The peacock and more...

Thank heavens Daron understands les ordinaires! (computers) 8-)  Mine crashed this week, so I'm now catching up on lots of fun things we've done the past few days.

We've been taking fun Sunday morning walks before church (which is from 2-5PM, so we have the whole day!) and we've found this cute chicken farm near our home with a pretty peacock and chickens - the kids had so much fun feeding them our cornflakes after we got permission from the owner!

We finished reading the first Anne of Green Gables book and watched the movie - we couldn't wait to start the next one! Full of such wisdom - the kids love their new wall reminding them of Anne's words...

Now all 3 kids have their own fun sporty activities -- the boys do gymnastics and Kas loves hip-hop...

Here she is rolling down the hill after class...

I took Stephen and his 2 new friends (Matt, from Ireland, and Andre, from Portugal) McD's for lunch this week - a fun little gathering - we ate it out in the courtyard.  Stephen really enjoys any kind of fun break from the 4-5 hours of French he has every day. But he gets thru it - I'm impressed with him. (Matt's the bigger boy who offered 'cocaine' to Stephen the first week - which we found out later was a joke with sugar sticks, but Stephen, having never been around anything remotely like that, was pretty petrified, as we all were - it led to a long chain of events including meeting with school administrators, almost changing schools - pretty stressful.  Since then, Matt's genuine apology and the teachers' proactive meetings with each other and other good students to form mentor relationships with Stephen has improved the situation ~ everyone's happy now, we've learned alot, and we've moved on.)

OK so I know there are lots of beautiful places on earth, but seriously - have you EVER?? This tree is just ONE of the many that are in full bloom all around where we live... Switzerland is just gorgeous!

Today I was invited over 'for coffee' by a cute woman from Spain named Rosa - I enjoyed touring her 4-story home here in little Crassier - she's got 2 kids and she of course speaks 3 languages, like everyone else here. It was fun switching back and forth between Spanish and French - you know, because I'm so very fluent in them both - (ha-ha) so she was wanting to practice her English and I was trying out all my newly acquired foreign words and phrases. It was fun. I had some herbal tea from her cute little decorated china tray with chocolate goodies (she's, again, skinny as a rail) - I asked her, how can you keep chocolate around your home like this, just sitting in a tasse (cup) - don't your kids just eat it all? She explained that none of them in their family are big sugar eaters. I mean - HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN? Do some people just get the 'I'm-not-interested-in-sugar' gene? I'd like to get that gene. I mean, really. It's so unfortunate. For me. That I just love sugary things. Like, I almost had little tears of joy in the store this week when I came across these already-made creme brulee desserts -- they're so delicious - they come with these cute little packets of the crystalized sugar to sprinkle on -- I of course bought enough for all of us to try, knowing FULL WELL that my kids most likely wouldn't prefer them and I'd get to finish theirs. See - it's so unfortunate. Clearly Daron did like his. (We can't eat too much of it though - we don't want to spoil our appetite for the real thing when we go to Paris with Mom and Dad in a few weeks!)

This evening's meal greatly impressed my children, who know I don't really prefer fish - I bought salmon and pretended I was Tiffany, and totally just started sprinkling stuff on it - teriyaki, garlic, and brown sugar - oh my word, it was so good!

This weekend should be gorgeous; Stephen asked if we could just babysit Callister (who's already back in Texas) while Stephanie goes back to work tomorrow... I told him he'd be a great sitter but he's just missing the nursing nipples... 8-)  Plus Grandma's doing a great job with him... (not nursing of course, just hanging with him for short outings). They look so cute here - especially posing in front of my amaryllis flowers that I dug up the bulbs before I moved and buried them there in mom's front yard -- I totally forgot about them til I saw this picture! They make me so proud. Mom, I'll be taking some of those back when I return...

So, we read The Friend magazine at breakfast every morning, and love looking at the pictures of all the little kids. Yesterday we talked about how neat it was that both Stephen and Kassie's pictures and bio's have been printed in it, and Kenny decided he wanted his in there too - so he asked me to take him pointing to the picture we hang on our fridge each month - the illustrated scripture they do - we'll see if The Friend prints it... 8-)