Feeling very French today

We had a jam-packed day today.  When I think back on what we did, I don't know how we fit it all in.  We began our day by "locking our love" for each other on a bridge near our apartment.  My friend discovered that there is a tradition in Paris in which you place a lock on a certain bridge and then throw the key into the Seine River below, thereby forever locking your love for this person.  My friend planned ahead and had locks engraved for Dan and me and for our family before we left for our trip.  Here are pictures of us locking our love and of our kids throwing our key to our "family love lock" into the river below:

It was really neat to walk by the thousands of locks on that bridge and know that two of them are ours.

Next, we visited the Musee d'Orsay, which is an incredible art museum and not nearly as overwhelming as the Louvre.  We spent most of our time on the top floor, which houses the Impressionists. The kids were able to see lots of Renoir, Monet and Degas works of art.  They loved the Degas paintings and sculptures of ballet dancers.  The museum is a refurbished train station, so it has a huge window that serves as a clock on the top floor.  The kids immediately got excited and said, "it's the Harry Potter clock from Hogwarts". I am sure any Harry Potter fan can sympathize.

You aren't supposed to take pictures of the art, and you know I am a rule follower, so you are only getting a picture of the clock.

The next part of our day made me feel like we were a Parisian family for just a little while.  We spent the afternoon in the Jardin du Luxembourg, which is a very lovely garden that is popular with locals. We began with a picnic lunch.

Then, the kids played on the best playground I have ever seen for about an hour and a half.  Lyndon made friends with a girl from Brazil and Sidney befriended a girl from Switzerland.  Here are the kids climbing on a miniature Eiffel tower.

The girls went on pony rides through the park.  Hadley was deathly afraid of ponies up until last year, so this was a major step.

We capped off our Luxembourg Garden experience with traditional wooden sailboat racing in a small pond.  Our kids were the captains of the Australian sailboat. The gist of the activity is that you launch your rented sailboat with a long wooden stick.  Then you chase your sailboat around the pond for 30 minutes and prod it with the stick to make it sail back and forth across the pond.  Each sailboat has a different theme, most of which relate to countries or sea creatures.

After the park, we headed to the Eiffel tower.  We only had to wait in line for about 45 minutes,which is really not bad!  The kids had been looking forward to this so much and it exceeded our expectations.

We made it to the top of the tower, and the views were phenomenal.  I need to explain this next picture.  When Dan and I first decided about this trip, we immediately began making references to the movie, National Lampoon's European Vacation.  As a joke, I ordered berets for all of us and resisted the temptation to have the name "Rusty" monogrammed on all of them.  (National Lampoon fans will get a chuckle out of that.)  I insisted that we all take a picture at the top of the Eiffel tower in our berets and they were all good sports about it.

This may just have to be our Christmas card  picture, if I ever get around to sending Christmas cards this year.  Last year's cards are still sitting in a drawer in my house.  I may send out 2012 and 2013 together...