2 kids with colds and fevers
+ 1 lovely intestinal bug (giardia?)
+ 1 kiddo kicking around at 21 weeks in utero
+ 1 case of weird, shooting lower back pain (sciatica?)
+ 25 hour travel time in the air and waiting in airports
= 1 exciting, upcoming adventure

On Tuesday, we fly to the States. Lord-willing, the kids will be past their colds, I won’t get any sicker, and Kabob won’t get what any of us are having. Particularly the fever part… Being quarantined in the airports stateside sounds like no fun.

All this said, we’re all very excited about this upcoming adventure. It’ll be go go go from the moment we land because the trip is short and sweet (we hope to come back for a more leisurely time in the fall, after Lentil is born). But it’ll still be good.

In the meantime, I’m preparing to speak at a conference, Kabob is preparing to travel solo with two kids from Atlanta to Oregon (we split up in Atlanta, and I go on to Nashville), and Chickpea is preparing for some Chick-Fil-A. Garbanzo is preparing to not poop one time while we’re in an airplane.

We’re traveling light because 1. we prefer to, and 2. almost all the kids’ pants are highwater. Yeah, we’ll be stocking up on clothes when we’re there. Watch out, Goodwill.

Be it in Nashville, Eugene, Austin, or somewhere in between, we hope to see you soon!

So I haven’t gotten around to writing about our last two vacation days for a couple reasons.  The main one is that this past weekend, I was hit HARD with the flu.  So I’ve been in bed for most of the past three days, and I’m only now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I can’t remember the last time I felt this yucky.

But the other reason I haven’t written much is because we didn’t really do anything.  On day 6, the day after Disneyland, we didn’t leave our apartment until lunchtime, and then spent the better part of the early afternoon looking for a place to eat that wasn’t full.  Parisians really get out on the weekends.  We finally sat down at a little cafe a bit after 2 o’clock.

The lunch was delicious (of course), expensive (of course), and full of the food I wish was still around me.  So after this, we went food shopping.  We went back to Le Bon Marche, the food section, and got some souvenir-y food things like Dijon mustard, chocolates, jam, and the like.  We even bought parmesan, cheddar, and brie cheese. Hey, it’s worth a potentially stinky suitcase.

After this, and after fighting the day’s rain and wind, we headed back.  We needed to clean the apartment and pack up.

So that’s what we did most of the evening while the kids watched Ratatouille (which is much more fun to watch now).  We finally crashed at dark-thirty, only to wake up again at…  well, dark-thirty, to catch our flight.

Day 7 was our leave day (sniff sniff).  We thought our flight was at 8 a.m., but it turns out it was at 8:40.  Not a major difference, except that we left the apartment via taxi at 5 a.m., not sure how long it would take to get to the airport (with traffic, it could easily take an hour).  We needed to be there two hours ahead of departure, since it was an international flight, so our goal was 6 a.m.

Well, we got there at 5:30.  For an 8:40 flight.  Check in was super fast, so we were sitting at a table at the closed Starbucks at 5:50, waiting for 6:30, when it would open.  Let’s just say that we had plenty of time to kill at Charles De Gaulle International Airport, quite possibly one of the strangest-looking airports either of us have seen.  Felt like we were in a Bond movie.

So we got back home, safe and sound, only missing one piece of luggage.  The one that happened to have the brie and the parmesan.  Luckily, it came to our home the next day, and it wasn’t too stinky.  Still totally edible.

This past week has definitely been a recovery week, and the house is still a wreck.  But that’s also in part because of our household’s Flu Takeover 2009. Needless to say, though, Paris has probably wrecked us for life. I’m not sure I’ll ever eat food as good again. I can’t wait to go back.

I have news to share… tomorrow!  Stay tuned.

Day 5 was… (drumroll)… Disneyland!  We didn’t tell Chickpea where we were headed, so when our train was about five minutes from the entrance, we asked her where we thought we were going.

Her answer:  “Chick-Fil-A?”

You may have noticed that Chick is into this leg-in-the-air pose. I have NO idea where she got it from, but I find it hilarious.

So we pretty much knew she’d be happily surprised.  And she was.

There’s not much to say about our day, because it was a typical Disney sort-of day.  Disneyland Paris is a spitting image of the one in Anaheim; maybe a wee bit smaller.

Chickpea is at a really fun age to do Disney — she asked several times, “Is this real or pretend?”

It was also odd to be cold at Disneyland.  The few times either of us have been, we’ve been sweaty and sunburned.

We left when it closed, at 7 p.m., and headed back to the apartment via metro.  I carried Chick’s souvenir, an oversized Minnie Mouse helium balloon.  It got stuck in the metro entrance gate, having closed before I pulled the balloon through.  Kabob had to squeeze it through via the other side.  I felt like I was in a cartoon.

So with four days of major sight seeing, then a day of Disneyland, we knew that tomorrow, our final day in Paris, needed to be low key.  We crashed HARD that night.