March has been busy...and promises to get even busier.
On Saturday, I took Valentine to sign up at the fine arts school in Annemasse. It's her "Plan B" school if things don't work out for the school in Avignon.
I'm sure it will all work out, but it's good to have a backup plan, right?

That afternoon, our pal Max, Alexa and I went to Geneva to do a bit of shopping. I ended up finding an amazing pair of shoes on sale for 60% off! But mostly we wandered around the flea market at Plainpalais. They have one there every Wednesday and Saturday.

Plainpalais is a neighbourhood in central Geneva and here's and interesting fact about it: Historically, it was an area outside the densely populated city of Geneva where they brought the sick to avoid contagion and an epidemic.
Everybody looked pretty healthy there on Saturday, though- so that's good.....
It's such a drag to contract the plague. Amirite?
Something for everyone!

It was a bit cold and windly, so we stopped in a nearby Starbucks for a shockingly overpriced snack. But it was so good!!!!

Sweden is a mysterious country.
Tell me, really- what do you know about Sweden?

Chances are, not much.
Perhaps the Nobel Prize springs to mind.
And also possibly those tasty fish-shaped candies they make

True fact: In Sweden, you can have your chewy fish-shaped candy "Salmiak"-flavored.
"Salmiak" means "salted herring".
I am not making this up.

Luckily, you can count on my informative, fact-filled blog to tell you everything you need to know about this mysterious, salted-herring oriented nation.

So, here's what you need to know about Sweden:
Sweden is very cold. It is located mainly at the North Pole. They have lots of reindeer there.
And trolls.
They have lots of trolls*.

The towns of Sweden have humorous names like "Jokkmokk" and "Nykoping". This is to cheer up the Swedish people who sometimes get depressed because winter lasts nearly 11 months of the year there.

The only other really important thing to know about the wonderful, troll-filled Arctic nation of Sweden is that Valentine is there RIGHT NOW!

She packed her bag on Friday night:

Then she and her boyfriend caught the plane this morning, quite early. They'll be staying with Mat's grandparents in the mildly funny-sounding city of Uppsala. And they will spend 10 days visiting the various salted-herring candy factories and caring for his grandparents' massive reindeer herd**

Now you know all about Sweden and Tya's trip there.

You're welcome!
___________________________________________________________________
*I know this is true because I read the following item in the India Times: "Author Jan Brett trolls Scandinavia for atmosphere. So she naturally headed to Sweden - home of all kinds of trolls - to research her new picture book".
See? I do serious research!

**This is possibly not entirely accurate.

My mom's visit here in the lovely Haute Savoie continues well.
As you can see, a good time is being had by all:

(Daisy apparently feels really relaxed in my mom's company.)

On Friday, we picked up Tya from school a bit early and went shopping!

We were in Annemasse, a nearby town that has some good shops. What's a trip to France without a trip to the Monoprix? Amirite?

The town square in Annemasse is quite pretty most of the year.
It's a bit barren in January...

...but it was still fun taking pictures to commemorate our outing!

Valentine turned 18 on the 6th of July. Not that it made me feel old, or anything....

OK- maybe a little.
But that's ok. That was more than outweighed by the joy of seeing her becoming an adult- so beautiful, capable, kindhearted, clever, talented and full of happiness....

The party we had for her was great. Tya had about 11 friends over and had a barbecue. Then they played Wii rock Band outside, followed by a "sitting around the campfire late in the evening" kind of thing, which was all really fun...


(And here's Al, looking cute.)

Why You Might Enjoy having Dinner at My House....Or Not: Two Scenes from a Dining Room

Alexa looks across the table to the buffet where there's an orange soft-drink bottle sitting out.
The label says "Orangina Geisha Peche". ('Peche' is peach in English for all you non-French speakers out there)

"Actually, what is a geisha, mom?"
"Umm...a Japanese hostess?"
She looks at me quizzically.
I try again. "A fancy Japaneses hostess? That serves tea?"
"Really?" asks young Alexa.
"Yeah...well...kinda...." I falter.

Valentine is about ready to die at this point from choked laughter and snorting. (Aren't teenagers fun?!) She decides this has gone on long enough.

cough*Prostitute!*cough

"That's just embarassing!" Alexa declares. "I can't believe I even asked!"

"But they serve tea!" I repeat. "And play the harp. Or something" I cleverly elaborate.

