Here for the Bread: Champagne, and the Many Ills it Cures...

Cheers!

Hi all!

OK, lots to catch up on...I'm typing this as we fly over the Atlantic back to France after a wonderful, but short trip to visit my favorite Mother-In-Law in Pennsylvania (much more on that trip in an upcoming post).

Playing dress-up can indeed kill some of the 5 1/2 hour layover at Heathrow Airport...

Daphne living the good life after we were inexplicably seated a class higher on our transatlantic!

I even drank wine from a real glass. Ahh...airplane luxury.

After the previous "Lice Post," I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that yes, Katherine's posts are much funnier than mine. She saves them up and will delight you with her wit from time to time. I will fill in the gaps. And we have plenty of gaps to fill in since late December.

We spent New Year's Eve with dear friends, reminding ourselves, once again, that the most important things aren't things, but rather the special moments shared with friends and family.

An incredible potato tarte (starch galore) for New Year's with the Andre's...

Expert hors d'oeuvres made by the kids

Leo ringing in the New Year...

Happy New Year!

I personally rang in 2017 by cutting myself (for the second time!?) on a day-old baguette. (I know, I know...)

My bed head: a lovely way to ring in the New Year...

What happened was this: New Year's Day was a rather late lay-in for the five of us (I blame the Andre's for their ample New Years Eve hospitality). And, though my brother will mock me mercilessly for this admission, day-old French bread is a formidable weapon of choice. The lack of any fat in the dough prevents shelf life, creating a jagged edged crust, and I have the scars to prove it...

Ouch.

Cora, wielding her weapon of choice

On January 2, we celebrated American Thanksgiving with some lovely friends who had never experienced this wonderful holiday. We had planned to do it in November, but my performance schedule got in the way, so it was a January Thanksgiving for us all.

Beyond our celebrating with friends, January was relatively chilly for Lyon, and everyone was complaining about it. We dug back into work from the kids' music lessons to swim teams to the piles of homework which seemed to grow larger just as the days were at their shortest. Katherine took a weeklong trip to London, to visit her college roommate, and I began memorizing a lot of music for various concerts and operas that I've got between now and July.

Katherine practicing selfies in London: she reminds me that's Tower Bridge, NOT London Bridge

Our new arrival! Cora has been studying the lute since the Fall

Leo truly mourned the departure of our 2016 Christmas Tree...(which was, by far, the driest tree we've ever had. If you just walked across the floor, you could hear the needles dropping from the vibration of your footsteps. By the end it looked more like a giant rosemary bush).

The kids burning off some winter energy at the local climbing gym.

Celebrating Epiphany (like all of France) by eating a beautiful Galette des Rois

We celebrated Katherine's birthday in early February in an elegant and wonderful way: we were treated to a traditional French luncheon at the beautiful home of our friend Jacques' 94-yr old mother. She was intrigued to hear that he had befriended some Americans, and she wanted to show us the way it's really done, here. And did she ever. We were the happy recipients of a delicious birthday meal of saumon fumé, foie gras, poisson à la crème, salad and plenty of champagne (ah, les françaises...), followed by a rich chocolate cake for Kat's birthday and, ahem...more champagne.

We spent all afternoon and some of the early evening enjoying her generous hospitality and warm conversation, and Katherine and I again remarked to one another that evening how incredibly generous the French people are, and how eager they are to proudly share their culture.

The next day brought Cora's tour of what will be her school next year when she enters collège (French middle school). She'll join Daphne there, and her tour both excited and intimidated her a bit. Like Daphne did this year, Cora will graduate into a much more autonomous learning environment, and much more will be expected of her. The transition between fifth and sixth grade here is a notoriously difficult one, even for the French themselves. Cora will choose a learning track from five or six choices ranging from visual art to science and technology to French cinema to foreign languages. This track will be an emphasis which will augment her core curriculum, and it's a decision that she's already thinking over. Daphne chose science/technology, and hasn't looked back...