One Happy Dog...

The only time Kati was on a plane before was when she moved from Romania to Holland and she would have been in the cargo hold.

I was amazed how comfortable she was climbing the stairs and exploring the plane.

More incredible was that she hopped aboard a helicopter that Pieter was showing us. Although none of us were boarding the helicopter, that didn’t stop her.

Off to Germany...

On the 26th, we packed up a rental car and set off to visit Melissa and Pieter in Hofheim am Taunus, outside of Frankfurt. We figured that Kati probably thought we were driving her back to the farm where she was fostered, but she eventually realized that she was going with us and fully settled down for the five-hour drive. Brody and Jackson didn’t seem to mind having a girl in the house. 

Melissa and I took the three dogs for a long walk in the fields next to their house each morning and afternoon.

Luckily Pieter was able to take two days off of work to hang out with us. One of the days he took us to the base to show us the type of plane he flies.

 Look at those big smiles while sitting in the cockpit.

Ashlynn missed out that day as she stayed behind to revise for her mock exams.

Christmas 2016...

In our usual tradition, our first activity on Christmas morning was to open our stockings.

Then we opened our Christmas gifts, which included this mermaid tail for Ashlynn from Veronica.

As much as we would have loved to stay in our PJs all day, we had to get dressed to walk Kati. 

Lucky dog got to join us for dinner. Of course, she didn’t actually eat off of a plate, but Jimmy thought it would be cute to pretend for a photo.

Christmas Eve with Trix...

On Christmas Eve, we went to Naturalis, the natural history museum in Leiden, to see the only tyrannosaurus to be permanently on exhibit in Europe.

Trix, named in honor of Queen Beatrix, was unearthed by some Dutch paleontologists in Montana in 2013 after being discovered by an amateur paleontologist and his wife of Dutch descent. They were able to extract 80% of her skeleton, making her one of the three most complete t-rex ever found. Her display differs from the two in the US in that her real skull is used and is thus low to the ground so it can be well supported. Her missing bones were made using 3D printed replications of Sue, a like-sized t-rex in Chicago’s Field Museum.

We had a fascinating long conversation with one of the docents and then enjoyed the other activities in the exhibit. Now that it’s already June, Trix is going on tour around Europe while her permanent new home is built at Naturalis.

Afterwards, we enjoyed some gluhwein at Leiden’s floating Christmas market.

That evening was the first night of Hanukkah and Jimmy made sweet potato latkes, which were yummy (much better than the strange blue wine that we’d received years ago as a gift).

The Vegan Princesses...

It was great to finally have Veronica home after being away for three months. She surprised Ashlynn with matching aprons with the name from their joint Instagram account: The Vegan Princesses.

Lucky for me and Jimmy, our Vegan Princesses were happy to cook for us over the holidays. The girls have always loved pierogies (Polish dumplings often with potatoes, onions and cheese) so they were happy to find a good vegan recipe. Lucky for all of us, they were delicious.

On Christmas morning, the girls made vegan cinnamon rolls, which were also delicious.

It was so great having The Vegan Princesses together again!

Last Odd Bits of Paris...

Every Sunday, there’s a colorful bird market, one of Europe’s last remaining street pet markets.

Veronica was very excited to explore this charming English-language bookstore started by an American in 1951.

We happened upon two movies being filmed, the first with a lady sitting in a box...

 ...and the second with a man getting photos at a fake photo booth.

We had lunch at a charming little creperie and then headed to the rooftop of the Galeria Lafayette, a very upscale department store, to see the view and a photography exhibit.

The giant Christmas tree was really impressive complete with gondolas flying across the store.

Our journey home didn’t go very smoothly as our train was delayed by nearly two hours. There was a complete lack of communication with passengers, which was the most frustrating part of all. Definitely made us appreciate Dutch trains.

Jardin des Tuileries and Beyond...

After breakfast on our final morning in Paris, we wandered down to the gardens next to the Louvre.

We had warm memories of picnicking in these gardens with Vivynne, Tony, Ariana and Max back in 2005 and taking photos of the kids (plus at least one big kid named Jimmy) with the statues such as The Three Graces.

Classy as Always

Luckily the weather was mild for December and we had a lovely day just wandering around together. On the bridge near Notre Dame, we saw an insane amount of love locks. Paris has had incredible problems with damage to bridges, but this area was next to the bridge, so presumably not creating as big of a hazard. 

We had to laugh, however, when we saw some of the locks. If the whole point of a love lock was to throw away the key to symbolize unbreakable love, why are there combination locks?