"Like Inara on 'Firefly'?" chimes in Mallory, my little geek-girl.

I grab onto this idea like it's the last flotation device on the Titanic.
"Yes! Exactly like that! You've seen 'Firefly', Alexa. A geisha is a Japanese Inara. Or Inara is an outer space geisha. Or something."

"Ok." she says. "But why the heck did thay name a drink for kids that?"

I've got this one covered and answer without hesitation: "Because a soft drink called "Orangina Prostitute" would probably be extremely unpopular. What would that even taste like? Gah!"

I then imagined a marketing campaign for "Ho Cola", but wisely kept it to myself, figuring that the general tone of the conversation had degraded far enough for one evening, thank you very much.

------------------------------------------

Severin is happily coving his french fries with ketchup.
As he sets the bottle down, he reads the label out loud: "McCords ketchup- the taste of America!"
"So" asks Valentine "Does it taste like America?"

Sev takes a contemplative bite of ketchup-festooned fry.
He chews it slowly and then announces "Why, yes! It does taste like America! It tastes like capitalism...and guns! Yum!"

"You're not supposed to say that!" advises his older sister. "It's supposed to taste like freedom!! Doesn't it taste like freedom? You better say it tastes like freedom, or you're in big trouble, buster!"

-----------------------------

We generally eat at about 7, if you're interested.....

January 2011 was not so bad, in retrospect.

There was this:

Nice, huh?
That was during a weekend in the Val d'Illiez, Switzerland.
It was all cute and stuff...

And there was this, too:

I has a fun weekend with a girlfriend who works as a translator each year at the big Solothurn Film Festival in Switzerland. It was fun to watch the movies from the booth and get the insider's view of everything...
And Solothurn turned out to be a very cute Swiss town:

Come to think of it, I spent a lot of time in Switzerland this last month....
I guess there's worse places to be.

At any rate, Valentine had no time for gallivanting pointlessly around foreign countries.
She stayed home, working hard:

What a good girl! And so talented! And lovely!

And finally....our cat, Daisy, who spent the entire month of January working assiduously to become even more gloriously porky.

Well done, kitty!

So, what happens when Tya, the Girl Who Imprudently Misplaced Her Ipod Headphones takes a long roadtrip seated beside Sev, Possibly the World's Fussiest Teenaged Boy?

Maybe this:

Tya: Sev. Dude. Lend me Your iPod headphones. I'm desperate here.
Sev: No.
Tya (pleading): Dude! Please! Help me out!
Sev (implacable): No. Way.

This initial exchange is followed by further exchanges along these same lines, involving heavy use of the words, "dude", "please" and "no".
The sanity of Tya is also called into question several times.
Finally, after several minutes of this:

Sev (resigned): Alright.
He sighs heavily and pulls a small bottle of hand sanitizer out of his pocket.

Tya looks at it blankly for a moment, then grabs it and puts a bit on her hands. She is distinctly heard to mutter under her breath the phrase "You are SUCH a freak."

Tya then puts out her hand to take the headphones, which are not forthcoming.

Sev: Your ears.
Tya (disbelieving): What?!
Sev (patiently, as though talking to a particularly stupid dog): Put sanitizer in your ears.
Tya: You are beyond a freak. I don't know what you are.

She squeezes a bit more of the blue gel onto her fingers and rubs some inside of each ear.

Sev inspects to make sure the interior where the headphones will touch her ears is completely covered.
He finds she has missed a spot and makes her apply more.

Tya (through clenched teeth): Are you happy now?

Sev (doubtfully handing over the earphones): I guess. This really isn't hygienic, you know.

Tya (grabbing the earphones): Über. Freak.

The above is something that could have possibly happened while we were driving to my MIL's place in the northeast of France last week, if my eldest daughter was very disorganised and my son a borderline OCD case....

As a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, I figure that my only real hope of giving my readers any idea of what we're doing here in the USA lies in posting some photos.

First of all, no visit to the USA is complete without an enormous fiberglass animal statue, such as the World's Largest Holstein Cow up in North Dakota....or the slightly smaller, but no less beloved Giant Chicken of Lincoln, Nebraska.
This big guy roosts in the parking lot of a very popular local restaurant. Lee's has been around forever and some of my earliest memories involve eating there with my whole family. Grandpa Augie would invariably tell me to go over to ask the organist to play 'Love Letters in the Sand' and he'd give me a quarter for her big glass tip jar.
I must have done it dozens of times over the years, but I was always SO embarrassed...

