A French Halloween

I wasn't really planning on doing much for Halloween this year, as it seems a little presumptuous for a bunch of Americans (us plus my brother Matt's family) to go out trick or treating to me, but some of our good friends, the Monclin's, invited us to go with them. It was certainly a different experience than a good old-fashioned American Halloween, but we had a blast anyway

You certainly have to work hard for your candy around here. Few people were prepared for the holiday, but they seemed to appreciate the kids' costumes, anyway. We did have some success at a few houses.

Since the kids didn't get much candy, it was even more of a shame that Jaxon drug his paper bag on the ground, finally rubbing a hole in it and losing most of his hard won goods...

The Last Swim of the Season

Just some pics of our visit to calanque Morgiou a few weeks ago. I am pretty sure that it was that last swimming weather day we will have until next spring, but that may not keep Daniel out of the sea.

The hike was pretty tough with the kids and in the end became too dangerous, but Jaxon did great.

Some Things America Just Gets Right

Every now and again we run across something that reminds us that there are just some things that America gets right and are not easily reproduced. Things like gourmet hamburgers with bottomless fries, or gooey chocolate chip cookies. Well, we discovered something else that we can add to that list: corn mazes. I wanted to shake things up a bit a couple of weekends ago and do something that felt like fall, so I found a corn maze not too far from us.

Notice the dying corn and the overgrown weeds

There were some fun bouncy things to play on for the kids and they did enjoy it, so I guess that makes it worth it.

Living in a Butterfly House

A funny little phenomenon started to occur after we returned from our summer vacations. We leave the windows open a lot to keep fresh air coming through our appartment and a few weeks ago we started to notice catipillars in our house. Not just a couple of them, but a ton! Jaxon was so excited and would play with them for hours upon hours. Everytime he came home from school, whether for his lunch break or in the afternoon he would always rush to play with his catipillars. He would build houses for them out of blocks (preferably where baby Jonas couldn't break them)

Here is Jaxon holding one of the catipillars. It was all very fun, except for when one unwittingly would sleep with Jaxon and get smashed or Jonas would get his hands on them and pull them apart. But still, I think the little bit of nastiness was worth the hours of fun for Jaxon.

After awhile we started noticing cacoons all over the place and then before long, butterfliesstarted showing up in the house, mostly in Jaxon's room. A couple of days ago he came home from school to find 4 butterflies flying by his window! You can kind of see them in this picture.

Jaxon has learned to be very careful with butterflies and not touch their wings.

It has been really fun to have butterflies showing up all over our apartment, it's a little like living in a fairy tale!

Dancing King

This baby cracks me up! He really is a dancer and lately he has taken to dancing to everything: good music, bad music, the sound of the metro or any other engine, any humming. This was in Inverness, Scotland and he was getting kind of whiny, so Daniel gave him his cell phone playing music. Needless to say, he was thrilled and danced the night away.

We know what to get this kid for Christmas...an Ipod!

This was in Shetland, and once again Jonas was getting kind of whiny after a long day of driving. Someone had left a cd in the car; it was a bunch a obscure 50's music that didn't interest us much, exept that Jonas discovered his favorite song: It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To. He quickly perked up and the kids had a blast dancing in their seats to this song about 50 times in a row.

Daniel was the only one able to risist the party.