A "New" Car (Saturday)

Josh bought his new car on Saturday afternoon. He found a 2000 model year Peugeot 206 on the internet with the help of a friend from work so after test driving it earlier in the week, he and the friend went to pick it up. He said it was an extremely "French" experience. He was to meet his friend in Auray at 1:30 and they were then to go pick up the car at 2 in another town. I dropped him off at his friend's house right on time only for him to find his friend and several other friends eating lunch on their terrace. They invited him to join them for coffee. They then proceeded to have coffee and lingered for quite some time over conversation. When they finally headed to the "stranger's" house for the car, they were greeted and invited in for a beer. Again they lingered over a beer and conversation before finally completing the transaction and handing over the car. Josh thought it was all wonderfully entertaining if you didn't have somewhere that you needed to be! While all of this was going on, Quincy had his first set of 2 basketball games. I had to take him to a pick up spot to meet his team. From there, it was just a blind leap of faith for us. I did not know where they were going for the game, didn't know how many games they were playing, and did not know when they would be finished. I tried to get as much information from the coach as I could but then had to hand Quincy a water bottle, a sandwich and a cell phone and just tell him "good luck!" Quincy, of course, didn't mind a bit. He was thrilled to have my cell phone and excited to play basketball. Turns out that they drove just about 30 minutes away, played and won two games, watched another and were back 4 1/2 hours later. He said that he played well (scored 4 points a game) and had fun. Max and Calvin had school yesterday morning and then Max was to go to a classmate's home to play after lunch. On Friday, he was quite excited about that and the mother spoke very good English so I was comfortable with the situation as well. On Saturday, after school, while I was picking up the boys and talking to Veronique, the mother who had invited Max, Max came running out of the school building when the bell rang, crying his little heart out! It was just heart breaking!!! He was sooo worried about going to someone else's house and not being able to communicate with them. Poor little guy!!! I quickly reassured him that he did not need to go and explained to Veronique that we would have to wait a while before Max was ready to come over. She was very understanding. Yesterday afternoon, while I was doing some more unpacking (I have now officially unpacked the last box - just have some organizing and then decorating to do!), Taba was to go to the beach with friends from last weekend and then spend the night at their house. We had to give directions to the mother to pick Taba up at our house and apparently failed miserably. It took her over an hour to find us! We felt so badly although she, of course, blamed herself. Whew!! Finally, we got all the kids settled for the day and then Josh and I fed the boys here before heading over to a friends' house for dinner. This was the couple from last weekend who had invited us to the beach. They had 4 other couples over and we had a wonderful dinner party!! Everyone could speak some English but promised us they would help us to work on our French and spoke 70% of the time in French. We all really had a great time!! Through body language and picking out a few understandable words in the conversation, I was usually able to follow along, when I couldn't, someone was always willing to help me out. The food was a wonderful meal of appetizers, champagne, tuna, tomatoes, bread, potatoes, salad, cheese and an apple tart for dessert. We drank wine, some after dinner drinks, and coffee! Whew!! We were there for more than 4 1/2 hours and really felt like we made some friends. In the pictures, Josh and Max show off Josh's new car - Max loves the fact that the back windows are the "really cool roll down ones" - manual! I am finally able to really cook in our new kitchen so I made the boys a big pasta dinner last night. Josh brought me some beautiful flowers so this little table in our entry hall showed the important things in our lives right now - car keys, a huge French/English dictionary, a the flowers as an example of our beautiful surroundings. Our guest room is completely unpacked and ready for company!!!!