Back from France

It's been a bit quiet in here. The boys and I took off for France on June 28th, leaving Pete behind for 2 weeks. He joined us for the last week of our vacation ... after surviving a massive storm, a destroyed veggie garden, a 4 day power outage (much less than a lot of our friends) and quite a bit of overtime.
The boys and I on the other hand, enjoyed my parents and brother and sister's love and attention, delicious food, booze and other fun times. Saw one of my cousins and uncles, my friend Alix and her boyfriend ... just great!
The weather wasn't always great but we made the best of it. We got to go to Brittany and see my aunt, uncle and celebrate my grandmother's 85th birthday. It was awesome to see her interact with the boys. She had only met Owen once and he was only 2 months old then. My aunt and uncle gave us the run of their fabulous house, we got to go to the beach a few times and though each time we went, one of the boys had a fever and took a nap on the beach ... it was still great.
We also went to the Aquarium in Brittany, the Jardin Des Plantes and it's small zoo in Paris and the Cite des Sciences and it's kid's museum. Downtown Paris was a bit of a letdown with too many people ... we stood under the Eiffel Tower but never went up.
We're back, I miss my family. I wish I could bottle them up or pack them in my luggage and bring them hoe with me. I had such a good time with my brother and sister. I really feel like I bonded so much more with them this year. It's amazing to think that they are now adults and what feels like only a short time ago they were just learning to walk and talk and I got to witness that. What a fun time to have a relationship with them as "grow-ups" now!!

Now back into the routine. School is only 5 weeks away for Owen, we have Taekwondo and kickboxing classes to make up (and it feels SOOOOOO GOOD to be back for that!), hikes to plan and more summer to enjoy before the hectic fall is upon us.

Here are a select few of the pictures from our trip:

Paris

Brittany

 Jardin des plantes zoo

Kid's science museum

Palais de Versailles

 'cause wigs are funny ...

I also didn't post about the awesome tattoo I got in April but I wanna put that down here. I wanted to surprise my parents so now I can post :)
It's a chestnut tree designed mostly by the awesome and talented Liaa Walter . Tree of my life, represents a lot of personal stuff. It's on my right shoulder blade and I love it!!! I feel complete with it.

just finished

taken in the mirror so the image is inverted ... the tat is really on my right

Ty and Owen are doing awesome in taekwondo. Junior classes are harder than Owen expected and he is a little mad that I am doing better than he is (FOR NOW!!) but he really is working hard. Ty is also amazing in his way, putting a lot of effort in focusing and learning things on his own. Check out this round kick that he was never taught by anyone ... not bad:

Little video to top it all off and end this post.