Christmas and More Christmas

Sorry that I have been so negligent about blogging this past week. We have been having a great time catching up with friends and family! Our first week in the US is complete and we have managed to celebrate Christmas 4 different times. Not bad, eh? We started out in Ft. Wayne where we celebrated and visited with Josh's mom, dad, brother and grandma. We also managed to hook up with some old high school friends and have a great time reuniting after many years of not seeing each other. Kevin and Kathy just recently returned to living in the US after 4 years in China. It was great to share our ex-pat experiences. After a few days in Ft. Wayne, we headed to Van Wert to spend Christmas with my parents. Santa was very, very good to our kids and they were bouncing off the walls for days with their new toys. Quincy and I squeezed in a visit with his god-parents and their children - more people that we haven't seen in years and had a great time. Later that week, we headed back to Ft. Wayne where we stayed in a furnished apartment for a couple of days, provided by my parents. This gave us a break from squeezing the six of us into someone else's house and life and gave our hosts a break as well! Much appreciated and time to catch up on our laundry! Josh and I got an evening to ourselves to go out to eat and to celebrate his 37th birthday! Very fun! On the 29th, we threw a party for my sister's 40th birthday. Good times for all. Yesterday, we had all of my siblings and families together to celebrate Christmas back at my mom and dad's. The cousins had a great time playing together. We also were lucky enough to have a European visitor stop by. My aunt and uncle are hosting the 15 year old French speaking daughter of a former Belgian exchange student of theirs. Dave and Alice brought Jenna by so we could say "Bonjour". The kids enjoyed showing off a bit of their French knowledge. Last night, we drove 90 minutes to have dinner with a friend of Josh's from Notre Dame. We haven't seen this Josh since '93 but he and his wife were visiting Indiana from San Francisco this week so we decided to get together. Very fun. Today, we are off to Indianapolis to celebrate New Years Eve with Max's godparents!

Safe and Sound

We arrived in the US yesterday afternoon without mishap. We drove the last 3 1/2 hours to Grandma's house and had a good night's sleep and a big breakfast of pancakes and sausage. It's good to be "home".... Merry Christmas everyone!!

I'm Not Ready Yet!!!!

Josh just called to tell me that AirFrance has called yet another strike today so we are all of a sudden very pushed to get our flight back to the States for Christmas. We were supposed to fly AirFrance from Nantes to Paris in the morning and then fly Delta from Paris to Cincinnati.... We will now drive to Paris tonight and just take the Delta leg of our flight!! Unfortunately, that means that we have to get in the car now and drive (with the millions of others on the road tonight...) the 4 1/2 hours to Paris..... So, as soon as Josh gets home from work and has made the arrangements, we will be leaving!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you! We were fortunate enough to see Pere Noel in his horse-drawn wagon the way home from school today so we got to stop and get some candy!

Baggage!

I am busy packing so that we will be ready to leave for the US at some ungodly hour of the morning on Saturday.... The kids are so excited, you would think they are about to explode. They all wanted to rush home from school and pack their carry on bags and charge their Gameboys, iPods, etc. In addition to packing most of the day, I got to go with Calvin's class to the cinema to see a movie. It was very good and because the narrator spoke slowly and in perfect French, Calvin and I were able to keep up with what was going on. It was a movie about animals in all areas of the earth, especially the areas with extreme climates that are being effected by global warming. Beautiful, poignant scenes..... It was quite interesting to be a chaperone when I really couldn't give any directions or any help! I did help to corral the kids in line with hand motions and kept many of them entertained on the bus with answering the English questions that they had learned in class. Such as.... Do you have a dog? What is your name? and.... Do you have a swimming pool? Very cute to see 3rd graders working so hard to show me what they knew. Calvin got a haircut after school and while he was in the shop, Taba walked down to the boulangerie and picked up a "yule log" cake for us to enjoy at dinner. This is the traditional Christmas cake eaten in this area. You can see the cake in the top picture. The other two pictures are Max being silly while home for lunch and one of the beautiful houses across the street from the boys' school. I love that house and today had the opportunity to take a picture while I waited to get on the bus for the field trip....

