The Yule Log

I completely forgot to show off Frédéric's Yule Log. He made it for us for Christmas dinner, as is his tradition. Yum! No snow on the ground this year for Christmas, but at least we got some on the yule log.

Noah couldn't wait to dig in!

And a sign that my children are French in their tastes... both adore foie gras, and Noah prefers to scrape it off his toast and eat it with a spoon, pure and unadulterated.

Pierrefonds

Internet friends the Castles came to visit us this weekend with their two daughters, who are close to Benjamin's and Noah's ages. This was our first time to meet them "in real life," but we are all getting along great and having a fun time. Yesterday, we took them to Pierrefonds to see the castle. 

Well, the actual castle is a tad larger than that. We lucked out weather-wise; the heavy rain didn't start to fall until after we arrived home. 

There was a Monduit lead workshop exhibit in part of the castle. The Monduit workshops are where the Statue of Liberty was made.

Early Christmas

As happens once every few years, Frédéric had both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off work this year. So it could have been a "normal" Christmas for us. But on December 22nd this year, I started wondering why we had to wait til the 24th to open presents, since it was just going to be the four of us here at home, and all the presents were ready and waiting.

So we stopped waiting for the 24th, and had early Christmas. The boys were thrilled.


They got pretty good at their "Cheese!" faces.

Benjamin opened this present and remembered that we had bought the same for his cousin Alex. He was very pleased to get one of his own... and since then, we have wondered what ever possessed us to buy him a toy with which he could build a catapult... we can't even blame that on obnoxious aunts or uncles. Though I suppose Ryan and Christine can!

Frédéric got to build most of Noah's Meccano set by himself, but Noah loves to play with the finished product.

And here we are, building the catapult!

Chantilly

This week, we went to visit Linda, a lady we met at Pierrefonds back in August when my parents were visiting. She works with a mission group in Chantilly.

After a delicious lunch, we went to the Chantilly stables, but found to our dismay that both the stables and the castle were closed on Tuesdays. So we admired the castle from the outside.


We also visited the Chantilly church.

They had a nice crèche set up inside. You'll see that the manger is empty; baby Jesus only shows up on Christmas.

Happy 6th Birthday to Benjamin!

We celebrated Benjamin's 6th birthday Saturday. Normally we celebrate in the US, with our family there, but since we returned to France before December this year, it was just *too* early for that. So we decided to allow Benjamin to invite some of his school friends over to celebrate with him. 

He was a little disappointed that we had to limit his list to only kids whose parents we knew at least by sight, but we ended up inviting four kids from school, and Frédéric's friend's two kids, so with our two there were eight altogether, which was a good number.

 We were kind of amazed that some of the parents just dropped their kids off, since we don't know any of them all that well. One mom did stay, though, and she was the one who did the face-painting at the school party. She offered to paint the kids' faces, and we gladly accepted. 

Benjamin was enraptured with all of his presents, which included a solar system floor puzzle, Bakugans, Gormitis, and a puzzle-game called Tipover.

If that is not enraptured, I don't know what is.

  After months of telling us he wanted an Astérix and Obélix cake, at the last minute (as in, just before I would have had to order Astérix and Obélix pans online), Benjamin decided he wanted a soccer ball cake instead. Fortunately, we were still in the US, so we hied ourselves to Michael's to buy a soccer ball pan. And Frédéric made this amazing cake (feel free to admire my contribution, the beautiful lettering, as well):

Benjamin was sorely disappointed that we had the kids sing happy birthday to him in French rather than in English.

But he got over it in time to blow out the candles.

Despite some of the parents' unwillingness to stay for the party, we did entice one set of them in for coffee after the party, so it wasn't a total failure as far as getting to know some of the parents a little bit better.