My name is Melanie Ashby. I was born in France in 1991 in Aix en Provence, in the South of France. To be fairly honest, I was never good at English at school. In 2010, my friend and I wanted to go to the US by ourselves. It was my first time going and I didn’t know anybody there. My friend was going to stay with her brother in Las Vegas, but I wanted to find a family that didn’t speak any French so I could live the real American experience. After a while I found someone through Facebook, that person being now my mother in law. We chatted quite a lot with me using Google Translate (again, my English sucked). She lived in Utah and though I didn't want to go there at first, we finally decided that I was going to stay with the Ashby’s for the whole 6 weeks in the US.
After my first trip, it changed something in me and I knew I had to go back. In 2012, after a bad break up in France, I went back to stay with the Ashby’s for a whole 3 months. During that time I helped a French teacher at a Junior High. I loved teaching French to those kids. It was so much fun! Three months later I had to go home since I didn’t come with a visa. That same year, I decided that I wanted to come back one more time, but with a student visa this time.
In April 2013, I came back to Utah and went to study at the ESL program at BYU. In the meantime, I started dating one of the Ashby boys, Cameron, and we got married a year later, in April 2014.
We had our first little girl in January 2016. Cameron wanted to name her Celestine, from a French story called “Ernest et Celestine”. It suits her well. She’s our social butterfly. In August 2018, we then had another girl and we named her Elise. She’s definitely our shy one (she got it from her mom). Lastly we had our third girl in November 2021. Olivia is only 10 months old as of writing this, but she has already started to show her personality (the third kid is no joke!).
Cameron had never really traveled before he met me. When we were dating, I made it clear to him that if we wanted to be serious, he would have to get over himself and at least go to France as often as possible. We first went to France in march 2015. We went to Paris, Clermont Ferrand, Aix en Provence, and Madrid (Spain). The first day was a little rough. We almost got separated in the Paris metro and we got scared. We were so stressed and tired from the jetlag. However by the end of the trip, I believe we both cried when we had to leave. The first thing Cam said after our first night back home was: “Where are the croissants??”
A few years later, in August 2017, we went back to France for the first time with one kid. This is when I realized how much France is not always adequate for kids. We learned so much during that trip with an 18 month old, and we made so many mistakes. For example, we had no idea that the Versailles castle didn’t allow strollers inside during rush hour, so we had to visit the castle while running after Celestine who didn’t think the bedding of Louis the XVI was very interesting.
In December 2019, we had our first Christmas in France, and it was our first trip with two young kids. Celestine was 3 years old and Elise was 16 months old. I loved spending Christmas with my family after almost 7 years. Christmas is so different in France compared to the US. I had missed all the traditions. It was also interesting to experience it with my new family. I had learned from my mistakes from my previous trips, and I made some new ones. For example, we didn’t visit a lot like we did before. It was nice to enjoy some time with my family and slow down a bit.
We had planned on going to France as often as we could, usually every two years. Of course, COVID slowed down the trips. But since then we have been able to go back, visit more, and learn so much with our now three kids.
I always wanted to write a blog about our adventures to France and give all the tips we have learned. People always ask me how we can travel to France with young kids and still enjoy it. Frankly we are still learning and we still make mistakes sometimes. However we have had enough experiences now that I feel confident to share online what we know. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing it!