On a trip to France, most people might expect to go visit interesting sites- perhaps the great Cathedral of Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower.

We are not doing any of that sort of thing with my mom. In fact, today she got to help me clean my house.(Thanks, Mom! Love you!!!!)

But we don't only clean house.
Mais non!
We also....go pick up Mallory when she gets out of school early:

(FYI: My car is the one with the blue "Nebraskans for Peace" bumper sticker.)

Here's Mallory getting her papers inspected as she leaves school:

Back home, Finally!

This is Bob. My mom thinks Bob is kind of cute and sweet.

Bob is actually strange and kind of deformed.
She was like this when we found her and even the vet can't explain how a stray cat could be so hugely obese. She's like a watermelon with four toothpicks for legs. But she's so pathetic that you have to love her....

My mom has been enjoying the lovely fruits and vegetables here in France...

(She took this photo at the supermarket. Kind of pretty!)

She has also sat through two of Alexa's dance classes. She went to ballet on Monday and today was modern dance. As she watched, she had to hold the teacher's dog, Coppelia. Coppelia is quite spoiled and barks at you if not petted and endlessly cosseted.

If my dad shows these photos to their dog back home, my mom could be in big trouble. Bridget seems like the jealous type....

Mallory is our Nature Girl. Plants and animals are her thing - which is good, otherwise we wouldn't have this:

It's a little flower patch near our brand new back door.

Mal's also been out in the vegetable garden, putting in the first lettuce plants. (And no, you can't have her or even just "borrow her. I need her here.)
Below we see Mallory and a dog- a nice, elderly, blind in one eye and mostly deaf sheepdog.

Ciboulette ('Chives' in English) is a good old dog and has worked hard all her life herding sheep and is now enjoying a well-deserved retirement. She belongs to our friends who were visiting during the last holiday. Her time chez nous was much appreciated by Mallory, who (of course) adores all dogs. Mal even completely forgave Ciboulette for laying several times in the brand new flower bed and crushing the baby flowers.

Here you can see a bit more of what we've been up to, house-wise:

The four layers of varnish are on the addition!

Yay!

What wasn't so great was the fact that we got varnish all over the borrowed ladder we used. It took the kids hours to scrub it clean again. (Have I mentioned recently how sweet my kids are? They are sweet...and hardworking, too!)

Here's a shot of everyone hard at work varnishing the carport. It's hard to tell, but there are six people under there working, plus baby Yasmine clinging to her mom and getting varnish on her clothes.

I promise to post more pics soon- we're going to have some landscaping (fancy!) done, so I'll definitely want to show our status as everything progresses!