Paris}The Eiffel Tower

Finally getting Paris posted!

We started our first day in Paris off early and at the Eiffel Tower - where else would you start your day when you are in Paris! In fact we began and ended our day with the Eiffel Tower when we took a nighttime cruise down the Seine River. It was magical. Did you know that at night, on the hour, the Eiffel Tower twinkles!? Yes, all the lights twinkle and it is so beautiful!!!

The other thing we discovered is that the Eiffel Tower is really big - I mean BIG!

Enjoy a little taste of Paris!




The beautiful view of Sacre Coeur from the top of the Eiffel Tower - does it get any better or any prettier than this!!



And the view down the Champs Elysees...



Just lovely....



The best part of Paris? Getting to share it with this cute girl!



And the view from down below is not too bad either. Did I mention that the Eiffel Tower is HUGE!!!





And Cali had to get her jumping picture in front of the Eiffel Tower.



This time I decided just to stand - not jump!


After a wild and fun day in Paris we ended the day with a beautiful cruise down the Seine River. The Eiffel Tower is even more beautiful and magical at night.







And it's BIG too!!


Paris is pretty during the day but is magical and beautiful at night.







Notre Dame isn't too shabby either at night!


It was the perfect ending to a perfect day in Paris!


More Paris adventures coming soon....

More Free Fun in the Park

We took full advantage of the free series of concerts at Washington Park this week.

Wednesday night we headed over to listen to a group called Apple Jam - they play all Beatles music so Jim was excited.  They mostly play Beatles music that was never recorded on an album so there were lots of songs we hadn't heard before.

We met our friends the Jensen's there and we took Tessa's friend Katy Jo along with us.

We ate dinner before we went so no picnic this time but the girls did enjoy some shaved ice!

It made for some very colorful tongues!

One of the most entertaining parts of the evening was watching this gal hula hoop right in front of us - she could really work those hula hoops.  I think she must be a rhythmic gymnast because she could really do some amazing things with them!

Logan arrived home Thursday morning so we decided to take him to the concert in the Park last night (thursday).  It was African music and dancing being feature which I must admit was not my favorite but we enjoyed watching all the interesting people.  They don't say "Keep Portland Weird" for nothing!!

This time we took a picnic dinner along

Unfortunately Cali had to work late so she couldn't go with us but we were so glad to have this guy home and with us!!

The amphitheater is right next to the Rose Gardens so we went and did a little photo shoot for Totally Tessa.

The roses were amazing and the view of downtown Portland is spectacular!
The concert series ends this weekend so I'm not sure what we are going to do for fun next !?

Picnic in the Park

One of the great things about Portland during the summer is that just about any night of the week you can find some free concert, movie or other performance in one of the parks.  This next week Washington Park is having a concert series so we decided to check one out.

The Portland Opera was performing on Friday night so we packed up a picnic dinner and headed over with our friends the Jensen's.  It was a popular place to be - the place was packed!

We managed to find a place right down front and slightly to the side of the stage to lay out our picnic dinner.

We ate and then kicked back and enjoyed the amazing music.

The opera was Verdi's Il Trovotore in Italian so of course we didn't understand a word but they did have a written synopsis of the opera so we had some idea what was going on.  The guys even admitted to enjoying it more than they thought they would!

We ended up sitting next to some people we knew.  They are the parents of Logan's buddy Bryce so we had fun getting caught up on each others lives and our kids lives!

They are having a John Lennon/Paul McCartney night later in the week - think we'll check that one out too!