Pictures of our European Vacation - France

This is continuation of pictures from our vacation. Again a continuation so if you have not first looked at the blog post titled "Pictures of our European Vacation-Netherlands" and "Belgium" and "England" for the sake of everything good and holy, STOP READING!!! Go read the other posts first PLEASE!!!!

Paris, France
The first place we visited in Paris was The Lourve. The Louvre was much larger than I expected. If you put on the headphones and took the self-guided tour and really looked at the art, you could probably spend weeks in this place. There were many works of art that I have seen pictures of many times. Of course, the most famous painting is the Mona Lisa.

Here is Abby, Billy, Isaac and Alex in front of the Venus de Milo

The Mona Lisa was once in a small room that you ha to wait for hours to get into. Now it is in the center of a very large room so no more lines. You can see that it was very crowded and you could not get within 15 feet of it. It was still cool being able to see the actual painting in real life.

Pretty obvious, the Eiffel Tower.

Here we are at the top of the Eiffel Tower. We got a great view of Paris from up here.

Under the Eiffel Tower the kids enjoyed chasing after the pigeons.

Pictures of our European Vacation - England

This is continuation of pictures from our vacation. Again a continuation so if you have not first looked at the blog post titled "Pictures of our European Vacation-Netherlands" or of "Belgium" for the sake of everything good and holy, STOP READING!!! Go read the other posts first PLEASE!!!!

London, England
After Belgium, we traveled down through France into England. This was an adventure because I just put London in TomTom and it took us into England under the English Channel. We actually drove into a train car and then the train made its way through a tunnel that is under the English Channel.

After arriving in London, we got a decent nights rest because we knew the next day was going to be very busy. Our first stop was the London Eye. For those of you not familiar with what this is, it is basically a very large Ferris Wheel. Instead of seats, you are in a glass pod that you can walk around in. Each pod holds about 20 people.

Here is Alex hanging out as we are going up on the eye.

A view of Big Ben from the eye.

Isaac, Billy and Alex

Hannah and Jessica, aren't they cute!

The next stop was the Tower of London. I was surprised to find that this was much more than a castle but it was actually a fortress. It was large enough for a small town and had shops, homes, gardens and pretty much everything a town would need to survive. This is where the crown jewels are stored and displayed.

After walking on top of much or the outside wall and visiting several towers, we were all ready a rest and a snack. Here are all the kids chilling out.

One of the rare pictures with all 9 travelers inside one of the towers within the Tower of London.

Here is just a cool picture of Alex daring to crawl to look out of one of the interesting windows that line the outside walls.

After the Tower of London, we continued on to Stonehenge which is about an hours drive outside of London. This was much cooler than I expected. The stones are huge and it is just amazing imagining what it looked like 4000 years ago when the first stones were placed here.

We were able to walk around and through the stones which few people ever get to do and they only allow it after normal visiting hours. There were only a few other people there so we were able to get a lot of pictures with just us.






The next day we went to church in the center of London. It was nice for us to here a Sacrament Meeting in English for the first time in 6 months. After church we went to the London Zoo. This is the recognized as the first zoo in the world. It opened to the public somewhere around 1840.


There was a petting zoo which the kids liked.


Here is where they filmed the snake scene in the first Harry Potter film.


Isaac and Billy at the entrance to the reptile house.



This is one of two statues we saw that was dedicated to the winnepeg bear that later became to be know as Winnie-the-Pooh. It was here that A.A. Milne brought his son Christopher Robin Milne to see a bear that Christopher fell in love with. Near this statue is a picture of Christopher posing with that bear.

Pictures of our European Vacation - Belgium

This is continuation of pictures from our vacation. Again a continuation so if you have not first looked at the blog post titled "Pictures of our European Vacation-Netherlands" for the sake of everything good and holy, STOP READING!!! Go read the other one first PLEASE!!!!

Ghent Belgium
The first place we really visited was Ghent, Belgium. OK not really. To make a long story short, our plan was to visit Brugge, Belgium first but we arrived and found everything closed because they were getting ready for an annual parade led by a vial of Christ's blood but because of heavy rain, it looked like it may be cancelled so we moved on to Ghent.


Gravensteen Castle (Castle of the Counts) This is the coolest castle I had ever seen . This really was not much of a feat because before this one, the only real castle I had seen was the one in the miniature golf course at Trafalga.


Here is Abby, Alex and Isaac climbing up one of the many spiral staircases in the castle.


Billy, Isaac, Abby and Hannah are showing the gigantic size of the fireplaces. I tried to light them on fire to warm up but they were too wet from the rain.


Abby, Isaac, Alex and Billy pose on a ledge that surrounds a courtyard. Finally the sun is starting to peak through the clouds.


Here is one of the few pictures you will see me in. Here is me, Kristal and Alex. Most of the windows had seats in front of them like you see here. The shutters are really cool too.

Brugge, Belgium
Brugge is about 45 minutes away from Ghent and is a very old town close to the west coast of Belgium.


Arla, Kristal and Isaac are looking over a canal just past the St. Johns Hospital which opened in 12th century and just closed in 1976. It is mostly an art museum now. In the center of the background is the Church of Our Lady which was built between the 13th - 15th centuries. What brings many people to see the church is the Madonna and Child sculpture by Michelangelo (below). The church also had many other beutiful sculptures and paintings.


The center sculpture is the is the Madonna and Child sculpture by Michelangelo.


There was a musician playing a very different instrument in the streets outside of the church. Here is Abby, "getting down" to the music.

