Welcome to Rennes!

Our family will be together this Christmas and I am so excited. Not only will we all be together (which is hard, considering we are spread across 3 different continents) but we will all be together in Rennes, France, the city where my sister Melissa lives. Here's a little map to give you a visual. Can you find Rennes?

Erika and I came a few days early for a little sister time. What?! We had a very interesting/stressful airplane ride. I could write a whole blog post about it, but I'll just give you a summary. Troy missed our exit to the airport (but blame Nate, who called him right before we were supposed to turn off), the Delta guy in Wichita told us we didn't have a reservation to Minneapolis (NOT true, and he eventually found it), they momentarily lost my carry-on and told me I would have to file a missing suitcase claim (but eventually they located it and I was paged to retrieve it), we sat on the airplane in Minneapolis for a good hour and a half because of some technical malfunction, and this last problem caused us to have less than an hour in the Paris airport to go through customs, pick up our checked suitcases, find the train station and hop on the right train. I must say, though, Erika and I are experts! ha! Or we just run really well with suitcases! Regardless, we made our train connection JUST in time. Unfortunately, we did not get into the right car of the train, so we promptly had to move ourselves and all of our suitcases three cars forward, causing many toes to be smashed and one child to be bodysurfed. BUT, we sisters are all in Rennes together again. The giggles have begun.

Here we are just arrived in Rennes. Forgive our traveled looks. Thanks, Joel, for taking the picture and picking us up in your car! Trop d'la balle!

The first evening here, we walked down to a little outside market to buy some fruits and vegetables. Look at all of the cheese! And this was just half of it!

Today we walked around downtown, browsed in some shops, hung out in the cutest little cafe, and just had fun being together as sisters.

I've had a handful of "tourist" mistakes, but otherwise, I'm blending in quite well! Can you spot me in the Christmas crowd?

Favorite story of the day: Erika and I were waiting for Melissa in a store while she was in line, waiting to check out. I was standing toward the front, next to a clothing display, very nonchalantly and normally. As a lady walks through a door I casually turn my head in her direction. She is startled, starts laughing and turns to me and says (in French of course!), "I thought you were a manakin! You scared me!" haha! Oops! I can't help it if I my clothes look like they belong in a French clothing store!

Oh, the adventures are only just beginning! What's on the agenda for tonight, you might ask? Oh, nothing, really. We're just going to watch the professional Rennes soccer team take on Bordeaux! What??!!!!