Countdown to a white Christmas.. One dream trip, coming right up...

So.

The kids passports have all just arrived in the mail. Our hotel in Paris is booked. And the flights. The hotels in London, Paris and Amsterdam and the house in Edinburgh are likewise sorted. I think I can finally believe it's really happening. In a few short months we're heading overseas for what will hopefully be our first ever white Christmas, and our first trip overseas as a family, travelling with my Beloved's folks. (I have big plans for sitting in Paris cafes with my beyond-compare sister-in-law while the wild ones are at Euro Disney with their Nana and daddy...) We are over the moon excited. 

While this will be my eightth trip to Scotland,* ninth if you count the time in-mum's-tum, I've somehow skipped Christmas every visit. My last visit - my first with my Beloved, Sprocket and Poppet in-my-tum, was the closest I came, arriving in the UK just after Christmas, so in time to enjoy the decorations, but missing the actual celebrations.

This year we'll be spending Christmas in Edinburgh, New Year in London and have a few follow up days in Amsterdam and Paris before hurrying home for my beloved to begin Doctoring in early January...in ta-da, Queensland. (Yes, packing for a major overseas trip as well as moving interstate will leave us a little busy. We are the experts at biting off more than we can chew. Hello sweet chaos, our old friend.**)

Of course... in order to revel in a white Christmas we need to travel twenty-four odd hours on a plane with three rowdy kids. Well, Littlest isn't rowdy (yet), but I suspect she'll be crawling by then, if not well on the way to walking…

I'm alternating between envisioning myself and my beloved strolling along the snow-banked Seine, hand in hand all chic in black velvet (me, not so much him with the velvet) and bereted, snow falling softly on our chic selves (I will of course have lost all trace of the baby-belly, while my Beloved will have Littlest, also tres chic in a little beret, wrapped to his belly) with the wee ones strolling along before us hand in hand, and nightmares of us rolling off the plane with newly grey hair, clothes covered in baby diarhea and vomit and hauling screaming children - also covered in various sticky substances. I suspect the reality will be somewhere between the two.

But I'm thinking now is the time to ask - recommendations for things to do with kids in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and Paris?

And any tips for long haul flights with young kids? Neither drugs nor alcohol are an option…

*Yep, keenly interested in the referendum. The suspense is so hard! 

** Just because where there's chaos there should be more chaos, I have a terrible hankering to do Nanowrimo this year - you know where you write 50,000 words in a month. Which would be November, the month before we fly overseas and move state... Will I, won't I? Will I won't I? It might take my mind of the insanity of it all...