Picture comparison...

Just wanted to do a side-by-side picture comparison of Grandma & her sister. I think they look similar...but Grandma is prettier! ; ) You can definitely tell that they're sisters! More than their looks though, she has similar facial expressions and hand gestures that are a lot like Grandma, but you can't picture that on film, I was wishing for a video camera when we were there. It was just fun to meet her and spend some time with her. Made me feel closer to Grandma...wishing I could be! : )

Home Again

We made it home, safe & sound, yesterday. A few days earlier than we planned, but we were all ready to get back. I washed the kid's car seat covers right away and was taking them out to the laundry line and stepped on a bee--while wearing flip-flops! Impressive, huh?! I can't believe how much it hurt and then my foot swelled up and today I've still been limping around and am just basically wiped out! It's 2:15 and I finally got one load of laundry hanging out to dry and a second one in the machine. I think I have about 4 more to go!! : )

I do have all the pictures on my computer now though and am working my way through those. There are so, so many! I think I'll just make a link to Picasa with a slideshow. But for now, I wanted to get the pictures up of visiting Grandma's sister. We had such a wonderful time. I was teary eyed off and on the whole time. She is so similar to Grandma...although much more talkative...it was really special for me to meet her! I am so glad it worked out!

Abigail really enjoyed her time there as well. We were trying to explain to her about who they were and finally told her "they're like your French Grandma & Grandpa" and that clicked. She followed her French Grandpa where ever he went and would ask "where did Grandpa go?" and then go find him. We asked her later what she liked about him and she said, "we played together and talked and I read him a story..." It was really, really cute.

We had the pak-n-play with us, so we set that up while we were there and Elijah got a really good nap, which gave us plenty of time to 'try" to talk to each other. Their house is full of breakables, so it was good for Elijah to have some "contained" time. : )

Joel did a great job with speaking French, I think he was even surprised at how much he was able to communicate even though he would've liked to have been able to say more. One it was set that we were going to visit, he got online and gave himself a refresher course from websites. I, however, kept reverting to Slovene. At one point Jacqueline finally asked me how we say "yes" in English because I kept saying, "ja" (ya) which is Slovene instead of "oui" in French. She was obviously confused. Oh my! It was funny at times.

Well! We're all set to go visit Grandma's sister tomorrow. I'm so glad I called you!! I called Isabelle, who didn't speak any English, so Joel stepped in and wowed me with his French. Then I went down to the Hotel desk and the owners wife made the phone calls for me. She got Jacqueline's phone & address, which are still the same and arranged for us to visit tomorrow. We're just 20 minutes away from them. We are so, so glad we called and are really looking forward to whatever tomorrow has~! Who knows what we'll all be able to say to each other...we may just sit across from each other smiling, but it will be fun! I'll post more about it next time we're around internet! Love you all!!

Vacation??

Well, this has turned out to be a lot more stressful and unpredictable than we planned. We've spent waayy tooooo much time in the car so far and are all exhausted and it's only day 4 of our vacation. The campsite I had reserved online (and gave VISA info to) doesn't do online reservations during the busy season. We need to make sure we were billed for anything! We were planning on being there for a week and only spent one night and had to move on. Thankfully, they had the space for the one night! We were traveling (with stops) for almost 12 hours to get there! We needed that one night.

So now we're in Montpellier ....so close to La Cres, Grandma! ...at a hotel just to have a break. We're planning on staying here two nights. There is a wonderful, sandy beach just 10 minutes from here, so we're hoping for some relaxing tomorrow and part of the next day. I'm going to ask the hotel for a phone book tomorrow at breakfast to see if somehow by chance I could find Grandma's sister in it since she's moved. It feels like we are so close to them (like less than 1/2 hour) and yet so far! Any thoughts Grandma? We'll be moving on from here...back toward Nice, probably more north though.

The kids are amazing through it all! We're really proud of them! Both of their vocabularies are expanding these days...Abigail used the word, "campground" correctly! It makes sense, but still! We know it's a new word for her! Every time we drive through a tunnel --which is a lot!--Elijah says, "gauk...gauk...gauk..." which is "dark". It's pretty funny!

Ok, I'm off to get some rest tonight! Love you all!!