Some Pictures

Somewhere along the way, I have misplaced the cable that allows me to download pictures from my camera to my computer. Hopefully, I come across it soon. Until that time, I will just post a few pictures that my mom took from our time at the State Park. We are continuing to spend our time visiting with friends as well as looking at some houses we might consider buying in Batesville. I am a bit frustrated as I just can't seem to find exactly the house that I want nor can I find a piece of land suitable for building... This afternoon we are heading back up to West Lafayette to spend some more time with Josh's dad.

Happy Birthday, Josh!

Josh went back to work today in Batesville while the rest of us spent time with friends. After work, we all joined some great friends for dinner to celebrate Josh's birthday. The kids then all went off for sleep overs at the homes of other friends so Josh and I have a night to ourselves...

Enjoying the Outdoors

We have been having a great time in southern Ohio these past couple of days. My whole family has been staying in cabins at a great State Park. The weather has cooperated nicely so that we were all able to be outside and enjoying 70 degree temperatures yesterday. Lots of eating, playing, talking, and gift opening have gone on. The rest of the family left this afternoon to head back to their homes but we are staying here one more night. We took a hike this afternoon in 30 degree temperatures that ended up with Josh falling into the lake! He was showing off for the kids and thought a branch would hold him that obviously did not! Hilarious! He was quite uncomfortable on the 20 minute walk back to the cabin to change into dry clothes. Great weekend!!

Merry Christmas to All!

We are enjoying another cold and wintry day in Indiana. The kids had a wonderful visit from Santa and are all busy playing with their new toys. I am enjoying the new laptop that Santa brought the family. Here are a few pictures from our travels so far...

Weather Issues

Boy, you certainly forget the "joys" of winter when you are not exposed to them all the time. The weather has not been great here since our plane landed on Saturday and we are all struggling to adjust. We have dealt with snow, ice, power outages, slippery streets, severe cold and biting winds. Yuck!! It's keeping us inside but so far, we have managed to be where we want to be each day. Today, however, we really struggled to make the 2 hour trip to West Lafayette from Batesville to visit with Josh's dad. The drive took us almost 3 1/2 hours and constantly watching others slide off the road tends to make you a bit tense. We are here however and had a nice Christmas dinner with Dennis. We'll see what tomorrow brings as we head to Fort Wayne. We had a great visit with friends in Batesville and even managed to squeeze in some house shopping! No purchases yet, however. I'll keep you posted! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Oh my gosh, it's cold!!!

We arrived in the U.S. last night at about 5 p.m. completely without incident. We were expecting delays because of fog, ice and snow but we had no problems whatsoever. 21 hours of travel made us all quite tired so the warm beds at my mom and dad's house were greatly appreciated. We all slept great and are now enjoying a quiet day with grandma and grandpa. It is horrendously cold, however!!! The kids have played outside some, just because they are thrilled to see snow but with high winds and temperatures in the single digits (Fahrenheit!!), they couldn't stay outside long. They are snuggling up with Grandpa for some warmth now. We will head down to Batesville this afternoon to see some friends and to allow Josh to work the next two days. It's always nice to be home...

I think we are ready...

Well, I think we did it. I think we have everything packed and ready to go so that we can leave here at 6 a.m. for our 2 p.m. flight out of Paris. Now, if we can make it out of the predicted fog here, snow in Detroit and higher level airport security everywhere (especially Paris), we should be in the U.S. by 5 p.m. Wish us luck! I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off today but did manage to squeeze in a lunch with my Scottish friend. I missed a great opportunity for some gorgeous pictures as the fog was really rolling in off the sea today. However, I didn't have the time or my camera with me to do it justice. Sorry! After getting the kids from school, I ran Calvin to a friend's house for a birthday party before taking Max over to the hospital for his little surgery. He had two nodules removed, one on his arm and one of his foot. He handled it okay and except for two sets of stitches and some mild complaints of pain, he seems to be doing okay. Hope that holds true during our travels tomorrow. I have packed the Motrin, band-aids and Neosporin so we'll see how it goes!

Lost it in my brioche...