It's not much to look at, but it was fun to take my kids to visit...and eat some of that amazing chicken!
Here's my mom and Tya at the bar:

(If you blow up the photo and look to the right of Tya, you can see that the organ is still there and the tip jar still sitting right on top of it)

But my home state of Nebraska is about so much more than Lee's fried chicken and old Pat Boone songs.
It's also about college football.
And, more specifically, college football merchandise:
Yes, the Huskers reign here and their insignia is to be found everywhere, on everyone, at all times. If you want to blend in here, all you have to do is wear a University of Nebraska t-shirt. It's a kind of uniform. As you can see, though, we haven't quite got that mastered yet and Tya's Goth wear kind of stands out like a sad, dark and mournful sore thumb...

We end up spending a lot of time in stores. When we're not looking at books and clothes, we're mostly to be found shopping for food. And when we do so, usually Tya grabs my camera, recruits her brother and heads off to document the fascinating world of the American supermarket. She seems particularly fascinated by the huge quantities and has quite a number of photos of Sev holding jumbo-sized containers of just about everything a person could want to eat.
For example:
They seem to have a good time, though the other shoppers aren't quite sure of what to make of them...

I have lots more photos and lots more to say about our trip. I just hope I can find the time to post them and do some more writing. I miss my blog!

You know how when you were about 10 years old and your grandma bought you a groovy pink and purple flower-covered diary with an adorable itty-bitty padlock and matching tiny key? And how at first you swore to yourself you'd write in it every single day? And how you did, at first?
But then how you slowly slacked off until you realized that eight months had passed and you hadn't written a word? And how it seemed hopeless to start up again because you'd missed so many vital events and catching the diary up would have been too gargantuan a task to contemplate?
Remember that?
No?
OK.
Never mind.

But I have to say that I find myself in a similar situation here. My beloved (by me, anyway!) blog has sat here unattended as I hosted hoardes (nice hoardes!!) of houseguests, played tour guide, and did some fairly blog-worthy stuff.
And now I have to get it up to date.
Where to begin?

On Friday (June 11th!), as the Auxillary Twins neared the end of their stay with us, three fabulous new guests had to be picked up at the train station. MLW was arriving from NYC, via Paris, with her 18 year old niece and two year old daughter in tow.

(I haven't asked if they want to be pictured on my blog. So all you get today is a back view of Possibly The World's Cutest Toddler.)

Then on Saturday, the parents of the Auxillary Twins arrived. They'd pushed up their trip by one day so as not to miss the concert that Valentine and Sev's band were to play in that night. I thought it was so lovely that they were interested and made the effort! And SO encouraging for Tya, who was quite, quite nervous by then.

Just as these new guest pulled up, JP was off to pick up Tya's godmother and her husband in Geneva. (They are real city-folk and neither one drives) So, the support crowd of fans for The Boxmen was growing by the minute.

I whipped up a little dinner for 15 people (ha!) and then we headed off to the concert, packed into two cars. We would have made the Shriner Clowns proud- we had seats for 12, but 13 people needed to go, so we just piled in and made the 10km drive up the valley, hoping not to see the police along the way.

The concert was primarily for the younger students of the "School of Rock" of our little mountain valley and was held in a small community hall. When we walked into the crowded, tiny building , we easily found the 13 seats at the front that the band had reserved for us at the very front.
As I sat down, Sev came over to me and informed me that he would be SINGING with another band that night.
"Just one song" he said with a feigned casual air. "They asked if anybody knew "Smells Like Teen Spirit", so I tried it with them and it worked. Gotta go now." And he stuck his iPod earphones back in and wandered off.

Talk about surprises!

First the younger groups played (5th and -6th graders). There were a few of my English students from last year. SO cute!
Then the older groups went on. Most of them were pretty decent, music-wise. The only problem was the singing.
Not good. At all.
One young woman's version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" sounded more like what they must play just outside the gates of Hell.

A certain amount of smirking and groaning went on in the crowd, which I thought was dreadful. Yes, much of the singing was American Idol crazy reject bad, but these were just nervous kids. I smiled from my front-row seat and tried to send mental waves of encouragement and kindness.

And I hoped someone would do the same if my kids or their friends messed up...

