Joyeux Noël!

Well, we had a wonderful first Christmas in France. I hope you and your family had a wonderful day as well. I'm sorry I'm a couple of days past Christmas posting, but we had too many Christmas sweets and have had two sick boys. I'm pretty tired and still have lots of cleaning to do, so I'm just going to let our pictures tell the story.

In our Christmas jammies waiting for Pere Noel to fill our stockings


Christmas Eve in front of our tree


The boys got their own baking sets so they can help me cook. On Friday we made pecan pies. They each had their own, but Ulysses and I had to share.


The boys got each other a pet cage that they both really wanted.


All four of us got new bikes. Xavier's is real low to the ground with pedals and training wheels, Ezekiel's has no pedals, Deirdre's is a city bike, and Ulysses's is a mountain bike.


The boys were very excited to see what Papa Noel brought them in their stockings. Ezekiel got a "Tow Mater" and Xavier got an art kit.


"Cheers!"

Pre-Christmas Update

Well, after two vigorous days and 4 different shopping centers, I think I'm ready for Christmas. The gifts were the easy part. Dinner was and will be a completely different story. We're going to try to have as traditional (for us) of a meal as possible this year. Maybe next year when I'm a little better cook, we'll attempt some French holiday foods, but this year it's mom's favorites - with variations. :-) I'll let you know how it goes, but we've got pizza makings in case it completely flops!

Our Menu:
Ham - slices with canned pineapple and homemade brown sugar (Great! We underestimated how much the boys would eat and didn't have enough for Daddy!)
Green Bean Casserole - I'm making cream of mushroom soup, seasoned salt, and fried onions (Looked good, but we forgot it on the counter when we went to church and had to throw it out)
Sinful Potatoes - I'm making Velveeta, but I was super excited to find frozen hashbrowns and what we think is bacon slices (they weren't quite as cheesy as they should have been and we didn't have enough bacon, but it was still good)
Sweet Potato casserole - if you're on facebook, you saw I was jumping for joy yesterday when I found what I hope are sweet potatoes and marshmellows (worked pretty well, but I had double the amount of spices and sugar, and big marshmellows instead of mini, so it was pretty much just orange sugar)
Fruit Salad - If I remember to pick up more bananas. Otherwise it'll just be apples. (I forgot the bananas and we forgot to slice some apples)
Pecan Pie - I hope. I have a recipe for whipped cream, but I think I'm going to have to get creative on the actual pie. (I'm making the day after Christmas. We were talking on Skype and had a disaster on Christmas day.)

We'll start the morning with my dad's rolls. I've made them before over here (homemade bread dough and brown sugar) with mixed results. Hopefully all will be good Thursday morning.

We've also got sugar cookies, pumpkin bread, and maybe apple pie on the menu for the next two days. I don't think we'll starve, but we might be on a sugar buzz!

The boys met me at my last stop today to see Papa Noel. They're kinda upset that they didn't get to sit in his lap and tell them what they want, but they don't seem to do that here. Everytime a kid got near him (or the other one we saw in the train station last week), he hands them some candy and quickly turns away.

Party! Party! Party!

Well, I'm exhausted. Xavier had three days of birthdays and I'm glad we've got a week before Christmas fun begins. Xavier brought snack to school on Friday and I left my camera for the teacher. Xavier had told me that his friends had candles and everyone sang to them, but I wasn't sure if he was confused with their birthday parties. But, I made him a train cake he enjoyed his morning at school.

On Saturday we had a pizza party at our place for him. He had four friends (of four different nationalities!) and lots of fun. I'd say it was pretty successful.

I wasn't sure they'd be able to handle rolling their own crusts, so I did that before the party, but they played with playdough until everyone got there.


Their own pizzas that they made themselves was a big hit. One mother told me she was shocked that her son ate it, since he's never seen anything like it before. I knew I was in for some translating challenges, but I never imagined a life without pizza!


The "pizza" cake didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, but I figured it was good enough for four year olds.


Musical chairs and pin the pepperoni on the pizza were big hits


Hide and Seek the toppings (and then glue onto a pizza slice) didn't get translated very well, but the kids had fun running around the house and Xavier enjoyed the game


The party goers - Paulo, Xavier, Aidan, Andrea, Ezekiel, Ruth

Yesterday, on Xavier's actual birthday, we opened family gifts and then went to a parade in Geneva. It's called the Escalade and commemorates a day in 1602 when Geneva was invaded and the people of the town fought them off. The famous story is a women who was cooking vegetable soup opened her window and poured the boiling soup onto an invader, killing him. They sell chocolate soup kettles filled with marzipan vegetables all over the city.

