Phase I of our summer holiday is nearly complete. I have exhausted every entertainment option with a two hours' drive of my home.

It's time to move on...

Phase II involves driving up to Lorraine, the home territory of JP. It's sort of the opposite of Provence, in terms of climate, beauty and touristicality. (Yes, I did make up that last word. Thank you.) But it does have the great advantage to being a stone's throw (if you're feeling like a bit of vandalism) away from Belgium, Luxembourg and also, if you have a good throwing arm, Germany. So, if you have a car, there's lots of possibilities for outings and adventures.

And we're always up for some of that!



After a week visiting with JP's family, we'll head over to Germany and see some of my family. I won't go into the whole story again (if you missed it the first time around, click the link), but we'll be staying with Mike and his family on a US military base there! Should be interesting and fun. Êxpect a full report when I get back...

That reminds me- being at my MIL's place is like going to a research station in Antarctica.
No- wait.
It's actually FAR MORE isolated than that. My MIL not only does not have a compuer chez elle, NOBODY she knows does. There's no place in the whole village where we can even check our emails. The only possibility for occasionally clutching at our cyber-lifeline is a rare trip to an internet café in a village about half an hour away. But it's very small (often completely full) and has odd opening hours.

All this to say that I will probably not post much for the next week. Once I get to Germany, I'll be back in "civilization", though, and will no doubt post a bit from the computer of Cousin Mike.



What have we been doing since we got back from the South of France?

Too much to tell, almost. We've been swimming a lot and getting out to local events. One of note was an outdoor sound and light show, written and produced by folks at the village of Reignier. It was rather bizarre and deserves it's own post, one of these days.

Yesterday, I took the kids to an amusement/water park that's just over and hour's drive from here.

After I took the above picture of the park mascot (a walibi, btw. NOT a kangaroo), Mallory went into quite a long "What's up with THAT?" diatribe about adults foisiting partially-clothed animals upon innocent children. Using Winnie the Pooh and the Walibi park mascot as examples, she pointed out (at length) that having animals (even pretend ones) wear shirts just POINTS out the fact that they don't have any pants. Ick!

If they were completely without clothing, you wouldn't think "Gee, naked animal!". It wouldn't even cross your mind, as animals usually don't wear any clothes-right? But once you start putting polo shirts on them, you are getting into murky territory, as far as Mal is concerned. Either dress them head to toe or leave them starkers, according to her. Otherwise...mega-ick! She got quite excercised about it. "Do they think kids LIKE animals with shirts and no pants? Why would they think that?" Oh dear....

Luckily the water park was nice...and very distracting. She forget her troubles in the clear blue waves. It was very, very crowded, but we didn't care. We were too HOT by then.

Here's Sev posing and looking all sultry for you :

It was pretty nice. Lots to do, such as:

Finally- another picture of Sev, who really will do ANYTHING for a laugh.
After lunch on Monday, he came out to mow the lawn in the above get-up. It was our major LOL of the day.

That's it, I guess. I'll post again when I can.
See you all then!