It’s day 23 and we’re going back somewhere we haven’t been for a while.

After Christmas and to ring in the New Year, we headed to Belgium. My mom had not been back there since our wedding so it went without question that Liz’s family wanted to enjoy a bit of time together with her as well.

… We drove through the northern French city of Long and even saw Long Castle, before crossing the border into the country of French Fries & fine chocolate!

Is this first Christmas Memory post you’re seeing?
You can get caught up by starting back on day 1 to understand this year’s theme

Two Castles & Cheese

This Christmas we did two castles… the first with just our family and the second with Liz’s brother & his family. I won’t go into great detail about Azay-le-Rideau, because I did an extensive post about it at the time, detailing the in-CRED-ible papier mâché Christmas decorations.

At one point, the boys tried to re-create this painting, with Timo as the illustrious nobleman from times past, and Dominic as the nobleman’s trusty walking stick. 🤪

That was also the second year that we’d done the Cheesy Christmas advent calendar… the first year having been 2020.

We did Azay-le-Rideau early on in the month… before school vacations were in full swing and during the week (if memory serves).

The other castle we did, Chenonceau, saw us facing the full brunt of school vacations at Christmas. These castles go all out in their decorations as you can see below.

These visits are enjoyable… but even more so when you have clowns like the ones that accompany us.

Thank you sharing this memory and…