The next band consisted of three adults. They played a couple of songs and then Sev came on stage with them, looking hugely tall and gawky in that way only 14 year old boys growing too fast can manage.
But as for stage presence? Chatting with the crowd? Getting a laugh? Sev was all over that. Then he launched into a parody of the famous Nirvana song!
It was so funny- it's really a shame that most of the people there didn't speak English!
"Now I'm mumbling, and I'm screaming and I don't know what I'm singing!"
I'm not saying that he sang it completely in tune. But then, does melody really count in a Kurt Cobain song?
I was just amazed that he was so at ease. And the crowd seemed to love it, despite the language thing. (Most of the groups were singing in English anyway, so everyone was pretty used to not getting the lyrics....)

After a couple more decent groups, The Boxmen came on. And that's when my normally somewhat shy Valentine showed us all that she was born to front a rock band.
I was completely astounded!They sounded GOOD! Really good! Like about 1000 times better than anyone else there. Their music was great, Tya's singing was impressive and they seemed to have FUN! You could really tell that they all like each other and enjoy being together.

"The crowd went wild", as they say. Everyone really seemed to appreciate them and the compliments afterwards were...vastly gratifying!

The best compliments came from their teacher... he was, obviously, SO, pleased with them. He pointed out to me that The Boxmen members are not the youngest kids in the association and are by far the least experienced. Max and Sev (guitar and bass) had never touched an instrument before September! And the drummer only had one year of experience.

On top of that, all of the other groups had been playing together for at least a year or more. But somehow The Boxmen blew them all out of the water. Their teacher is expecting great things next year!

Yes, I did film it.
No, I cannot show it to you.
The recording seems to be lost.
Can't find it on my camera!!!!!

But here's the thing- their great performance earned them a spot at the village music festival! And that's today! And for the event, I've borrowed a decent camera from a friend. So, maybe I'll be able to show you something soon...

It's lucky they're able to go perform today...On Tuesday, their drummer made a wild leap off a picnic table at school, trying to grab cherries off a tree (a common pastime for bored high school students at their lycée (high school), or so Valentine has informed me). He hit the ground, dislocating and breaking his right shoulder.
Ouch.
He's ok now- has to have his arm in a sling for a month and a half...and may need surgery. But at least he didn't break his neck....Could have been worse, as we like to say back in Nebraska.

The Boxmen have recruited their teacher to play the drums, just for this last gig.
And hopefully their drummer will be fully recovered by September...

I've been working on some posts-mostly about French culture and such- but can't manage finish anything. Spring has sprung in the French Alps and I can't seem to keep still in front of a screeen. I'd much rather be outside admiring my bright yellow crocus patch...

The addition to the house ? Well, the builders have got all the doors and windows on and put the interior wood panelling in. Their work is done.

Lucky dogs.

Now there's lots for us to do. JP will do as much as he can by himself, with a bit of help from a neighbor and maybe our kids.

What's left?

Flooring (insulation and then stratified floorboards)

Heat (drill hole through kitchen wall and add on a radiator out in the new room)

Paint (one ugly cement wall which used to be the exterior of the west side of the house)

Light (Agree on, purchase and put up some light fixtures!)

Varnish (interior walls and ceiling with transparent UV protection)

More varnish (exterior+shutters+the carport)

So, plenty to do there.

The REALLY big news is that Tya is leaving for Germany.... at 2am this Saturday morning. That's only about 16 hours from now! She's leaving on a bus with a bunch of classmates and some teachers. They'll all be lodged with various host families in a small town not far from Berlin. Tya's very excited. She'll only be gone a week, so expect a full report on her blog very soon.

You all HAVE to go have a look at Valentine's latest art project for school.

The assignment was to use photography or video in conjunction with one other art technique (painting, sculpture, whatever) to make a piece portraying a daily activity in a humorous way.

She ended up using a picture of an old Flemish domestic painting and having some fun with it. She changed it up and incorporated pics of our whole family.

I think she did an amazing job, but you should go see for yourselves.

BTW: It would be nice of you to leave her an encouraging comment, too. She likes that.

What did my eldest daughter think of our Paris holiday?


If you'd like to know, check out this post on Tya's blog, where she informs us that the Mona Lisa is 'not all that' and generally gives the low-down on the City of Lights.

I briefly considered posting a cute Valentine's Day -themed picture here. Perhaps one featuring an adorable cat saying something humorous.

