a link from one of the local stations featuring the infamous sportscaster Bob Barry Jr. mentioning “The Carpenter Family from Oklahoma (?) being at the game” (of course he had to get it wrong),  along with a short video.  Hilarious!   I won’t include that here, but let me know if you want me to email it to you,or any of the 100 other pictures we took with the team. Anyway, a fabulous night that we could have never planned, but that worked out great.  We’ll never forget it.

Well, you can probably guess what we did yesterday by the name of this post. Yep, each of us walked over 700 steps to get just to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower! But from there, you had to take the elevator. At the second floor, I was already freaked out by how high I was. We were only half way though! The elevator was partly glass so you could see how high you were going. When we got to the top, the view was the best view I had ever seen! Here are some great pictures from the middle and top:

We had a great day today. Marcy and I went to a farmers market in the morning. Then we took the kids to a carnival by the Louvre. Then we went to the Pompidou museum (awesome), And spent the evening listening to a clapton-esque street performer.

Nice, right? But not exactly spine tingling. I asked the kids what their favorite activity had been so far. They both said “the bike tours!” Least favorite was daddy’s exercise routines (i agree).

So I said let’s have an adventure! lets Rent bikes (theyre everywhere) and ride them back to the apartment. This trip is supposed to be about getting out of our comfort zone occassionally, right? Done.

So as we hopped on the bikes Marcy asked “lead or follow?” I offered to bring up the rear, cause im a wimp.

Un moi mal decisione (french).

Within one minute we realized riding with a group of 20 yellow smock wearing companions led by an experienced Parisian guide was very different than four greenhorns from Texas trying to figure out which way to turn. Luckily we didn’t have those pesky safety helmets to get in our way.

And from the rear, i got to watch my three loved ones come closer to death than they ever imagined. Apparently Paris Bus and taxidrivers hate 1) bikers 2) americans 3) kids 4) american kid bikers wearing berets.

I swear I watched Ellies left pigtail get clipped by the side mirror of bus 101 hell bent for the louvre. And Chris will never know that the 12 second horn blast from the taxi driver behind us was meant for him because he had the audacity to ride more than 6 inches from the illegally parked cars in the bus lane. He’ll also Never know he was almost clipped by a driver getting out of a parked car less than one second after his back tire cleared it. I know this because I had to Tony Hawk it just to avoid being splattered. And I got a french middle finger for my efforts.

Thank God for Marcy. After 10 minutes of that craziness, she navigated us through beautiful parks and sidestreets the final 20 minutes home. whew!

So yes, will do this again and yes we learned our lesson: next time, dad rides in front!

PS. If we do die over here, please donate the rats to science.