I really had to buckle down today and get serious about my packing. There will be no time tomorrow and we leave first thing (actually before first thing) on Saturday morning. So, I packed, got some last minute groceries, and did some final laundry. We are ready to the hit the road for the U.S. Everyone is very excited. I did have Sabine come over for a quick cup of coffee this afternoon. As we begin to turn our thoughts toward our move back to the U.S., we have started looking at real estate on the internet. This has always been one of my favorite things to do so today, Sabine joined me in looking at some houses. She could not believe how "grand" the houses are in the U.S. or how huge the rooms are! When I picked up the boys from school today, Calvin showed me that he had lost yet another tooth. He just calmly told me that he lost it while eating his brioche this afternoon. Certainly not a sentence we heard too often in the States! Both little guys got their report cards and are doing excellent! They both have some of the highest grades in the class with Max having almost straight "A's". They also both have fantastic remarks on their behavior and integration. Calvin played the role of the father in "Hansel and Gretel" yesterday. This play was performed all in German. Calvin did an excellent job with his memorization and pronunciation. He is thoroughly enjoying learning another language.

A Gorgeous "Winter" Day!

We woke up to a fantastic day today. It was sunny almost all day long and the temperature remained around 50. This was the picture I took out of our back upstairs window just after my shower. I love the cityscape view! Anyway, it was Wednesday so it was a day of running kids in 100 different directions. While out and about, I kept passing these obvious city workers doing something to the sidewalks in our neighborhood. When I had a moment, I realized that they were clearing the moss off of the sidewalks with giant blowtorches! Very interesting! Do you think they use the same blowtorches for their creme brulee in the evenings? Max and Calvin both had their last basketball practices until after Christmas so their coaches had a little Christmas party for the team. When I went to the community sports center to pick them up, I found them in the "bar" of the sports center. Why wouldn't all sports centers have a bar? I mean, this is an official unmanned bar! Bar stools, long bar, beer taps, etc. Hilarious! AND, it's bigger than the dance and judo rooms. I guess the French have their priorities.

Even our dog wears a scarf!

We have all certainly learned the value of wearing a scarf here. You gain so much warmth from such a simple garment and yet can so easily shed it if you get a bit warm. We really wear some version or another for most of the year. Anyway, today, while the kids were home for lunch, Max put his scarf on Coco. You wouldn't believe how much she liked it and how unencumbered she seemed to be! Maybe this is the warmth she has needed all this time! Don't worry, we don't want her to get strangled, so she can only wear it when someone is watching her.


This morning, I walked down to the mayor's office and picked up my brand-new French drivers license! I feel so legal and official now! We were legal before but I hated the thought of getting stopped and needing to show my US drivers license with my French residence card. The French license is very strange. It's basically a piece of folded paper with only 1/3 of it laminated. I will somehow have to keep this bulky thing intact in my wallet. It is not the primary identity card here so I guess it is often not carried with you if you are not driving. After this accomplishment, I walked over the old part of town to do a little shopping.

Remember that French stores can only have sales at two different times a year and Christmas is not one of them! It's so odd to not see big Christmas reductions taken on things. I did find Tabitha a great new winter jacket however, that was on clearance because the store is going out of business.
After lunch, I joined my friend Sabine for a drive out to Sene where she needed help dropping off a mattress at "Goodwill". Goodwill would not accept the piece because it had a small hole in it so we drove a bit further to leave it at the dump. Once again I am amazed at the friendliness, cleanliness, and orderliness of all things French. The dump was a sight to behold. (Sorry, I didn't think to bring my camera!) It was so well-organized and staffed! Everyone greeted us very pleasantly, pointed us to the correct car line, pointed us to the correct dumpster (that was ergonomically designed for easy dumping), helped us with the unloading and wished us a pleasant day. I have never, ever had such a "dump" experience! After dropping off the mattress, Sabine and I drove around a bit in search of the store of a friend. We finally found it and had a great time checking out Isabelle's beautiful hand-painted furniture and wares.

Laundry and Wrapping

Today, I began the process of getting all six of us ready to travel again for Christmas. Not an easy task but one that we are certainly getting good at. At the end of the afternoon, I had Sabine come over and join me for coffee. She had been in Paris most of last week, doing her Christmas shopping and visiting her parents. She loved seeing our very American Christmas decorations and sharing some our Christmas cookies. Max played in the yard all evening despite the cold wind that was blowing around. He has been having a great time "building" with all the smaller pieces of wood left from the big tree cutting.