But I'm too tired. MUCH too tired. This home renovation stuff is exhausting, especially when it's done in an old house, full of surprises. Bad surprises.

The down stairs hallway went fine and only took about a day and a half. But then we started in on the twins' room, and the fun began.

By "fun", I mean the opposite of fun, as in "sheer hell".

Cristian the Romanian handyman was brilliant, as always. And the kids helped so much. Valentine was especially great, taking charge of much of the painting.

I'll post more details, plus pictures, tomorrow.

But at least now, it's done.
That's right! We finished at about 6pm this evening.
I'd celebrate if I weren't so darn tired...

I am very tired.

THIS is why:

Cristian the Romanian Handyman is working 11 hour days. Mine run towards +15 ....
We wouldn't have to work so hard if everything were going smoothly, but smooth is a distant dream these days.

Yesterday, we started putting wax on the 'decorative lime coating' in the living room After the first wall, I knew it was all wrong- there was way too much gray in the blue and it made me feel like I was shortly to be crushed to death in a crippled submarine at the bottom of the ocean.

And that's not how a person wants to feel in his or her own living room, is it?

So, I had to drive back to Leroy Merlin (the big DIY place in a nearby town) for the third time in as many days. I traded in the blue for an ochre color called "Pierre de France" (Stone of France). And my red stencil paint was exchanged for a light sienna shade.

Here's how it's looking:

I'm very pleased, but very, very tired.

And tomorrow promises to be another über-long day. I have to go back yet again to Leroy Merlin and exchange the baseboard paint I bought this morning. I had an entire coat of it applied and then realised that the color just wouldn't work with the Stone of France wall wax. It's so frustrating! If I could just get my act together, this would all be done in a jif.

Suffice it to say that I will not soon be hosting my own home decorating program on French TV.

And finally, some real news: Tya is back from Munich safe and sound, full of tales of adventure! I've been trying to persuade her that she has to write all about it in her blog, which hasn't seen any action since Africa. . .

The Great German Adventure seems to be coming along nicely.
At least, that's the official word from the school hotline dedicated to reassuring nervous persons such as myself. After punching through a series of menus and secret codes, the suffering parent gets to listen to a short message recorded by one of the accompanying teachers.
Yesterday's recording informed me that the bus got to Munich at about 8:30 am, after a long, rather uncomfortable all-night bus trip. After a quick breakfast in a café (Sorry. That would be Kaffeehaus) they got back on the bus and headed over to the famed BMW museum. (I will restrain myself from any further comments on the latter 'attraction'. You all know what I think).
The museum visit was followed by a picnic consisting of the sack lunches the kids had brought along from France. I am hoping it was not a sunny day, as a lunch that endures a long morning in a hot bus generally leads to food poisoning...

And as for the rest of us? Keeping busy, as usual. Especially me. Cristie the Romanian Handyman is back for an encore performance and the house is being transformed. And it needs it, as you can see from these photos. Warning: if you have a heart condition or are just particularly sensitive to scary home-improvement photos, please refrain from viewing the following material...

Not so bad, you are thinking?

Well, what about THIS? This wall is where the sewage from the septic tank leaked through. NOT for the faint-hearted.Here's yet another wall we're dealing with:

Wish us luck!

One kind blogpal has asked if my kids actually LIKE their new schools. Good question.

Eldest daughter weighs in with a resounding "Non!". She is not liking it one bit. She is known as "The African" and random groups of people wander up to her to ask "Are you from Africa?" and when she answers politely, they wander off smirking and giggling. Idiots. As you may guess, she's really not comfortable with the attention and is becoming pretty miserable. And as a result, she even pretends not to speak English very well.
That's right!
She doesn't want anyone to know that she's half American and speaks perfect English. She couldn't hide the fact that she'd transfered in from Burkina Faso (all the teachers knew and mentioned it in class the first day) but she CAN avoid being an English-speaking "freak" by staying silent in class. I just hope that these kids get bored and move on to something else. I also fervently hope that Valentine will eventually assume the mantle of her freakishness and shine in English class once again.

And the boy Sev? He's floating above it all, as usual. On the first day he easily found two pals to show him around. And by the second day, he was making an impression the female population. He was passed a pink piece of paper with hearts drawn all over it. It was a masterpiece by two girls in his class and read "We are watching you!".
He later showed it to Valentine who remarked: "Ooh! Stalker girls. Kind of creepy, don't you think?"
Trust Tya to discern the dark underside.