Gateau, gateau, and more gateau

Max had beaucoup, beaucoup cake today! After taking the big kids to school this morning, we headed out to Max's soccer practice. The coach had asked me to bring a cake to today's practice to celebrate the end of the year. When we arrived at practice, we were told that it was too cold (-4 C this morning) for practice so we would just meet in the soccer club building for hot chocolate and cake. I didn't realize until we got in there that the coach had asked every parent to bring a cake! Those 25 kids had 25 cakes!! It was complete bedlam! The French people with children crowd seem to be very into gateau. They are just simple cakes like an 8x8 size or a one layer round cake without icing but they are served at many occasions. They are cut and served to be eaten with the hands. Seems to be more popular than cookies. Anyway, Max had a great time running around with his friends, Calvin had a few friends there also so it was a good time. After coming home for lunch and to meet the big kids getting off the bus, I took Max to a friend's birthday party. He stayed for 3 hours playing games, playing with Legos and eating more gateau! Life is good when you're 6! Calvin headed out to basketball practice this evening and after playing for an hour, they were served chips, gateau and soda to celebrate their end of the year! The adults were served champagne so Josh made out well compared to my bad coffee from the soccer party!
Calvin got his report card today and with more than 40 grades listed, he had almost all "A's". He's really doing well. He is really my "go-to" man when I have a question about French. He has the accent down pat! In fact, last night when Josh called to say he was on his way home from work, Calvin answered the phone with a beautiful "Bonjour". Josh promptly hung up, thinking that he had dialed the wrong number!!
Does anyone know what these little figures are about? We often see them in little niches above the front door of the homes in our area.

Tres, tres froid!

Being an American, of course, I am used to most interior spaces being way overheated! They are not in France however, and I feel like I have been cold for 2 months straight! Today was very, very cold. The temperature peaked at about 42 this afternoon and bottomed out at 28 this morning, I know that's not that cold but when you go inside and aren't any warmer than you were outside.... it's a bit painful! I went shopping for kitchen appliances with a friend today to equip the house we will move into in January and for the 90 minutes that we were in the store, talking to the sales clerk and making my purchases, she and I never unbuttoned our coats nor took off our gloves and were never once too warm!! I then spent the afternoon at my own house with my French teacher and was just as cold there. We have only individual electric heating units in each room rather than central heat and no matter how high I turn up the heat or how much the sun is shining in the windows, it never seems to get to comfortable level inside. After picking up the kids from school, we all walked with Calvin's class down the street to the local Catholic church where we celebrated Mass and watched the kids act out the Christmas story. It was quite nice and it was very nice to hear Calvin sing the French church songs right along with his class, however, it was so cold in that church, I thought we would all die!!! The church was probably built in the 18th century and it is beautiful and huge but it is certainly not heated in any way. I think Calvin's teacher asked me to join his class on a field trip on Thursday afternoon to the cinema to see a film. I hope I'm right in that interpretation because that would be my first parent volunteering that I will do since we got here! I have always enjoyed doing that in the past!
One more exciting thing.... I traded cars with Josh today for the first time and drove a stick shift all day! I had a lot of running around to do so it was great practice and great fun! Not one stall, one ticket, one accident or one person honking their horn at me so I think it was a success!