The sunset was just gorgeous tonight...

Joyeux Noël!

We had a wonderful day today, celebrating as if it were Christmas day! Max woke us all up early so that the kids could open their gifts from us and from each other. Everyone was absolutely thrilled to see the Wii that Josh and I had bought for the family. The kids have just been dying for one! Only afterwards did we find out that American Wii games will not play on our French Wii console! Ughhh! Nothing is ever easy when you divide yourself across two continents. Oh well, we certainly know where to buy games here and Ebay sells games everywhere for every console... After a big breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls, everyone kept busy for most of the day with playing with their new toys, reading some new books, taking turns on the Wii and trying out the two new board games that we bought. The kids also decorated some cookies and Taba baked a cake in the shape of a Christmas tree before they headed out to a local afternoon Christmas party at the sports center nearby. We had a big dinner of beef wellington, vegetables and cake. Now, four, very excited, but worn out kids are going to bed!

It's Beginning to Look a lot...

...like Christmas! Christmas decorations have been up at the stores around here for a couple of weeks although nothing that compares to the U.S. I just heard Christmas music in the stores this week but I don't hear any on the radio. Really no one decorates the exterior of their houses here although I have seen a couple of wreaths put up this week. No one uses lights on their houses, they are way too energy conscious for that! BUT... Vannes now has a Marche de Noel or a Christmas market set up downtown with lots of booths selling a variety of things. Josh and the kids went to this market today to finish up their Christmas shopping. We plan to celebrate our little family Christmas tomorrow as it will be the last day that we are all home all day before we leave for Christmas in the States. We have our stockings hung by the chimney with care! Josh and I are also having a little celebration tonight with some very traditional French Christmas food items, wine, truffles, terrine, foie gras, etc. Should be interesting!

Food, Fun and Shopping!

Today was the birthday of my friend, Valerie. Even though she is now back to working full-time, she took the day off and invited me to spend the day with her to help her to celebrate. Originally, our plan was to go to the city of Rennes for some lunch and some shopping. However, yesterday, there erupted some serious and occasionally violent student and teacher protests regarding some new reforms that the French minister of Education wants to make. These riots were basically confined to the cities of Nantes and Rennes although we did see some evidence of them here last night. When I took Quincy to basketball practice near one of the local public high schools, police cars were racing to the school because some students had set fires in trash cans in the parking lot. I believe that was the worst to happen here.
Valerie and I decided to avoid Rennes today however, so we headed north along the coast to Lorient. Lorient is not a pretty city at all because it is situated on a very large harbor which the Germans held on to for a long time during World War II. Because the Germans held out so long in Lorient, the city was basically destroyed by the Allies. The reconstruction is quite ugly but it is a large and thriving city. Neither one of us knew much about Lorient, so we just pointed ourselves to the city center and began exploring the pedestrian streets and doing some shopping. We found some wonderful Christmas buys and had an excellent lunch at a restaurant that specializes in food from the region of Alsace. Alsace is now a part of France but has an extensive history with Germany so the food is distinctly German. We had a delicious lunch of sausages, sauerkraut, ham, bread, beer, and of course, crème brûlée for dessert! After lunch, we did a bit more shopping before heading home to our families. I have never seen so many friendly and helpful people during the Christmas holidays. Every store wrapped our gifts for no charge and took the time to make sure we had found everything we wanted. I will never get used to shop clerks always greeting you when you enter and always saying good-bye when you leave. They expect the same from you as well! In small stores, even the other shoppers would say good-bye when we left! Amazing!


Max and Calvin were excused a bit early from school today so they could perform a small Christmas singing concert for the parents. The school had a visit from Père Noël while the parents enjoyed some mulled wine and attended a little bake sale. Very, very nice day...

I just have to force myself!

