Die Hard Women

Monday mornings are the hours that I spend riding my bike with a group of women - these women all have children that are my age but they are some serious outdoor lovers! Today, we woke up to pouring down rain again occasionally interspersed with periods of hail! I took the boys to school and kept hoping for that phone call saying our biking was cancelled. I didn't hear from them so I put my bike in my car, put on my rain coat and headed out. I met my friends at the designated spot and they were all ready to go - they did concede to walk today rather than ride for fear someone would get hurt on the slippery streets. So, we slipped on boots, rain pants and coats and headed out to walk for almost 2 hours. It rained quite hard at times and at other times looked like the sun might come out. We enjoyed the scenery and they all enjoyed having more time to teach and quiz me in French since we weren't biking and could actually talk more. We also saw the biggest catamaran that I have ever seen - apparently there is a world famous sail maker in our area who was making a sail for this huge around the world sailboat. Afterwards, I headed home for a long hot shower and dry clothes. As soon as I was warm and dry again, I headed to the grocery store - the sky was blue and beautiful when I walked into the store but by the time I came out, it was as black as night and pouring down rain again! Ughhhh! Everyone has told me that this is what to expect from winter in this area. It was about 50 degrees so I guess I can't complain too much! Max got "puked on" today at school after lunch. He was not too thrilled and his teacher had cleaned him up as well as she could but he was pretty gross. His best friend was the sick kid so Max was pretty forgiving. Not fun though - tonight I'm washing his shoes, backpack, pants, coat, etc. Yuck! While Josh and I were plodding through the mountains of paperwork from school, work, etc last night as well as paying bills and lamenting the fact that we get paid in "dollars" and not "Euros" - Josh made the comment that when you look at all this stuff that is so difficult, he's not sure that he would do this "adventure" again. I think he was just tired....