Hello! This is Ainsley and I'm taking over the blog for today (maybe more)—I have been asking and begging my mom to let me do this for months! So I'll be posting about my family tradition of crepes and my school fun run for our school money raiser.

So here are the amazing crepes my mom makes every General Conference. 

They taste so good I ate at least 8! 

This is my class before the fun run (I'm on the right).

                                   

This is me and my best friends after the race and you can see from our red faces that we ran a lot.

     

 (from left to right) me, Lucia, Kaylie and Shayla. Thanks for reading!

—Ainsley 

A Walk in Paris

Guest Post by Ainsley

Posted June 18, 2015

Ainsley here! I am going to talk about a walk that me and my dad went on. We went to a church and on the doors it has all ten commandments.  Five on each side. Here I am standing by one of the huge doors.

Here I am in front of the church, it's called La Madeleine.

One of the sides of the church.

Me posing with this lovely statue.

 On top of a building was a stature of something. I can't remember what this is.

And we finally (after a LONG walk) we found macaroons. If you've never had a macaroon, you don't know what you're missing. They are made with two gourmet cookies, with gourmet frosting in the middle. There are many different flavors, like strawberry, lemon, chocolate, mango, lime, apple...the list goes on. They are light and soft, but kind of crunchy. It's worth a trip to Paris just for a good macaroon. Walking in Paris is the best!!

Paris

Guest post by Rob

Posted July 5, 2015

First full day in Paris, it was time to go out and explore. So while everyone else was sleeping, I got up for a run, if by "a run" you mean sort of jogging toward the Seine then wandering a bit to have a look around. And that is exactly how I mean it.

Which reminds me of a joke.

Pierre: Jacques! A man just jumped off the Pont Neuf!

Jacques: What? He must be in Seine.

Back to my wandering.

Since Paris was totally unfamiliar at this point, I was just having a look around, but if I saw something that looked interesting, I took a snapshot. Which is why I took this picture of a government building. Actually, given that there are so many government buildings in Paris, it's a good bet that most of my pictures fit that category. 

Fans of Sex in the City will recognize this bridge from an episode where the Sarah Jessica Parker character (I've never actually seen the show) and her partner attached a lock to a bridge, then throw the key in the river. What? That's in Seine! Apparently the lock on a bridge is a thing. Which is why there are thousands of them on the Pont des Arts:

If you can ignore the fact that the extra weight is causing damage to the bridge (which, conveniently, I can) it's a pretty cool site to see. A close up:

And from the bridge I ran over to the Louvre which wasn't open yet. So there were no tourists. The courtyards were peacefully empty.

Two hours from now the pyramid will be surrounded by thousands of people holding their fingers just right so they look like they're pressing the pyramid down. But for now, it's really quiet.

Our apartment was just two blocks from the Louvre, so we walked through this courtyard and the gardens beyond them dozens of times over the next month.

I went back to get a few of my traveling companions and we went exploring. This is the Palais Garnier, also know as the home of the Phantom of the Opera.

We wandered down the Seine to Notre Dame. It's hard to see from the photo, but there's a pretty good line of people waiting to get in. We were excited to join them.

A historical aside... Notre Dame wasn't always a popular destination. During the French Revolution it was occupied by revolutionaries and rededicated to the Cult of Reason. The statues of the Kings of Israel, who stand on the Western Facade, were beheaded because the revolutionaries confused them with the Kings of France. They replaced the Virgin Mary with Lady Liberty. Fun crowd, those revolutionaries.

Napoleon was coronated here in a staged ceremony where he ripped the crown from the hands of the Pope and placed it on his own head, symbolizing that the people (or at least the emperor) had taken the power away from the church.

Then the cathedral fell into disrepair and was used as a warehouse. 

The stained glass is impressive (not as impressive as Saint Chapelle) but worth seeing.

The Gothic architecture is impressive. But in the early 1800s, it had fallen out of fashion. Many of Paris' gothic buildings were being torn down and the stones used for more modern buildings. Victor Hugo thought the Gothic buildings were worth saving, so he wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame to draw attention to this architectural treasure. It worked and the cathedral is the most popular building in Paris today.

From an alter piece, Doubting Thomas gets a reason to doubt no more. Love the other apostles watching the scene from the windows of surrounding building, which seems to be a pretty good example of artistic license.

On the western facade. John the Baptist, apparently resurrected but still without his head.

In the court yard in front of the cathedral is this statue of Charlemagne.

Around Paris, the Metropolitan (metro) signs come in several different styles. I took to collecting a few of them.

On our way back, we passed the Hotel de Ville (Paris City Hall) where Robespierre was arrested. It later burned and was rebuilt.

Our apartment was in an awesome location. As I mentioned, just a couple of block from the Louvre and just down the street from the Opera, smack dab in the middle of Paris's Japan town. This is the sushi bar on the floor below us. The French do a lot of foods right, but the sushi in the states is far superior. They kick our butts at bread and pastries, but they can't touch our 007 and Playboy rolls.

Last, the view from one of our windows, looking down Rue St. Anne.

Fantabulous French School

Posted June 17, 2015

Bonjour! Ellie here. Now I don't blog very often, so savor this post like it's your favorite dessert. Today I'm blogging about my day in French school.

