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Happy Birthday beautiful Olivia!!!!! I love you more than you will ever know, my precious girl.

November, where did you go??

It's been a busy month for our family. With work, school, a holiday and vacation, we haven't slowed down a bit! We were happy this month to have the girls home for two weeks (they have 2 weeks off school every 6 weeks), it's always nice to have a change of pace and let them sleep in some! They are at school from 8:30-4:30, and by the time we get home and they do homework, it's already 6:30. I feel like we hardly see them most of the time!
We were able to take a short family vacation to London last week, which was amazing. We haven't traveled much outside of France, but thanks to cheap RyanAir flights, sweet friends with a guest room, and free museums in the city, it's an affordable getaway!
We also had our friends Darren and Dana and their kids visit us from North Africa. It was a much too short, but very sweet visit, and the kids just loved seeing their friends again!

Last night we hosted 200 people for the annual [iccp] Thanksgiving feast, which was a great time! It's always so fun for our community to come together in such a big way to celebrate and fellowship with each other.

December promises to be a busy month, as well! We have the Annual Christmas Carol concert next weekend, Olivia's birthday after that, a birthday party for two of my girlfriends here at the house, Christmas, and of course a New Year's party here! So much to look forward to!

Trick or Treat

A little trick or treating fun...

strike...

Lexi continues to improve her strike pose. Gotta love the Hip-Hop class!

Another reason to love France

Lexi's best friend at her new school, Margaux, came over to play today.
When her mom dropped her off, she told us that next week they are moving
one street away from us. Lexi has not had a friend since we moved to France that lived
near us. I can't even believe how happy this makes me. And Lexi is beside herself. They have planned sleepovers and playdates every weekend for the next 6 months. We couldn't have gotten
better news over this holiday. (Lexi thinks finding out she could turn into a mermaid would actually be just as good, but she's still really happy!)

Food Adventures

I think I take for granted sometimes how adventurous my kids are with their eating. In France they are exposed to so many foods that we never saw in the States. One of Lexi's favorite meals these days is Magret de Canard with a Cherry-Port reduction sauce. Olivia loves Beef Bourguignon. Well, they both love that. They aren't shocked anymore in the grocery store when we see the little skinned rabbits all stretched out in the butcher case. They still have their little buck teeth, too! (the rabbits, not the kids!) They try ratatouille, strange saucissons, fish steaks, taboule, and lamb roasted over a firepit. All kinds of things I'd not even heard of as a child. And it's as natural to them as the sun coming up in the morning. They are not crazy about Portuguese food, but they prefer it to Dutch food. Although the Dutch have the most fabulous frites and peanut sauce you could ever imagine. and the Dutch Pancakes. wow. You haven't had one till you've had it the Netherlands, that's for sure! Hungarian food leaves something to be desired, but they loved Tapas in Spain. Anything that's Italian-get out of their way!
What a gift to be able to introduce them to so many cultures and their foods! I am so thankful that they seem to enjoy this part of the adventure as much as I do!

Dear Me,

Dear Me,
The next time you start to think that it's a good idea to cut off all your hair and dye it 14 colors in an effort to look young and hip, kindly refer to the following photo. When you find a haircut that you love, don't go and ruin it for vanity's sake. You WILL regret it.

xoxo,
an older, wiser me

A Little Fall Update. And some other stuff.

Well. Hello again!
Apparently my ability to regularly update a blog is lacking. A lot.
But I'm here now. So I'll give you a brief update of our comings and goings.
Olivia is super happy at school. Her social calendar is mind-boggling. After years
of having just one or two girlfriends, though, this is a good thing. It's hard to believe
she's already in 7th grade, and will be 12 in 2 months. Wow! She is playing basketball at school, and also taking dance class. She starts choir in November, and is really looking forward to it :)
Alexandra started at a new school last week. It is the French public school in our village. She LOVES it! We are so thrilled. She has made several new friends and gets to eat in a real lunchroom (where they serve totally weird food like fish steak and strange mushy vegetables!) and she loves going through the line and picking all her stuff. In France, dessert for them is either fruit, yogurt or cheese. To Lexi this is totally normal. Sometimes I forget that she never had the U.S. lunchroom experience-chocolate milk, pizza, ice cream bars, etc. They have basically a four course meal each day, and teaching them how to eat properly is part of the educational experience. So far, she has tried everything they've offered. Her favorite so far was the Chicken Provencal and Basil Gnocchi. She is continuing her Hip-Hop class this year, and her sweet friend Sophie is in her class again, as well as a girl in her new class at school!

As for Teal and I, we survived the 347 hour drive to Portugal for our Annual Staff Conference. He says it was only 21 hours, but I don't believe him. We, along with the children, spent a night in Barcelona (love, love, love that city), then Madrid (ate at an American type food court thing that was awesome) and then drove into some podunk little town on the beach for our conference. I love podunk beach towns. Our time in Portugal was really good, and on the way home we drove through Biarritz, France. Beautiful little city-I'd LOVE to go back.

We are off to a busy Fall already. Both of us are back in French class, which is really good. I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of it, and this time, my class is fun. I have a great teacher and we laugh a lot. Totally different environment than the first year of classes!
We've had gobs of guests, which has been great! We have a little break this month, but are hoping our sweet friends, the Joneses will be with us in November for at least a few nights.

I think that's all for now. If any one is passing through Aix, give us a call!!! We'd love to see you!

SCL...another great post

Check this out. This guy is amazingly funny most of the time, and then he throws these zingers in that really make me think. I like that.

Things that make you go hmmmm...

Apparently I lost track of time. 3 months worth of time. oops. To say things have been busy here would be a ridiculous understatement. I don't think I can remember a busier time in our lives, except maybe when I had a newborn and a preschooler. That was pretty crazy. But now, wow. The good news is that for the next few weeks, things slow down a little. We'll only have 10 extra people sleeping at our house in August off and on. We are so thankful, though to finally have a place where we can have guests! Whooppeeee!!! Soooo, if you've ever thought about coming to visit us, Fall is looking pretty good!
I'll give some highlights of the last few months, and I plan on updating regularly from here on out!
Here goes:
*Olivia changed schools and is extremely happy now
*I have a new niece named Jessica
*Both girls are AMAZING students, and their French is phenomenal
*My parents came to stay!
*My inlaws came to stay!
*we had 3 wonderful interns for the summer
*ICCP's summer camp was incredible-66 kids and 40 volunteers
*Had one of the best birthday parties of my life
*There is a new Mexican place in town that is super yummy, and i heart it
*I lost 25lbs in the last 5 months, for a total of 45 since we moved here
*I really like France. Many of you may find this shocking. But it's true.

So that's the short list. I know I left 60 or 145 things off, but I'll fill in over the next few weeks!