June 23, 2025
Kayleen took the boys out for a walk this morning so I could catch up on some life admin things. Another one of our flights in Asia got cancelled and this one was the first leg of a three flight travel day that gets us to Australia so more of a headache. The boys explored the area around our apartment with Kayleen and discovered a really cool park called Ludo Jardin inside Jardin du Luxembourg. It was closed but they were excited to go back later.
We did some home schooling once they returned to the apartment. Ollie was offered to try and write down one of his rap lyrics instead of writing a letter which he was happy to try. We set him up with Spotify on his iPad to get him a beat to write to. He tried to do it as he would pause the music and restart songs but needed some more one on one help. Lenny was not too excited to do his words this morning as he was waiting for the arrival of Grandma and Nonno.
Much to Lenny’s delight they arrived shortly into our home school session. Their hotel is just around the corner so we went to find them and bring them to our place. The boys were excited for more visitors and were telling them random things at a speed that could not be easily comprehended.
Once we got back to our place we had them try and get a taste of the boys home school, Lenny doing his words with Grandma and Ollie writing with Nonno. It was a brief home school session as the thought of diving into Grandma’s surprises was too much for the boys. They were very pleased to find dragon eggs with a toy dragon inside as their first surprise.
We headed out to find lunch and go back to the park with the boys. The jet lag had set in for my parents so they stayed at our place to relax until they could get into their hotel at 2PM. Bri and Amanda would come home and find them sleeping on the couch, at first unsure if someone had broken into our apartment for a nap.
We headed to a taco shop Kayleen had noticed on her walk but once we arrived we realized it looked like a fast food taco place but somehow even worse. After looking at the kiosk menu we decided to try to find something else even though the boys were very hungry. Luckily there was a poke bowl place nearby that had something for everyone. We got our food and headed to the park to eat as the boys played.
The cost to get into the Ludo Jardin park the boys had discovered this morning was 8 EUR for all of us, a deal for how nice it was. We ate and the boys ran around between all the different things in the park, the favorites being the giant slide, the zip line, and the ninja challenge course. Both Kayleen and I made it up the giant slide and rode it down once after relentless requests from the boys.
After the park we grabbed some popsicles and waited for the carousel. It was an old carousel and Ollie was not very into the idea until we told him there were wooden wands, like in Harry Potter, that he needed to catch rings on each time they went around. Not realizing how many rings were available to be caught during each ride I promised the boys a point for every ring they caught. Ollie got 9 rings and Lenny had 8, the easiest points they have gotten yet.
We pumped up the rugby ball and threw that for a while in the park. We used different trees as the different “levels”, the levels are now a must for the boys. They had points on their mind after the carousel so we agreed they could each have 2 more if they reached a certain level. Lenny complained that the back of his knee hurt but still managed to reach his level goal. Ollie got to his as well on one of many “last throws”.
We headed to a haircut place for the boys that we noticed on our hunt for lunch, it had a huge Spider-man in the window. Lenny complained about his knee as we went but the walk was not very far. The boys took turns getting their hair cut with the one waiting happy to watch old silent mickey mouse cartoons on a TV in the shop. There was a brief misunderstanding that almost led to Ollie having most of his hair cut off but that was quickly fixed as even the shop owner thought it couldn’t possibly be what we wanted. Both boys ended with a lollipop much to their delight.
We headed to a gelato shop a few storefronts down and the boys took down their second midday desert. After this stop Lenny was complaining a lot about his leg and limping as well. The limp convinced us it was not being faked so I agreed to carry him home.
Kayleen headed to the grocery store to get things for dinner and I took the boys home. Lenny is getting to be too heavy to comfortably carry for long periods of time so we had to switch between sitting on my shoulders and the fireman carry across my back.
Kayleen met us at home and cooked dinner for us as well as Bri and Amanda. The kitchen ventilation is lacking so after we enjoyed our salmon we tried to use the portable AC to blow the smell outside/into the stairwell. It worked well enough and we headed to bed.