These are the only two pictures I got of Xavier alone yesterday. I'm going to try to get a better "birthday" picture soon.


Ezekiel was scared to death that the horses or spears were going to get him the entire time, but Xavier really enjoyed it.

I hope you all had a great weekend too. We are now getting ready to start decorating for Christmas!

Let it Snow!

It's been snowing for the last two days! We still probably have less than 3 inches on the ground, but it's really pretty! It's the perfect, wet, snowball/snowman snow. So, of course the boys had to make one...

Ulysses agreed to go into work late yesterday, so I could birthday party shop without any helpers. :-) I know I have the best husband. So, my three boys built the largest snowman Ulysses has ever built.

Unfortunately, a ten year old brat came and kicked it down today during lunch. Luckily the boys didn't see, but I'm not sure how to tell them.

I will post pictures next week of Xavier's birthday party. We're having a pizza party on Saturday with four of his friends. Wish me luck as I try to explain party games and how to make your own pizza in four different languages!

A video to end. The other night, my perfectly healthy boy (yeah!) was begging for a nebulizer because he couldn't breath (emphasized with a huge breath). It was too funny. We had to capture it.

Are my children normal?

I've pretty much decided the answer is no. But, I love them all the same. Maybe even a little more because of it. Anyways, I think I've decided the churches that we've been attending focus a little too heavily on the Old Testament. Xavier's favorite story is David and Goliath, Ezekiel's is Jonah. Last year, when we would go out and play in the snow, Xavier would tell us that he was David and Ulysses was Goliath. Xavier would then throw snowballs at Ulysses and expect him to fall down dead so that he could beat Goliath. Well, this year, they've started building the temple with our legos. Xavier plays the trumpet and Ezekiel plays the drums as they sing praises to God on their way to the temple. They then go to the Lego table and bow down to the temple "because that's how we worship God." We've been discussing that, yes, if we were Israelites, we would go to the temple to worship God, but we're not Israelites and the temple was destroyed. Of course, the Bible study that I'm currently doing is a Beth Moore study on the Psalms of Ascent, so it's very possible that they've gotten the praising on the way to the temple from Ulysses and my discussions about my Bible study. Any thoughts? Have your children taken hold of a story so strongly that they truly believe that's their life? Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic that their idols are from the Bible, but I think our churches need to focus a little bit on how we worship God as Christians, not just Israelites from the Old Testament.

I just couldn't bring myself to take the picture of him actually bowing down to the temple, but here he is singing.

Starting at age 4, they get to be part of the fun for Advent at our church. "John the Baptist" (who Ezekiel is alternately terrified and fascinated with) has been coming to tell us all to get ready for Jesus! He's been bringing pieces of the season to put in our heart to prepare. Visually, there's a huge heart on the stage and the four year olds get to open a big present with that week's "word" in it that then gets attached inside the heart. Xavier's in the blue and red striped shirt opening up "Joy" (last week was "Hope", but we didn't have our camera).

The kids (4-10 year olds) then sing the old Amy Grant song from Songs From the Loft "I've got the Hope (Love, Joy, Peace) Down in my Heart." Next to Xavier is one of his best buds from chuch, Zachary.

Poor Daddy...

It seems like if Ulysses doesn't leave for work by 8 when Xavier goes to school, he doesn't get out of here until well after 9. I'm not sure why, but that seems to be the case lately. Well, since Thursday was an American holiday and Ulysses didn't get out of the door with Xavier, he decided to try to play some football with his youngest son. Ezekiel was quite excited to go play football with daddy, but he insisted that we call it soccer. Just the French call it football. Ulysses tried to get him to play American football, but Ezekiel would have nothing of it. They did kick the soccer ball around for a little while before Ulysses decided he'd better get to work. He came home early to try with Xavier, but it was too cold. Oh well, maybe we're going to have soccer players instead of football players. Poor daddy.

I did get them to make some handprint turkeys on Wednesday when Xavier was out of school. We didn't completely blow off the holiday! I hope you all had a great long weekend!