Noah's third meet of the year

Noah's third swim meet this year was in St Quentin. 

Ready to go!

Noah came in 2nd in 50-meter breaststroke, 3rd in 50-meter freestyle, and improved all his times. He improved by 7 seconds on his 50-meter butterfly!

Alabama

During difficult times, it's hard living so far away. I'm always grateful we're able to fly home so easily. Frédéric couldn't take off work, but the boys and I were able to fly to Alabama on short notice for the funeral. We were glad to get to spend some time with family in spite of the circumstances.

And the boys got to help weigh eggs!

It has been a sad year so far... my other grandad, Quentin Ray Crowe, passed from this life to the next on April 9, 2018. As some of my cousins eloquently shared at his funeral, my grandad was a life-long learner, and he passed that on to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 

I'm so glad that my boys got to know him, and so sorry he had to go. What a joyful reunion we will have one day.

Weekend in Méru

We spent the weekend at Meru visiting friends. Meru is about an hour and a half west of us, in the Oise region, and it's a great location - a decent-sized city, right next to the countryside. We took advantage of the great weather to go for a walk hike.

Really not sure how they manage to grow things here. The fields were full of flint rocks.

At one point, we thought we saw a pair of wild boar staring at us down the road. One of our number went closer to check it out - they weren't moving - and I zoomed in with my camera. From the photo, we managed to determine that these were not wild boar after all, but huge tree trunks, sitting in the middle of the field. Not sure what they were doing there, but we were sure glad to find out they weren't boar after all!

Noah and the "wild boar"

Happy Easter!