Beau & Jen, Charleston, Litchfield2016

Three Fridays ago I tricked Kelsey into getting on a plane again and we flew to Palm Beach.  The humidity was such that my glasses would fog up, blinding me, every time I took a step outside. It was for a good cause, though, because Beau and Jen got married!

And I got to give Beau away. That's how this works, right?

It rained a bit before the wedding, but then cleared up and was a perfect (super humid) night.

And the Flagler Museum made the reception very classy.

Kels and I clean up alright, too.

Beau and I have known each other for fifteen years as this September, and I was delighted and terrified to serve as his best man.  I had a lot of good memories to mine for my speech, some of which I am sure were corrupted by time and had nothing to do with anything that actually happened. 

The next morning, I tricked Kels again and we got on another plane to Charleston. We wandered around for hours, Kels bought a hat, we ate oysters three different ways, and found an ice-cream sandwich shop staffed by a classically trained trumpet player (who also makes surprisingly good ice cream sandwiches). 

Then we watched Hamilton win all the awards.

On Monday we drove up to Litchfield, where I had a special surprise for some folks at the beach...

Ben! All the way from Japan!

After I found out that Ben could come, we went to extreme lengths to make sure that no one else would find out.  

**BREAK**

At this point in the blog, Kelsey is taking over due to Mike recovering from his eye surgery. He's doing well, he just can't look at computer screens:) Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah....I can't believe Mike kept the secret of Ben joining us for several months. Apparently this is something he was working out while we were on our Europe trip. I'm so grateful Ben was able to the beach (this gives us hope for next year too!) and the quality of our hangout time and cocktails benefited from his presence.

Our first night, Ween and Roberta were visiting for an evening and took everyone out for a seafood dinner! Glad we ended up getting a picture of the whole group:) Jen, Ross, and Brian had yet to arrive at the beach. They would join on Thursday after I was already gone.

Our waitress had great picture-taking skills.

And I made Mike practice his photography skills with our fancy camera. Here's an example.

Ben making cocktails back at the house on our first night. He should be on a cocktail edition of Top Chef.

The group waiting for dinner at one of the traditional spots: The Fish House.

I was no longer at the beach when this photo was taken, but I definitely cried when I saw it. Apparently where the future Paljug child is expected to swing.  (Mike edit: this picture was 100% calculated to make Kelsey cry.  There was no other reason for it.)

Sunset on the first evening

Great picture of pregnant Kay

**BREAK**

At this point it has been five days since Mike's eye surgery and so I (Mike) am taking back over to finish this blog.  Everything is very blurry, but I can sort of/kind of see.  Any errors on the blog for the next several months will be blamed on my PRK procedure and the slow process of the top layer of my eye growing back and smoothing itself out.  

VA & NC & Marathon Training

Summer travel season is in full swing! In the past few weeks, Mike and I have visited my family in VA, Mike's family in NC, attended a wedding for Beau and Jen in Florida, had a brief stay in Charleston, and spent some time at our favorite beach in South Carolina. Since I'm currently at the beach in South Carolina listening to the boys play board games in the background (I'm very particular about my board games), we'll save the recap from that trip for another blog.

Memorial Day in VA:

We were blessed to be able to have some extra time off over the weekend to see friends and family and remember the ultimate sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. Highlights of the weekend included getting to babysit Ashton, a wonderful snack spread of smoked salmon from Wegmans and other goodies, and getting to spend time with family even though it was short.

A Memorial Day ceremony I attended at GW where we had an amazing speaker and a jazz saxophonist playing the National Anthem.

Our neighbors never miss a holiday.

Courtney and Ashton at the pool at my mom's house during Memorial Day Weekend.

Rick let Ashton sit on the tractor.

I brought Ashton a special marshmallow treat of one of his favorite TV show characters.

Too cute!

Weekend in NC:

We spent the weekend after that traveling down to NC where we spent some time with Mike's family. We don't have any pictures that I know of besides this one on a cloudy day walk in Burlington, but that's because we were bring good and trying to minimize time on our phones:) I'll have to get Mike to pack his nice camera next time! Highlights of the trip included Ween's cooking (as usual), seeing Rachel who is back from France for good!, taking a yoga class with Leslie (Mike declined), and just getting to see everyone even though it was a short trip.

Probably not a good idea:

So, Mike and I are both officially signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon at the end of October. Mike is running with some Navy friends, and I am running with GW to raise money and awareness for cancer research. I was so nervous about signing up for this race, but I am inspired by stories of those who run and why they run/the causes that they run for. Below are two instructors from Mike and I's spinning classes who inspired me to sign up for the race.

Nicole was signed up to run IronMan France which is a triathalon that includes a full marathon for the running portion. Unfortunately, she got in a bike accident right before the race and has to be off the bike for a while, but she has already made plans to try again next year and has shown grace and positivity throughout the entire thing!

Robin ran a 100-mile ultra-marathon a month or so ago! She is a former lawyer who left her job to inspire others through fitness. She has a great story and a book coming out soon!

SO I guess we're going for it then. Training for me starts on June 26th and for Mike it starts a week after. We've been getting a couple of runs in at the beach to make sure we're good to go. You know we'll be providing you all with training updates along the way!

Paris

DAY EIGHT

The train to Paris was on time and speedy. We took an uber to our hotel, which was small but had a pretty okay location.

Right across from the Louvre.

And down the street from the Musee D'Orsay. 

Since we were right in the middle of everything, we immediately set out to explore the city on foot. We ended walking all the way to the Eiffel Tower. How convenient!

It's pretty under the clouds.

