Gymnastics levels

 

This weekend, the boys had levels to pass for their tumbling class with their gymnastics club. Gymnastics clubs here have started using colors to designate levels, like in martial arts.

They had various exercises to do to pass each level. Since this was their first year in tumbling, they both passed their yellow level.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

The boys had their swim club's meet Saturday. After the races were over, they had Australian races (they swim the width of the pool instead of the length, and the last one is eliminated each time). Noah impressed us by trying out the butterfly when that was the announced stroke (pictured below at right).

 

Never too young to be a mechanic

Noah expounding his great knowledge of cars to Frédéric.

 

He has a lot to say.

The Funny Pages

Time for a catch-up collection of the boys' funny sayings...


Noah came home from school one day and told me that his teacher keeps "hassling" him at school.
Another day, he insisted that his teacher said they only had to READ their lesson, not to LEARN it.

* * * * * * * * *

The boys are getting old enough for more of our games. They wanted to try out Taboo (please don't anyone tell them how good this game is for their vocabulary! Maybe we need an English version, though) and we got some great gems out of it... clearly they play by the Lundy/Crowe family rules: if you don't know, make it up!

Noah: It comes from a rooster.
Answer: (which Frédéric guessed, by the way...) An egg!
Clearly they didn't spend QUITE enough time at Travis & Heather's farm...

Noah: A kind of boat.
Answer: An anorak!

Noah: A place where it is very cold.
Answer: Antiquity!

Noah: It's something we don't have VERY often in our house....
Answer: Mice!
Oh dear...

Me: You might see Japanese people in Paris, with their cameras, we call those...
Benjamin: Illegal immigrants!
I swear, I have no idea where that one came from!!

This one really only works in French, so it's ok if you don't quite get it in English:
Noah: Pendant la marche, il y en avait beaucoup. (When we were walking, there were a lot of these.)
Answer: Publicités (advertisements)
Nous (us): ??? Il y en avait ?? (There were??)
Noah: Oui! Il y avait beaucoup de public... publicité! (Yes! There were a lot of people (public)... publicités!)

* * * * * * * * *

Noah the scientist:
Me: Noah, don't eat that chip off the floor. We've been walking on the floor, Gala's been walking on the floor, you'll be eating germs.
Noah: I have antibodies.

* * * * * * * * *

In our "You might live in a village if..." series...

One day, Noah came in from riding his bike outside. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Noah, who were you playing with outside?
Noah: Oh, there were a lot of kids! Justin, Tiago, Mathilde, Sasha, and one other one...
Me: Wow, that is a lot.
Noah: Yeah, you wouldn't believe the traffic jams!

* * * * * * * * *

Q: How do you recognize a hick child in the city?

A: He goes into a store, and says: "Ce magasin est tellement grand, je pourrais y perdre mes marcassins !" ("This store is so big, I could lose my wild boar piglets in it!")

Mountain Vacation

Both boys were ready to get their skis on and get to their lessons.

 

Gala had a good time, too.

Proud, accomplished skiers. "Première étoile" for Noah, and "deuxième étoile" for Benjamin.

We had some rest time after lunch before the boys headed out again, and in the evenings we played games. Benjamin was very excited to learn to play Clue (Cluedo in French) in the mountains. It was a little trickier with Noah... "No, Noah, only show him ONE card!"

Ready to ski with Daddy!

I took the cable car with them to the top of the slopes... but to Benjamin's dismay, I chickened out on taking a chair lift down to the ice sculpture cave.

Driving to the Mountains: Part Two

Little did we know what awaited us the next day. We left the hotel just after 9 am, thinking we'd arrive at the condo by 11:30 or so.

That was until this happened... do click, it's worth seeing the photo over there.
 

Yes, that's right, 50 tons of rock fell off the mountain and onto the road leading to the resorts of Menuires and Val Thorens. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed. The problem for us was that all the resorts in this area use the same national road to access the roads to the resorts. We don't split off until a few kilometers before each one.

So a 2 1/2 hour drive turned into a 12 1/2 hour drive... or a 12 1/2 hour stop, mainly... the road looked like this for most of the way. Car engines were turned off, the stops were so long.
 

On the bright side, I finally got a great, clear photo of this castle far, far up the mountain. Easier to have a stable zoom when your car isn't also moving.

People even got out of their cars, and walked a couple of kilometers to the nearest gas station to take a break.

We saw this guy advertising pine furniture. I'm not sure we'd ever seen him before, in all of our trips, but we had plenty of time to see everything this time!

It looked like this far into the night... after leaving at 9 am, we finally arrived at the top around 9:30 pm. We heard on the radio that we had around 40 km worth of traffic backup. Our average speed according to the car's computer was around 4 km/h. Yeouch.

If ever there was an argument for taking the train, this might be it... of course, if the boulder fell on the tracks, there'd be trouble, too.

More Gems from Taboo

This might be my favorite game to play with the boys.

Noah: "It's something we don't have VERY often in our house...."
Answer: Mice!

* * * * * *

Me: "You might see Japanese people in Paris, with their cameras, we call those..."
Benjamin: "Illegal immigrants!"
(I swear, I have no idea where that one came from!!)

* * * * * *

This one really only works in French:
Noah: "Pendant la marche, il y en avait beaucoup." (When we were walking, there were a lot of these.)
Réponse: "Publicité" (advertisements)
Nous (us): "??? Il y en avait ??" (There were??)
Noah: "Oui! Il y avait beaucoup de public... publicité!" (Yes! There were a lot of people... publicités!)