Today, I made a conscious decision to make myself speak French. It is so easy to just not speak (I know that you all might find that hard to believe, coming from me....) or to default by saying that I don't speak French. That inevitably leads to the other person trying their hand at English instead of me working a bit and trying my hand at French. So, today, I had several things to do that were out of the norm and out of my comfort zone and I made myself do them, in French! I am proud to say that I completed everything without defaulting and without the other person needing to speak any English to me! Hurray! I was even able to go to the pre-admissions desk at the hospital and get all of Max's surgery registration completed. When I had difficulty understanding one thing, instead of saying that I didn't understand, I just asked the woman to repeat herself! I'm sure that if I had said that I didn't understand, she would have tried to say it in English. Instead, she repeated it more slowly in French and, viola! I got it! Very exciting for me. I know I need to do this more and more...
Susie and I joined some of our French friends for the biweekly English speaking group.

We had a great time just helping these women with their English and in turn, getting some new French vocabulary as well. We also enjoyed homemade macroons! Most of our topics were about the Christmas holidays. It was interesting to compare our American traditions with the French ones. Here is a link where you can read about some of the French traditions. The tradition that both Susie and I decided to adopt is the one from the south of France where they serve 13 desserts on Christmas day! They must be 13 different desserts with fruit, nuts, chocolates, etc involved. Sounds good to me! Ghislaine, the woman who hosted our group today, lived in Wisconsin for 5 years.

She is French but absolutely loves the American Christmas traditions and has her home decorated exactly like an American home. It was great to see!

In addition to her American snow village, complete with 2 Starbucks, she also has the traditional French crèche set up.

All crèches around here are populated with santons. Santons are little figures of villagers and peasants dressed in the traditional south of France attire from the beginning of the 20th century. All of the French people that I know take great pride in their crèche and add one or two new figures each year.

Thanks for the pictures for today, Susie! I forgot my camera!

Okay, not that cold...

I have been so cold, for days... We closed up our house while we went to Belgium and lowered all the heaters. With our walls being a foot thick and with minimal insulation in the roof and flooring, it seems like it is taking forever to warm up the house again. I've been baking Christmas goodies like crazy but our little oven can only do so much. So, today, I finally paid attention to what the temperature actually is.... it's not that cold. It's been about 30-32 in the mornings and getting up to 45 in the afternoon with plenty of sunshine. It's supposed to get up to 57 this weekend! I even found bulbs starting to sprout while walking around the yard today.


Today was Wednesday so it was all about running around to get the kids to all of their various activities. In between activities, we made some peppermint bark, some cookies and some fudge for Christmas. (The fudge is absolutely incredible when made with this awesome French chocolate!!) Of course, we had to import our own cookie cutters, peppermints and peppermint extract since that stuff does just not exist over here.

This morning, we met with Max's surgeon. He will operate on Max's arm on Dec. 19 to cut out the little cyst that has formed. Max is less than thrilled but hopefully, it will not be big deal at all. Maybe Santa will be extra nice to Max to make up for it. We fly out for the US the following morning, so all NEEDS to go well.

Coco keeps pulling her bed out of her crate and moving it to the warmest part of the house. It's hilarious to see where she is at different points of the day.

Just Stuff...

Nothing too exciting going on today. Calvin and I both seemed to have caught a bad cold over the weekend which made today a bit low key. I got a lot of things done around the house in preparation for Christmas, including baking some of our first Christmas cookies of the year. The kids helped to cut them out when they got home.

All the kids came home for lunch today since it's Tuesday and that is our routine. In walking the boys back to school, I just had to take a picture of the sidewalk... It rains so much here and always so damp that moss actually grows on the sidewalks. Not something that we see much of "back home in Indiana". Between the dog poop and the moss, walking on the sidewalks here can be a bit treacherous!

Tonight for dinner, we had Coquille St. Jacques which is one of my favorite local foods - a delicious creamy scallop gratin.

It is always served here in the scallop shell from which it comes. I have not yet tried to make these from scratch as they are so readily available everywhere here either fresh or frozen. This afternoon, I began to fill out all the paperwork necessary to have my knee surgery done in January. I had to laugh out loud when on the medical history form, it asked whether I drink more than one bottle of wine a day! Apparently less than one bottle is completely acceptable!

Weekend in Brussels

Sorry, this is a long one.... better get comfortable....

