Paris Day One... a trip to Disney

We made it through Italy, so it was time to venture into...

France!

The wonderful part about driving through all of this, is to see the countryside up close and personal.  Flying is great, and I'm a big advocate! but there is something special about the scenery from the road.  Unfortunately, since my good camera was out of commission, all of the pictures I took from the car looked like I took them from a moving vehicle... oops!  In any case, we were excited to arrive in Paris because of the cabin Greg had booked.  We hadn't told Brady about it and thought he was especially going to be excited because it was a...

 

 Treehouse!  

If you look on the left hand side, you can see the ramp that leads you to a back porch and the door.  We drove partly for this cabin and the one on Normandy because it was necessary to prepare our own meals, and basically we were camping.  Every morning someone brought us a basket (seen on the left behind our car), attached it to the long rope hanging in front off the balcony, and we pulled it up to enjoy the fresh bread and croissants, butter, coffee, and juice.

The first day was especially for the kids and we went to Disney.  After a walk to the train station and a ride across the city, we finally arrived at the "Most magical place on earth."  And life was good.

 Sorry for the poor picture quality, but it's necessary to show Juliette's dessert plate and the fact that she was eating with 2 spoons!  Did I mention life was good?!

And then, things took a turn.  Before we entered the park, we told each child they could choose one thing to buy.  It could be whatever they wanted, but we were only going to buy one thing each.  Brady found a Stitch doll while we were renting the stroller.  We had barely entered the park and after talking to him about it, he decided to not buy the first thing he saw.  So, we went on our merry way.  The Buzz Lightyear ride was the hit of the day and both children decided to buy a Buzz toy.  

Juliette chose a laser gun and Brady chose a talking Buzz Lightyear (the exact one he already had at home, but he was able to choose whatever he wanted.)

She enjoyed shooting the princesses...

and Brady had the best toy ever until...

He spotted that same Stitch doll as we were returning the stroller.  So then he thought he would be smart and give Juliette his Buzz toy which meant she had TWO toys and poor poor Brady had no toy at all.  I'll give him credit that it was a good try, but it didn't work.  We say ONE toy, we mean ONE toy and yes, we are those parents.  Well, it didn't go over so well because the results were this...

and this...

then this...

and finally a time out, mostly because he hit his sister and it was all getting a little too dramatic.

We were standing around waiting for time out to be over when a family came up to us and told us they thought we were doing a great job!  They said they had been watching and listening way back at the stroller return and felt like we were doing the right thing.  Wow!  It was great to get positive feedback in the midst of a total breakdown!  In a world where parents are barely able to "parent" their own kids, what a nice reminder that maybe we aren't screwing up so bad after all!