We only have one picture inside of Kei restaurant because we quickly realized it is not the type of restaurant where you take pictures. We will do our best to describe the highlights of the experience to you in 3 "lessons learned": 

1) use all of the silverware even if there is some silverware that doesn't make sense for a particular dish

2) expect things like ground pepper to be single-origin and served from the bones of a well travelled exotic animal

3) doors to the bathroom hidden in the wall are to be expected and there's no need to applaud

Our only picture inside of Kei. Lavender walls, white trim and mirror accents, silver and crystal. Beautiful decor, even if my picture is really of a random angle in the restaurant.

DAY NINE

The next morning we woke up super early to catch our bus to Versailles. Even with the morning chill and the sun not being fully risen, our first glimpses of Versaille were spectacular and glittery. The camera cannot capture it, but we tried anyway. Not knowing a ton about French history (Kelsey), I could tell from his home why the people had a love/hate relationship with the king. How could you not adore someone with such a spectacular home? But how could you not loathe something so self-indulgent and extravagant.

In front of the golden gates.

Still shiny even with some cloud cover.

Gazing at the gardens.

Sweet, right? This was also just the smaller "side" garden. A teaser for the gardens to come.

The main garden complete with gold-plated statue fountain, marble statues lining the walkways, acres of woods, and a man-made lake.

Picture this place during a party with all of the  fountains on and fancy dresses everywhere.

Selfie for good measure.

Picture gazing back toward the palace.

Fountain of Apollo. I love how it looks like he's coming straight out of the water.

Mike: Kelsey after I insisted on walking down another random pathway on our way back to the main castle.

Kels: Mike literally wanted to go on a walking adventure through the bamboo mazes of Versailles without knowing where we were going. AND I had not had any coffee yet today. :)

Kels: After we got back from Versailles, we had a wine tasting scheduled back near the Louvre. It turned out to be a really cool tasting experience that educated you on the wine process before your tasting portion, and you got to take experiential quizzes through an app you downloaded on your phone. Our favorite (maybe just mine? haha) moment was at the end when our sommelier, Baptiste, educated us on various wines. I asked what his favorite wine ever was (of course) and he said a 1987 Burgundy that he had on his birthday, and that's how we found out we were all born in the same year! Then he also helped us out by teaching us that a Cotes du Rhone is probably the cheapest and most consistently good wine you can order when out. 

Kels: This was the "wine label" room. Around the room were framed wine labels.

Kels: There was even a photo booth....so a little touristy, but we were tourists after all!

After the wine tasting, we took a little nap before our dinner cruise that evening. We walked about 40 minutes down the Seine to where the boat was. What ended being hilarious is that the boat basically took our same route down the Seine and turned around a few feet past our hotel. However, we did get to see the Eiffel tower at night! There was a point at night after dinner, where we went on the deck and tried to snap a million selfies of us and the sparkly Eiffel, but literally every one was blurry or I was uncontrollably laughing at our inability to take selfies or I had hair blowing in my face. 

Delicious foie gras!

Fancy.

Me creeping on Mike.

Close Up.

DAY TEN

I guess I realized on our last day in Paris that we weren't going to see EVERYTHING;), so I talked Mike into going for a run so that we could see some more sights. We ended up running/walking and snapping some pics along the way.

Notre Dame!

Statue of Charlemagne.

A really cool firefighter training exercise.

Because we'd been eating so heavily basically since entering France, I yelped some good "healthy" spots for lunch and Bob's Kitchen seemed pretty popular. I tried to talk Mike into by telling him one of Taylor Swift's model best friends is a notorious fan of the place, so we could end up seeing TaySwift. The logic was a little complicated. But Mike obliged, and we ended up going on a long walking/window shopping adventure to Bob's which was super crowded. I ordered the veggie stew, Mike got a pasta salad with a sushi wrap, and we both got juices and also shared a cookie. Everything was amazingly delicious and also vegan. 

I took a picture of this so I could try to recreate at home. Veggie stew with green curry sauce.

Kels: Of course when ordering our juice, Mike got a combination of like 5 juices for each:) 

Because Mike had been so good about letting me take frequent naps and museum breaks, letting me pick vegetables for lunch, and also letting me attempt to speak French sometimes, I manned up and agreed to go to the Rodin Museum. I'm so glad I did! It was definitely one of my favorite museums of the trip. It's at Rodin's house and houses many of his most famous pieces.

The Thinker

I forget what this one is called (Lover's Embrace?), but it's definitely my favorite.

Mike: The Kiss. Very close guess!

The gardens were nice too.

Later that evening we got dinner at a Spanish Iberico Ham shop, so naturally we got some Spanish ham. It came with potato pancakes, smoked salmon, bread, sauce, and a cute lemon squeezer,

Glass plates.

DAY 11

Unfortunately, we don't have any more pictures of our trip after this, but we did have an adventure waking up early and getting to the airport. We planned to get to the airport earlier than needed and to take our hotel's airport shuttle, which we did. However, traffic, picking up other passengers, navigating Charles de Gaulle, and intense security (which we were grateful for) led to us still not having made it through passport check (much less security check) by the time our flight started boarding (two terminals away). Naturally we were freaking out, but every airport staff we spoke with about this (hey....uh...we really need to make our flight and there are a lot of people in line) seemed perfectly confident we would make it. Well, we did end up making it and also sprinting with backpacks to our gate. 

We flew into Detroit before getting a flight back to DC. One nice thing about the Detroit airport and long layover was that I treated myself to a manicure and chair massage and we got to take showers in the Delta sky lounge When we got back to DC, we had a quick uber trip home and basically went straight to bed.

Until next time, Europe.