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My beautiful cousin gave us a wedding card with a quote from Lewis Carol written on it. “The best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures,” it said. A lovely little line from Alice & Wonderland. And as we close this part of the trip it comes to mind, because when I married Brad it is what I knew I would be getting. It’s what I know I’ll continue to get for the rest of my life.

I have a thing for the chimneys in France. The way so many of them reach out of the beautiful old buildings into the cotton candy clouds at sunset. It makes you feel cozy and romantic and maybe like when the wind blows through them it could whisper to you stories that rose from their hearths below long ago. Amazing how something as weird as a chimney can do that.

When I was a little girl I used to tell all of my babysitters that I lived in a castle. That the house we were in wasn’t my real house. That actually I was a princess who lived high in a tower on top of a mountain overlooking the ocean. I so vividly remember what it looked like in my mind, my imaginary home. And now I’m pretty certain I’ve seen it in real life.

Turns out, if you’re us, it takes about four weeks of international travel with children to hit a wall. To go from that this-is-all-so-romantic-and-exciting mentality to worn out and weary. We arrived in London with colds, which rapidly evolved into something more gnarly. And let me tell you, nothing makes you realize what a physical feat this all is quite like lugging a bulky stroller and sixty five pounds worth of small human by yourself down three flights of stairs to the London Underground with a deep and persistent chest cough.

Ketch has decided that his favorite city is Paris. To be expected I guess from a kid whose most frequently requested food is muscles in butter sauce with frites and who has been obsessed with the seeing the Eiffel Tower since we put together a 3D puzzle of it one day after preschool.