At the school they had a kind of broken apart school I guess, like one classroom was across the street, he others in the courtyard, etc. So, it's not all attached. This is a courtyard where they had recess and lunch.

You had to wait for a couple minutes outside the courtyard (and a couple minutes can be very long when you are impatient!), and then the gates would open and the teachers were waiting for you and you all went your separate ways.

Here is a picture of Ainsley with Émeline and their teacher. They colored in American flags and had English class, but she said it was British English.

And here is a picture of me and Alexia and our teacher. At school we learned about America, because I'm American. We colored maps and read an article on the other side of the worksheets about America. In math we focused on learning our numbers, or in my case learning my numbers, in their's reviewing them. Then, we played a few games. It was so fun! Oh, and it turns out that an American girl at a French school is very popular.

After French school we went to the Mezzasalma's and kept playing. This is a picture of Joey with Clément.

This is a picture of Ainsley and Émeline on google translate, seeing as we couldn't speak French very well, and they couldn't speak English very well. Oh, and this doesn't mean we didn't try it was just, well, difficult.

This is me and Alexia helping each other to get our numbers in French (I told you we tried!), and English. This is something we did in math except we did multiplication facts (it's harder to do it in French—I mean a language can change everything). All in all, I think that French school's pretty fantabulous.

"Un Petit Défilé de Carnaval"

Posted June 17th, 2015

The night before these photos I got a message from Christine asking if the girls would be interested in joining in "a little carnival parade" organized for the kids of their local school. Of course we jumped at the chance to  live like a local for the day and joined them around 2:30 in the afternoon in La Fountain St. Martin (the town of about 500 people where Christine and her family live, just a few kilometers away from Pierre and Solange). Here's Ellie to tell you about the day:

So apparently it wouldn't be that long before I blogged again, but still. Les Bons-Bons is a parade-like thing were you go around to all these houses and yell, "LES BONS-BONS," which is French for, "CANDY!" I happen to think that this single word just sums it up. Candy. It is actually a lot like Halloween, although French candy not American candy. This is a picture of Ainsley and me in front of the local church.

This is a picture of Ainsley, me, Alexia, and Émeline (in order). I felt very left out, seeing as I was the only one wearing polka-dots, and they were all wearing stripes.

Many kids were wearing costumes.

We carried around this doll, which we would burn at the end.

This is us calling for the candy (it's a good thing they gave it to us too, because otherwise, well, you get the point).

You can hear the chant in this clip:

In this picture I am holding confetti, and Ainsley is holding a maraca (I think she got the better end of the deal).

Here we burned the doll,  which was filled with straw so it didn't take long for it to light up. 

And this, of course, is the aftermath. Who ever knew a kid could be so entertained?

Here are a few pictures taken by my dad on a walk that he and Joey went on while we trick-or-treated. 

You can read, good job! Now go make your reading skills useful and read the Harry Potter series. #fanforlife #whyareyoustillreadingthis #areyouoneofthosepeoplethatreadhashtags? #weird #thatmakesmeweirdtoo #hashtagsarehardtoreadbecausethewordsareallmashedtogether #dontknowwhatthisisapictureof #icanreadthesehashtags #hashtag #iamannoyingyouandnowyouarelaughingbecauseicalledit #whatwhat #whoscool? #ellieis #icouldgoonforeverbutiwillspareyouthetorture #seriouslywhatisthisapictureof #iwantotknowbutmymomtakessolongintheshowerandithasbeenahalfanhourandshetookthepictureandsheknowswhatitis

Michelle again. Apparently I really threw Ellie by including this photo from later that day:

I went with Solange to a Relief Society activity. We weren't quilting, this was just someone showing off their finished project. I can't remember exactly what we talked about, just that there was a lot of talking. I was happy I could follow most of it, but tired by the time the evening was over. 

#sorryforthedistressellie #ithoughtyouwerentgoingtotortureus #ihatehashtags #whatiswrongwithpunctuationandspacing??!!!

Mom's Birthday and Valentine's Day

Belated guest post for February 13th and 14th, 2014. Actually posted on June 17, 2014.

Hello, my name is Ainsley. Today I will be talking about my mom's birthday and Valentine's day. It begins where Ellie and I made my mom a birthday gift—one necklace with shells and one necklace with charms. 

So, since we made her that gift, apparently she had to take a picture with us and the gifts.

We went to dinner for her birthday in Perpignan and we had delicious pizza and pasta there. My dad and Joey shared tapas. They looked disgusting.

Mom and Ellie posing for a picture, what an exciting event.

Here we are toasting mom with our glasses for a happy birthday.

This is on Valentine's. It's our family tradition to always get a new book on Valentine's, but since we were in France and all of the books were in French, we got it on our kindles.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to eat crepes, which is our other Valentine Day tradition, even though we were in France!!! Here I am, peeking at my book while the others are all posing for another picture.

I got a Nancy Drew book!!!

Here's Ellie, with her book, Writing Magic, because she wants to be an author.

Robbie got some boring book, which he says is Steelheart.

Here mom is with her book, which she bought for herself, because, well, she's the mom. It's called All There Is. She hasn't even read it yet.

Dad got a book about Paris, called The Greater Journey.

And here Joey is, with a book called Crime Travelers.

I hope you liked Ainsley's blog post.

The End.