Signs of Christmas

Christmas is a'comin'..... Things are a bit different around here as the preparations for Christmas are in full swing. Christmas does not seem quite so over-the-top here. I was noticing today that although there is definitely more traffic, more customers at the stores, longer store hours, and Christmas decorations around town, there does not seem to be the all encompassing feel of Christmas. There are no Christmas songs on the radio, very few being played in the stores... there are almost no Christmas lights on people's houses although they do seem to have decorations inside.... there are minimal Christmas programs at schools... there are no Christmas gifts for the teachers at school.... no Christmas gifts for everyone that has ever done anything for you, i.e. the mailman, paperboy, etc.... and, there do not seem to be all the Holiday parties among neighbors and friends. Maybe they are just not inviting us but I think that they just don't do all of that..... So, at times, I feel quite grateful for the less pressure, less crazy Christmas environment but at other times, it makes me a little homesick.... Just when I was feeling a little homesick this morning, I went to my biking group... Today, the group met at Ghislaine's house. She is a woman who lived in Wisconsin for 3 years, several years back.... She likes to think of herself as part American... I pulled up to her house to find wreaths hanging everywhere, a big ole' American Christmas tree, mistletoe, Christmas carols and stockings! She even had a big snow village complete with a "Starbucks Coffee"!!! Sure made me feel good! We are very excited to be leaving on Saturday to be in the States for the next 2 weeks. It will be fun to see our family and friends again and to celebrate Christmas American-style. Our kids did play with their cousins all weekend though via the beauty of Skype technology and webcams! Calvin even played checkers with his cousin Penny today on the webcam since Penny had a snow day and was home from school.

Pictures from Sunday

Our Merry Christmas

We decided to celebrate Christmas today within our little family. We allowed the kids to open their gifts from each other and from us so that we wouldn't have to haul that stuff back and forth to the States next weekend. We had a great day! We slept late, ate a huge breakfast of pancakes and sausage, opened gifts and then let the kids play all day with their gifts. Josh and I took a long walk this afternoon to enjoy the sunshine and the seaside. It got up to about 40 degrees today but was below freezing all day yesterday and for a few hours this morning. We then ate our traditional Christmas Eve meal of lasagna, salad and pie (that tradition started because lasagna was something I could put in the oven before we went to Mass and have it be ready when we got home). I was able to find all the ingredients to make my usual lasagna recipe, although the ricotta had a wonderful, more fresh texture and the mozzarella is true, fresh mozzarella that comes in a ball. We do see lasagna made and sold around here but the only French recipe that I have seen for lasagna includes bechamel sauce! Yesterday was a cold and gray day... the boys had school in the morning followed by a little parent council open house where they served coffee and muffins and sold homemade jams and jellies to raise money. The kids enjoyed some Christmas caroling as well as a visit from Santa (Pere Noel). After the rounds of basketball, soccer and horseback riding, Quincy had his friend, Hugo, come over to play for the day. They had a great time together and Hugo couldn't eat enough of my chocolate chip cookies! Josh and I finally attended a very casual French evening. We were invited to the birthday party of the husband of an acquaintance of mine. We considered not going because it just takes so much effort to make small talk with people that don't speak the same language and we were not sure how many people that we would actually know.... We decided to go however and had a great time. It was the first very casual get-together that we have seen here. It was a kin to a college party with people drinking out of paper cups (wine however, not beer), eating snacks off of paper plates, loud music, lots of talking and silly prank gifts for the birthday boy. We were pleasantly surprised to see quite a few people that we knew and Josh impressed them all by speaking only French. Another late night on our crazy social circuit!

We Are Making Ourselves Noticed

Actually, that's never a problem for us and an American family with 4 young children is very noticed around here.... Anyway, today, Quincy found out that he was on the front page of the newspaper a few weeks ago! His school hosted a seminar about internet safety and Quincy had his picture taken while sitting and listening to the lecture with his two buddies, Hugo and Remy. Pretty fun! Not much else happening today... a gorgeous but cold day... it never got up above 5 degrees Celsius but the sun was out all day. I had some movers come out and give me a quote for our move "into town". I realized that moving terms are way out of my scope of vocabulary so a couple of friends came out to help me translate. I have yet another message on my answering machine that I can't understand at all. I do know that it's from the leasing agency about our new house and I know that I am supposed to call back but there is a whole bunch in between that I just can't get. Sigh.... just when I think my French is improving!!!

