She is just over three months pregnant- which means that her baby will be 11 months or so younger than Sam. That's all the more exciting because John and I each only have one sister- so it's so cool that Sam will have cousins his age on both sides (Susan is pregnant with their third due in December).The first day of her visit was the Tour de France- her luggage didn't arrive so my parents went to get it while we watched the race. Actually, we watched about an hour an a half of commercials and then about 3 minutes of the race- the cyclists come through so quickly. But just like the Superbowl- it's the commercials that count. Instead of being on TV though, they are these floats that drive through advertising everything from pizza, to car shops, to the new Simpsons movie. People throw out free stuff and samples and everyone scampers to pick it up.
Here's John with some of his SWAG
This is one of the floats- no idea what it's advertising though
Sam and I watched from the shade though watch is a bit of a strong word for what Sam did. He gets really scared sometimes when there are sudden loud noises and if they startle him he cries- that happened once on this day when a particularly load float came through and also at the soccer game we watched (Lille vs Lyonnais) when a team scored and everyone clapped and cheered. He just wasn't in on the secret so when everyone clapped at once he lost it. Cute though
We went to the beach again too- we tried taking Sam in but it was too cold for him.
He's got a total fascination for bottles- he prefers glass and ones that have condensation on them to suck on.
This whole region is spectacular because no matter where you are the view in the background is phenomenal. This day at the beach, they didn't charge because it was cloudy.
One of the best pastimes is just to drive off in any direction- everything is beautiful and no matter which way you go- something interesting is around the corner. John and I enjoyed being driven around this day- which included: a castle, a delicious French meal, swimming in a river, and a mountain farmer's market.
Sam is now much more competent at amusing himself- so we can eat dinner all together- really a big change. Here he's wearing an outfit Elizabeth brought him because it says Baby Dino and Sam was making his Pterodactyl noises (those have mostly phased out now- he's on to trilling)
Here Sam is sporting an outfit from his Great-Grandmother :-)
Sam really adores John (the feeling's mutual, I'm sure)
Our last day with Elizabeth we took the most beautiful drive imaginable- Here are 4 pics-
A view of Mont Blanc from the restaurant we ate at.
Wildflowers are amazing up in the high altitudes (we were at 5-6000 feet)- this kind here has purple, yellow, and orange on the same flower.
We saw cows, horses, and sheep with bells on :-)
On the way down we weaved in and out of forests and fields
All in all, it was an amazing few weeks. It was so encouraging to hear French in the streets and understand things. It was not so encouraging to watch French movies and miss everything but the gist. John says that he thinks he went back a step in terms of spoken French but forward several steps in grammer. My class did much more speaking but it's harder to quantify what I learned. I've definitely got new vocabulary and phrases.
Those of you who are inclined to pray could keep these two things in your prayers-
1) finding a good babysitter for Sam for our afternoon classes- someone we feel comfortable with- it's really hard to trust a stranger with Sam but he's getting too big to stay in class with us
2) finding a good tutor for John-
It's going to be a scheduling feat to find tutors and a babysitter who are all free at the right times... we'll see.
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