As for the twins: the tiny one-room school caught them by surprise, even though they'd been warned. And it was not a good surprise. At lunchtime the first day, Alexa was crying and wishing for her old school and myriad of friends back in Ouaga. But all was well by the end of the day, as the teacher complimented both twins on their skills and fine handwriting. (Good move on her part. Brava!) So, the academic front is going well. But socially?
Well, the twins are finding the locals rather provincial and had some cutting things to say about their clothes ('the girls look like boys!') and their amusements.
A particular subject of disdain was the apparently very popular game called "Wall". It involves throwing a ball against (yes, you guessed it) a wall. The kids all play it during recess and can talk about nothing else, so I am informed. The twins decline to participate and positively yawn when forced to listen to the endless chat about it.
I tried to explain to the girls that their conduct may not exactly win them a big fanbase here in the Valley, but I don't know how all this is going to play out. The whole 'bored sophisticate' stance might offend, of course. It can do that.
But on the other hand, the twins are pretty convincing and charismatic. The girls might just get away with this and have the other kids competing for their attention, the Wall forgotten.
Stay tuned...

So, here's the story; We're in a small Burkinabe village and all of a sudden, I change into a chicken. Sometimes I'm a turkey, but usually a chicken.

Anyway, there I am, all poutry-fied and Valentine is trying to catch me, but I run away. In my panic I run near the village reservoir which is filled with crocodiles. And there I meet the inevitable sad end of village chickens that venture near crocodile-infested waters.


This is a dream that Valentine (eldest daughter) has had repeatedly over the last few years. Her mom turns into a bird and runs around until torn apart by savage reptiles.
How strange is that? What does it mean?


Guess it's time to leave.


We'll have the fried chicken with sides of both coleslaw and psychoanalysis, please.

Evil has a name and that name is: BurkinaMom.
Well, maybe not evil, probably just stupid- the jury is still out. Yesterday I managed not only to break our digital camera, I accidentally erased almost every photo that Valentine took on her very last day of school here in Burkina Faso. I know it's kind of my trademark to make a short story into an excruciatingly detailed epic, but this one is too painful to drag out. Suffice it to say, mistakes were made.

The few pictures that were spared are trapped inside the broken camera. I'll find out today at 4pm whether the camera can be saved and the pics rescued.
We have managed to get a few pictures from some of her friends, but it's not much, compared to what I managed to destroy.

Question: Is there any way in the world that photos erased off a photo memory card can be restored? Help?!

Sorry, Tya!!

Yesterday I was back in my bedroom and heard screaming. It sounded like my children were being dismembered , or at least being kidnapped by people planning to do so.
I tore out to the living room to find Alexa rushing to find me, sobbing piteously. No axe-muderers or kidnapper in sight.
I was then made to understand that my girls had been through a hideous experience. They'd been in Valentine's room when a crazed gecko jumped off of the top of the mosquito net and onto Valentine's head.
She screamed.
The gecko ran down onto her face.
She screamed louder.
Then she brushed it off (who can blame her?) without paying much attention to where she was aiming. She ended up flinging the little lizard onto Alexa's head- which resulted in even more huge amounts of screaming from everyone, including Mallory, who was the horrified witness to all this.
Ah.. Life in Africa.


I still have no e-mail, so keep the comment/messages coming. I forgot to mention, for those of you that don't know how it works, that I can read the comments and then NOT publish them on the blog. So, messages to me do not become automatic entertainment for the whole blogosphere.


I have to run several errands today, so the tax story will have to wait yet another day.


If you want to read something funny, go over and read Valentine's blog today. She gives a big write up of her impressions of the amateur rock group we went to see the other night.
You should definitely read it if you are over 30 and thinking about fulfilling that life-long dream to create a band with the help of your equally decrepit pals from work. Ouch.

Here is a picture of JP and I at a Christmas party. Maybe it isn't that great, but it is such a rare item, that I felt I had to post it. My husband and I are seldom in pictures together. It seems like it's always me holding the camera, taking endless shots of the kids. Which is only right, as I feel that my children are getting more beautiful with age. I am sorry to report that the same cannot be said of me. But this pic is nice a souvenir of a really lovely night at H's house.
BTW-Valentine has posted again. Go have a look!