No Problem

Calvin had his EEG first thing this morning as a follow-up to his seizure and although we haven't received the official word from his doctor, the very nice technician told me that there was "no problem". Thank goodness! That certainly put us all in a great frame of mind for the rest of the day. After taking Calvin to school in time for lunch, I joined my cooking group friends for a birthday lunch for Valerie and the introduction of another type of French food. Today, they demonstrated "raclettes" to me. Delicious, fun and kid-friendly! Can't beat it! You have a cooked potato on your plate with some cold cuts of meat (prosciutto, salami, ham, etc)... you then melt a piece of cheese in a little tray thing that is similar to a fondue pot mechanism, you put this melted cheese on the potato and eat it with the meat! Very fun and easy. We paired it with salad and champagne for a wonderful lunch. I was so excited to introduce my kids to this that I went out and bought the supplies and made it for dinner. Everyone loved it - Max even said that it was better than ice cream! You can see our meal in the pictures. You can also admire Max's Joyeux Noel decoration that he made in school and brought home today. That little guy is so excited about Christmas, he plays with the gifts under the tree every chance he gets! I also included a picture of one of the streets of Vannes that I drive down every day. Today was another gorgeous, sunny day with temperatures at around freezing in the morning and getting up to the low 40's in the afternoon.

Sunny but Cold

We woke up to a beautiful day today but it was cold!! I think it was 32 degrees when we got up and never got above 45 today. Whew, hanging out on the soccer field during Max's practice was not exactly fun. Actually, it's never fun.... for some reason Max has decided that he doesn't like soccer this year. I don't know if it's because of the language barrier or what but he used to love it and always scored goals and played quite well. Here, he mostly just wanders aimlessly around with a few occasional bursts of energy where he briefly runs after the ball before losing interest again. He never is thrilled to go to practice and is always asking me if they are almost finished each time he catches my eye. Painful! He told me today that next season, he wants to choose a different sport. He was excited at the end of practice today though because he caught the words, hot chocolate, cake and last practice when the coach was telling them what to expect next week. We were home bodies the rest of the day today.... The kids played quite contentedly all day while I took care of some Christmas and pre-moving stuff. Calvin and I made some Christmas cookies together (as you can see in the picture) before he headed off to basketball practice. We had a big American dinner tonight of oven-fried chicken, corn on the cob (I found frozen ears at the freezer store) and homemade lemon meringue pie. Pretty fun! The other two pictures are Quincy freezing at the soccer field today and a bottle of wine that Quincy and I found at the grocery store. Thought it was pretty cool and had to pick it up...

Much Better

We had a much better day today! Calvin did just fine with no problems whatsoever. He was eager to just have a normal day of school and play. He said he played extra hard with his friends on the playground since he didn't get to yesterday. Josh and I had to drive the 60 minutes to Rennes today to have our physicals for our long term VISA's. I guess they want to know that we are healthy enough to live in France and not be a burden to their healthcare system. We have certainly discovered that there is no room for modesty in healthcare over here. They do not seem to believe in gowns... when we had to disrobe for our physicals, we just had to disrobe and walk into the next room for the doctor. Calvin discovered the same thing yesterday, he was told to undress by the doctor and then just had to sit around in his underwear while doctors and nurses came and went. None of us were too thrilled by this! After acing our physicals, we had time for lunch in Rennes before driving back here to sign the lease on our new house. We will take possession of the new house on January 15 but today we were able to have a walk-through and doing some measuring for our furniture placement planning. Quincy got to see the inside of the house for the first time today so he was pretty excited. He thought it looked awesome and was ready to move in now! We got Taba's first report card today and she made the honor roll!!! Pretty amazing for a kid just learning to speak the language! What a great kid! The pictures are of the upstairs landing which we plan to have as a little T.V./computer area for the kids, the great room, the kitchen and Quincy climbing one of the trees in the backyard....

