Five for Friday

Hello and welcome to this weeks edition of Five for Friday! I am linking up with Della Devoted, Cup of Tea, Bright on a Budget and Coffee With Caitlin!

Sorry for no Wednesday post, the Blogger photo uploader wasn't working! But, it is now, so back to posting pictures :) anyways, here's my Five for Friday...

1. Well, I think I finally got the subscribe by email figured out! I had been having trouble with it, and then I kept forgetting to fix it, but now I think I finally got it figured out! So if you were wanting to subscribe by email, you can now do that!

2. On our way back from Washington, we stopped at Ikea in Portland. I got quite a few things, one of which was these frames. I had bought these vintage Paris posters while in Paris, but they were an odd size (9" X 13") and I had trouble finding a frame for them. I knew I wouldn't find an exact size, but I wanted something that at least had an even margin. Luckily I knew Ikea would have what I was looking for and sure enough, they did! I really like how they look! I now just need to find a place to hang them...

3. We had a game night at our neighbors house earlier this week and it was so fun! We played Apples to Apples, Ladder Ball, Family Business (which is a mob card game and extremely entertaining to play! It's a little difficult to figure out how to play at first, but it's really fun!), and then we played Ticket to Ride. We stayed up until after 1 am playing games! 

4. I received my Sunshine VoxBox and tried all of the products out. Look for a full review next week! There were some fun things inside! 

5. I made this really good lemon cake with lemon curd filling and fresh raspberry frosting earlier this week. I had made some lemon curd and I wanted to use it up before it went bad. The cake only lasted a couple of days! Everyone really liked it. 

Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a great weekend!

Mont Saint-Michel and Dinan

We woke up early and drove out to Mont Saint-Michel. It took us about an hour and a half to get there from where we were staying in Vierville-sur-Mer. 

The French countryside is beautiful! We enjoyed the drive because of the scenery. Lots of neat little villages and rolling hills.

We were driving along when we came around a corner and then we saw it! I had always thought Mont Saint-Michel looked really cool and it was always somewhere we all wanted to visit.

We parked in a large parking lot, then took a shuttle to the island.

It was really windy when we got off the bus on the bridge. And the tide was out. I bet Mont Saint-Michel looks really cool with the tide in! Not that it's any less cool with the tide out!

 Mont Saint-Michel was very neat! We enjoyed walking through the town and exploring the island. There were lots of little shops and cafes to visit too! Definitely a place you should stop if you're in France! It's at the top of our lists as one of our favorite places we visited. 

As we were leaving Mont Saint-Michel, we spotted this store. We all like the St Michel cookies, so we had to stop! We ended up buying a lot of stuff! Cookies, Madeleines, and some butter caramel sauce. Definitely a great place to stop! (It's right by the entrance to the parking lot of Mont Saint-Michel.)

From Mont Saint-Michel, it was about 50 minutes out to Dinan. My mom and brother had read about Dinan online, and we thought we would check it out. It's a really neat old town.

We spent a couple hours walking around Dinan, checking out the little stores, and taking pictures (as well as stopping for some ice cream which was SO good!) before heading back to our apartment.

Five for Friday

Hello! How was your week? Today I am linking up with Della Devoted, Coffee With Caitlin, Cup of Tea and Bright on a Budget for another edition of Five for Friday!

1. I made lemon curd earlier this week. It turned out really well! I used this recipe. It was really easy too! I did strain the curd after it was cooked to get the zest out. The house smelled SO good! I used one extra lemon, and it's a little tart that way. Which is okay with me! (I had small lemons.) It isn't too sweet either. I will definitely be making it again!

2. I babysat at my neighbors house this past weekend which was pretty fun! It had been a little while since I had babysat anyone, so it was really fun to get to do that again! The kids and I played Life, which was pretty fun! I didn't know that there was a new version of the game where you can file lawsuits against other players. The one boy landed on the lawsuit space 5 times! And he, of course, sued his brother every single time! It was pretty entertaining. Anyways, the family has a really cute pet bunny!

3. We've been in Washington this past week, which I'll post an update on later, but it has been nice to get away for a few days! 

4. Since it's been so hot, I decided to make some cold brewed coffee. I just put 1/2 cup coffee grounds and 3 cups water in a mason jar and let it sit on the counter for 24 hours, shaking the jar occasionally to mix the grounds up. Then I strain the coffee grounds out with some cheese cloth, then pour the strained coffee back in the mason jar. Just fill a glass with some ice, coffee, and milk or creamer and enjoy! It's so good and so easy to make!

5. My VoxBox showed up the day after I left, so I am looking forward to getting home and checking that out! From what I've seen, it looks like there's some fun stuff in inside!

Have a great weekend!

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Vising the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial was pretty important to my family. My dad had always wanted to visit Omaha beach and the memorial and cemetery. We are a military family. My dad was in the army and quite a few of my family has served in the military, so it was very important to us to visit the cemetery. And we visited on June 7, 2015. Which is exactly 71 years and 1 day since D-Day. 

We woke up early and took the train to Caen, France, then we picked up our rental car and drove out to Colleville-sur-Mer, France, where the cemetery was located. The weather was pretty nice, blue skies and it was warm. We enjoyed the scenery. Rolling green hills with little villages and farms along the way. 

We arrived at the Memorial and headed into the visitor center/museum. We spent quite a bit of time there, reading all of the information.

 Medal of Honor.

 The image on the right tells the story of the Niland brothers, who inspired the movie Saving Private Ryan.

 Omaha beach.

 After the seeing the visitor center, we headed out to the cemetery.

 Two of the brother who inspired the movie Saving Private Ryan.

9,387 graves. 

Inside the chapel.

I was glad we came. I think everyone had tears in their eyes while walking around. It's pretty hard not to. I was quite surprised at how many French people there were at the cemetery. The French are extremely thankful for what the Allied forces did 71 years ago. I saw more American flags being flown in the towns surrounding the cemetery than I do in my own town here in the US. 

The French have not forgotten and neither should we.