Pictures of our European Vacation - Netherlands

I posted these on the MyFamily site so if you have access to that, GO AWAY!!! You should have already seen these. If you have note yet seen them, Welcome :)

Because there are many pictures and too many explanations to sit down and do at one time, I will separate this into countries that we visited, 4 in all. I am startinmg today with The Netherlands. To see pictures closer, click on them and you will see it full size. I will be posting most of the pictures taken as slideshows later for those of you interested.

Kinderdijk
The first day we visited Kinderdijk which is an area about 10-15 minutes from our house that many people visit because there are 18 windmills in one place. One of them is open to the public for tours, the others people live in.


Here is a line of 5 windmills, now you all know what a windmill looks like.


Hannah and Jessica decided to pick some flowers that lined the pathways. Where they supposed to? Probably not. Do they care? Probably not. At least they are beautiful while they break the law.

Keukenhof
After Kinderdijk, we visited Keukenhof which is the big tulip festival that people from all over the world come to Holland to see. What is the tulip festival you may ask? Well, I was surprised to find that it is endless gardens of flower arrangements. It was beautiful for about 10 minutes.


Here is Billy, Isaac, Jessica and Hannah in front of a bunch of the worlds largest breed of tulips. The giant one in the middle is a fake one so don't be too impressed.


In the middle of all the gardens is big pond that had pads you could walk on. Here is Isaac and Alex hopping across on those pads.

Madurodam
Madurodam is a place the The Hague that has many buildings and sites from Holland built at 1:25 scale. They paid very close attention to detail right down to the gargoyles on the cathedrals and people and cars in the streets.


Here is Kristal and Arla. Like myself, Arla is found with a camera in hands most of the times.


Billy, Abby, Isaac and Alex


Here is Isaac and Billy looking at what looks like a few nice rowhouses. Notice the people on the sidewalk and the small reddish path. If you look closely, you will see a bicycle symbol. Bike paths are paved in red or have red bricks.

National Lampebbs European Vacation

Like the title??? Of course a play on National Lampoons but with the Pebb family (Pecks and the Webbs)

Today we went back to work and school after our 2+ week vacation which really blows but we have to accept the fact that we cannot vacation all the time. Our friends from Eagle Mountain came to visit us on April 26th and stayed for a couple of weeks. We saw many things and had a lot of very tiring fun. I will be posting some pictures on this blog by the end of the week. Here is what we did over the 2 weeks:

Holland:
Kinderdijk - An area that has 18 windmills and you can tour one of them.
Kuekenhof (Tulip Festival)
Maduradam - 1:25 scale highlights of Holland with tremendous attention to detail. This was interesting because we saw several things that we would like to visit in person. Also, we now know how King Kong feels.
Anne Frank House - Visited the actual hiding place of Anne Frank and her family
Canal Tour of Amsterdam

Belgium:
Church of Our Lady - A church built in the 13th century which is full of art including the Madonna by Michelangelo.
St Johns Hospital - This hospital was opened over 800 years ago and just closed its doors in the 1970s. It is now primarily an art museum which included many religious paintings and sculptures.
Gravensteen (Castle of the Counts) - This was a very cool castle. Imagine what you would envision a castle to be and this is it.

England:
The London Eye - If you don't know what this is, I am surprised. I don't think they show any video of London without including it. In case you don't know, it is a large Ferris Wheel that has glass pods so you can walk around and take pictures in all directions.
The Tower of London - This surprised me because it was not just a castle, it was a fortress with towers, houses and markets. This is where the Crown Jewels are stored which are amazing. I probably have never seen so many jewels as I did in the crown, sword and staff among other things that were presented to Queen Elizabeth when she was crowned.
Stonehenge - This is a bunch of rocks piled by bored people. OK actually this was really cool. Normally when you visit Stonehenge you pay something like 9 pounds and you get to follow this path which gets you about 50 or so feet from the main center circle which is cool because heck, you are at Stonehenge. However, I did not want to travel all the way to this farming countryside and see them from that far away. After normally visiting hours they allow about 30 or people in 2 shifts to actually walk around and in the inner circle. I was able to get permission to do this so we were able to walk up to the stones and see it from a perspective that few ever get the chance to. When we arrived, there was about 5 other people walking among the stones but they were easy to keep out of most pictures so we got alot of just our families. When you see the stones up close you see that they are covered with moss which I guess the type of moss is unique to the area so they did not want us to climb on them and hurt it.
Church - We were able to hear Sacrement Meeting in English. Something we have not heard in over 6 months.
London Zoo - The zoo itself was not that impressive. I like Hogle Zoo better. However, this zoo has history. It is considered the first zoo in the world. The winnipeg bear that inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh stories was here and of course, this is the first place that Harry Potter first saw some real power when he made the glass disappear in the reptile house. We saw the section where this was filmed in the movie.

France:
Louvre - Of course we saw the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo and many, many nude statues. All was well until I showed Kristal a picture of a sculpture of a nude woman from behind laying on her side on a bed and mentioned that I now have some porn. She then informed me that it was actually a man!!! I went to the other side of the sculpture and yep, a penis!
Eiffel Tower - This was the only place we really stood in a line. You first have to wait in line to buy tickets and get on the elevator to go up to the first and second floors. Then, if you want to go to the top, you have to wait in line again. Once ready to come down, you guessed it, more lines. It was cool seeing the tower but I don't think I would want to wait in those lines again.

Overall we had a wonderful time and got to see some of the highlights of Europe but we still have a lot to see, time to save up more money.

Alex singing songs from school

Here is a video I made last night of him singing a couple of songs he learned in school. The first song is about a dirty little pig that needs a bath. The second is about the sounds animals make.

NOTE: If you cannot see the video Please go to the following website:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download

When you go to the above website, it detects the version of internet browser you are using (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc...) and will install the proper plugin for the browser. For that reason, you will need to go to the above link in every browser you use and install the plugin.