A Very Scary Day

I'm going to post some more pictures from our weekend in Normandy but they really have nothing to do with our day today.... All that we really did today was to try out the French healthcare system some more....
While holding his breath for the 10 seconds that he always needs to when taking his asthma medicine, Calvin was leaning against me when he suddenly went rigid and fell over into a small seizure. I at first thought he was just fooling around until I realized that he was shaking and not responding to me. Scared me to death even though it only lasted about 30 seconds. He was a bit out of it for about 2-3 minutes afterwards and was then perfectly fine and wondering what my problem was. Needless to say, we took a trip to the doctor's office and from there to the Emergency room. Our doctor speaks adequate English and he and I are becoming quite able to communicate in our combination of English and French so he made sure to call the ER and warn them that we were coming and that we don't speak French. Everyone we came across at the hospital was very nice and tried their hardest to communicate with us. Calvin and I were quite pleased with ourselves in that we could really understand almost everything and could answer quite well although in very simple terms. Our doctor sent along a note explaining the details so we didn't have to worry about that. So, we spent several hours at the hospital before being sent on our way and told to return on Thursday for an EEG and possible CT scan. Calvin seems completely fine and we are hoping that his was just a one time thing! Our doctor called this evening to make sure that Calvin was doing okay and that I had understood everything the hospital told me. I thought that was very nice! Of course, I had Josh and my 2 close friends on stand-by the whole time by cell phone to help me out if we really couldn't communicate but I am proud to say that we did well enough on our own.

History of Normandy

We ventured up to the Normandy region this weekend to explore and learn about that area. We really had a great weekend despite the fact that it rained almost constantly, the temperatures were in the 40's and the wind was fierce! We saw some really great sights and ate some fantastic food! We explored St. Malo which has a long pirating history. It is a walled city built on an island. It is now permanently connected to the mainland by a causeway but is really beautiful. We went through it's castle including taking a long, narrow and steep winding staircase up to the top of one of the castle's towers. Beautiful views of the town and beaches below. Max was a little nervous on the stairs and Josh spent his time at the top mostly just hugging the wall, but the rest of us thought is was very cool. After lunch in St. Malo, we drove to Le Mont St. Michel which is just an absolutely amazing place!!! It was a huge, granite abbey built on an island with the construction started in the 700's. It is just fantastic! We climbed the more than 300 stairs to the top and took a nice tour of the abbey itself. We then walked through the narrow, winding and steep, steep streets of the island below the abbey. Mont St. Michel is the site of some of the highest tides in the area and all but the causeway gets covered in water at high tide. The kids thought it was wonderful to see the people scurry to move their cars as the tide began to come in. We spent the night in Caen and then headed to the Caen Memorial this morning to learn all about D-Day, World War II and everything that went along with that. It was really fascinating and eye opening for all of us. The kids really learned a great deal. Despite the fact that it was pouring down rain, we drove out to the landing beaches to see where all of these events actually took place. Amazing to see the huge guns and shelters still in place. We all got soaking wet but were able to get comfortable enough for our 300 km drive home. We are now ready for a warm night in our own beds.

Friday's Pictures

Fantastic Friday!

I love when the kids are home from school!! Today was a day of big teacher's meetings (I think) at the little boys' school so they didn't have to go to school today. We had a very nice relaxed morning at home. We were able to finish up a little Christmas shopping, walk around our little village while we picked up some packages at the post office and then go and play on the beach before lunch. It was just gorgeous today! Two little episodes of rain that lasted not more than 10 minutes and the rest of the time, the sun was out, the sky was blue and the temperature was never below 55! We climbed on the rocks and walked along the beach picking up sea shells.... After lunch, we met some friends at a Playmobil exhibit at the mall where the kids played for a long time. Playmobil is huge with Calvin and Max's age around here so they were just thrilled when they received a couple of little figures for free after drawing a picture at the exhibit. When they tired of this, we headed to the home of a friend where they all played with more Playmobil and then ran around for hours. Quincy and Taba walked to this friend's house from school with her older children and then all the kids played for awhile before we took off for home. Very fun! This evening, we all watched my friend Valerie on television. She was chosen to be on a game show and it was aired tonight. Great fun to cheer her on and to try to understand the questions in French that they were asking her! Tonight, Josh and I are heading out the door to meet with 6 of Quincy's teachers for our first round of parent/teacher conferences!! Wish us luck!!! - Check back for pictures, blogger is giving me trouble again!

Thursday Pictures