Our Trip to France--Background

A long time ago, back in January(?) 2013, my youngest brother Tim got his mission call. He was called to serve in the France, Lyon mission! We were all so ecstatic because that's where we were living as a family when he was born. Not Lyon, but France. We were there when he opened his call, and we all decided immediately that we would just have to plan a trip and go back to France together to pick him up at the end of his mission.

I had still never been back to France since we returned, so when I was 8 years old. I've always wanted to go back. In high school when I was taking French, the class could pay like $2,000 (if I remember correctly, could've been more) to go on a fabulous trip over there. I wanted to go so badly, but my parents said I had to pay for it myself. I did not have nearly enough money, and no way could I get it in time. My part time job at Arctic Circle wasn't going to cut it. So this time I swore that I would work hard enough to be able to go on this trip. I had 2 years warning, that's plenty of time to save! I ended up babysitting a little girl for about 7 months and made a pretty good chunk of change. It didn't cover the whole trip, but most of it.

The only thing that became an issue was that my baby Briggs was still that--a baby. I hated the thought of leaving him, but I also knew how very different this trip would be if we brought him along. I had already stopped breastfeeding him at 5 months because of other issues we were having, so that wasn't part of the equation anymore. But thanks to Kenny's insistence that we leave him or he wouldn't come, we arranged for childcare. We flew Kenny's mom out to be with the older 4 kids, and then split the time with Briggs between my sister in law Shalee, and my cousin Carmin. I was so worried about over-burdening someone with my baby. He still wasn't sleeping through the night at that point, and I just had so much guilt over making someone else take care of my kids so I could go off on a vacation in France. I was very selfish. But I also couldn't bear the thought of NOT going when we had worked and planned for it for so long. So I decided to just try and get over it. I knew he was in good hands and that he wouldn't remember a single bit of it. There was a lot of going back and forth over whether we would go or not. It was a hard decision, but eventually I came to the conclusion that I would regret more if I didn't go!

Also in preparation for the trip I had been reading my Book of Mormon in French, and conference talks online (in French), as well as going through Rosetta Stone. I have not done a very good job of keeping up the language, and I didn't want to go over there a total idiot. But I sort of did anyway haha. I knew enough to get by as a tourist, but certainly not at the level I would like to be.

We had planned for a very long time that we would go in April 2015, because that was 2 years from when he went into the MTC, but it ended up being mid-March that he was getting released. In some ways it was kind of a bummer because a lot of things weren't yet open because it wasn't "tourist season", and the blossoms weren't out yet and it was still cold and rainy. But in other ways it was really nice because it wasn't tourist season yet and we didn't have to fight crowds anywhere we went! I love that.

Carolyn (Kenny's mom) got here late Sunday night. It was nice to have time with her before she left to go over things, she could ask any questions she wanted, the kids got comfortable with her there, find out where stuff is in the house, etc. I felt good about the transition.

Tuesday, March 10th we flew out really late that night. So we put all the kids to bed and said goodbye to them. They were excited for the time with Grandma! I wasn't worried about them at all. Then we drove into Anchorage and dropped Brigham off at Carmin's house. That sweet little boy just smiled at me the whole time as I left him, totally unsuspecting. I definitely cried as we drove away, it just tore me up inside. I felt so sad to be leaving my 7 month old baby who is still pretty much another appendage at this point, always stuck with me!! Lots of mom guilt there, and even looking back I sort of can't believe I actually did that. We flew out a few hours later. Sleeping on planes is never ideal, but that's okay. We were so excited that we were actually going! 2 years of anticipation and now it was finally here.
Pictures of a little exploring we did walking around the DFW airport for a long time on one of our layovers.