We had a fantastic weekend in Brussels!! The 800 kilometer drive from our house wouldn't have been too bad at all except that as usual, we were driving through rain. It took a bit longer than we had hoped, but no big deal. We crossed the Normandy Bridge at the port of Le Havre, France which is the mouth of the Seine River. That was a sight worth the drive, in and of itself! When we reached Brussels, our GPS took us right to the door of our hotel despite the heavy traffic and narrow, winding streets of the old town. We were fortunate enough to have a hotel with parking. I'm not sure what we would have done otherwise as parking looked almost impossible in the city. We immediately took off with umbrellas in hand for the Grand Place. The Grand Place is the civic center of the city and the site of commerce and markets. It is a gorgeous place to see examples of the 17th century Flemish Renaissance architecture.


When we arrived, it was already dark because of the rain, so the square was lit up with a phenomenal light show for Christmas! They had a light display projected on the Hotel de Ville (town hall) that was just fantastic.

After watching the show for quite awhile, we set off down the street to see the next most famous Brussels attraction which is the Manneken Pis. The Manneken Pis is a 1 foot high bronze statue of a young boy relieving himself into a fountain. Our boys absolutely loved it! Tabitha was not impressed.

The statue area was crowded with tourists and the streets were lined with vendors selling replicas. Max and Quincy each bought one, much to Tabitha's delight. There are many, many legends about why this statue came to be. The one that Max liked the best, is that a little boy was caught peeing on the door of a witch so she turned him into a statue and there he remains. They dress this little guy up in more than 600 costumes throughout the year. On our second day in Brussels, he was dressed as St. Nicholas. After our sight-seeing, we ate some delicious mussels with french fries, wiener schnitzel, and fish. Josh and I then sampled some of the Belgian beers.
On Saturday, we were fortunate enough to have only sporadic rain so we hit the sight-seeing trails hard.


We enjoyed the Grand Place again in daylight before heading to the Galleries of St. Hubert.

This is the oldest shopping arcade in Europe and is filled with beautiful little shops, most of which contain chocolate!

We then walked across town to the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinee, the comic book museum of Belgium.

Quincy has really grown to love the French comic books which are a far cry from the cheap, floppy books we find in the U.S. These books are works of art and appeal to broad demographics and cover all genres.

We all had a great time at the museum as all of the kids' favorite characters were represented. I loved the building itself! It was designed by Horta in 1903 in a Art Nouveau style that was just fantastic.
After the comic book museum, we struck out for some strolling through the many Christmas markets set up around town and to do a little window shopping.

We had to partake in some of the amazing waffle (gauffres) concoctions that were sold everywhere. Absolutely delicious!

We then walked through the Upper Town of Brussels, which is more of the financial district and the home of the parliament for both Belgium and the European Union. We were able to see the official residence of the Belgian Monarchy at the Palais Royal, where we noted fewer tourists than at the Manneken Pis!

We ended up at the Cinquantenaire Park . This park is filled with various museums (military, auto, airplane, etc) and beautiful architecture.

The center piece is a huge central arch, built in the style of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. We then headed back to the Lower Town for a delicious Italian dinner just off the Grand Place. After enjoying an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos (in English!!) on television, we tucked the kids into bed, gave them a cell phone for emergencies and headed back out.

We met up with a woman that I've seen only once in about 30 years.

"Pep" was the exchange student from Belgium who lived with my aunt and uncle for one year when I was a kid. Pep gave us a quick walking tour of some parts of Brussels before joining us for a hot drink at a pub. We had a great time catching up, sharing our European experiences and just getting to know each other better. Very fun to have know a local!
On Sunday, the sun was finally shining so we checked out of the hotel and headed to a little park just outside of the city center. The park is the home of the Atomium which was built in 1958 for the World's Fair.

We were able to ride up in a tiny elevator to the top and have a great view of Brussels and beyond. We then walked over to Mini-Europe where we strolled past all of the major sights of all the countries of the European Union in a miniature form.

Great fun!! We can't do history and architecture with our kids all the time.... We finally forced ourselves to leave Brussels at about 4 for our long drive home. The drive would have been easy this time except a dense fog enveloped just before we reached France and stayed with us for hours until we finally got away from the English Channel. Whew!! Not fun.

We had a truly great trip in a very interesting country! Half of Belgium speaks in Dutch and half in French. There is also a small group of German-speaking people so it is quite interesting. Every single sign, no matter how small, is in both Dutch and French. We heard mostly French though in restaurants and shops.