April 24, 2006
Rats
Nath's watching a made-for-TV movie in which the rats attack Paris. She's been enjoying the shivers.
They just blew up a building with thousands of rats standing by, ready to eat whole animals and people in a sudden frenzy. A guy got stuck in the explosion. He was going back for his white rat.
Now he's coming out of the building with a few smudges. (That's it, the people who've been trying to get me to wear my helmet and my seatbelt are lying. If he can survive that explosion, the least I can do is survive a head on collision on the autoroute or falling off my bike and having a truck run over my head.)
Aha! They're panning out to show a few rat survivors, starting a litter in a bale of hay atop some apartment downtown. The scary music is playing...
Posted by Mark at 10:25 PM | TrackBack
April 23, 2006
Hike above Montfort
We went for a hike up to the ruined castle in Montfort, next to Lumbin.
Unfortunately, the castle was such a ruin that we couldn't get close.
Things went fine until Diane fell over and skinned her hand. After that I had to carry her on my shoulders.
Still, they all enjoyed it a lot. Spring is definitely here.
Posted by Mark at 08:40 PM | TrackBack
Emma's glasses
Emma got her glasses yesterday afternoon. She's happy about them.
She still had trouble reading the menu last night at the restaurant, but it didn't seem related to vision.
Posted by Mark at 11:08 AM | TrackBack
April 20, 2006
Grasshoppers
Since we took Tim down to the manmade lake near Pontcharra yesterday, where he saw a couple of tiny frogs, his brain's been hopping. Yesterday Mom had to sew plastic bags onto wire loops at the end of bamboo poles. One for each child, though Diane's not yet returned from up north.
Today at lunch, Tim explained to his grandmother he needed her to gather 50 fat grasshoppers per child. (We have not yet prayed for a plague of locusts, and are not sure where we're going to get 150 fat grasshoppers this time of year.) He's planning to use sewing thread to tie a grasshopper at a time to each pole. The frogs will go after the fat grasshoppers, and as they do, the children will be able to scoop them into the plastic bags.
Next they'll transfer the frogs to three plastic pop bottles Tim has clipped for the occasion. He says the bottles will be too tall for the frogs to jump out, but that I'll nevertheless have to take a large bucket with a lid to hold the overflow as the bottles are filled with frogs.
Emma hadn't gone to the lake. She asked me what size the frogs were. She'd been talking to Tim, and had gotten the impression each frog was about the size of a basketball.
Both were convinced I should prepare by buying a large aquarium and filling it with the sort of things frogs would like to have around. Sticks and water and lilypads and so forth. They'll be angry and suspect me of stalling when they get home for their snack.
Posted by Mark at 02:58 PM | TrackBack
Emma's eyes
Emma and I went to see an eye doctor this morning. Her regular doctor had seen a huge fall off in her vision at the last checkup.
Today the verdict was that she does in fact need glasses for the classroom and for reading, but that she's only a bit nearsighted with slight astigmatism. Nothing that would force her to wear glasses all the time.
On the way back from the appointment, she was happy to know she wouldn't have to wear her glasses all the time, but she was already sulking. I asked her why. She said she'd looked at the prescription and was going to have to have round glasses, because the drawing on the prescription sheet was round. Her idea was that the eye doctor would prescribe the particular pair of glasses Emma needed. (The guy we saw was no doubt inadequately fashion conscious in Emma's eyes.)
I explained to my incredulous daughter that all the eye doctor was doing in his office was determining how the lenses needed to be ground so as to improve her vision and make it easier for her to read and see things far away. She was sure she wouldn't be able to get the square glasses she wanted. I'm not sure she believed me.
She also didn't believe me when I agreed to discuss with her mom whether she can get blond highlights next time she goes to the hairdresser. The world's a rough place when you're 7 years old.
Posted by Mark at 02:36 PM | TrackBack
April 19, 2006
Big plans
Tim's first question this morning when he got up was whether I could buy him a color photocopier. My answer was that color photocopiers are not cheap. I did not elaborate to say that several hundred or a thousand euros (color laser printer) seemed like a lot to print reams of Star Wars and shark JPEGs that would be ripped up and thrown away shortly after being printed.
Tim's next question was what career should he choose to make lots of money. He'd consulted with his buddies and found that baker probably doesn't pay very well, and is hard work, so he'd changed his mind about that. He's sticking with the idea of being a biologist. I suggested that if he wants to make lots of money, he should see whether he might like sales and running a business.
He shook his head at the idea of sales. He didn't mind the idea of running a business, as long as he doesn't have to do any of the work. He did get the idea that he'd need money to start a business. I explained the idea of venture capitalists, and how they require that you come with a good idea and a well thoughtout plan of how you'll manage to bring them return on their investment.
Tim found it hard to get his head around that, but he had the right idea. If you cannot do something yourself, delegate. So he says it's up to me to come up with the idea and the business plan.
He's not very good at employee motivation yet, however. Right after he left me with the problem of figuring out how to raise funds and figure out what his business would do, he told me about working conditions at his biology laboratory (where the product they'll make is nature films of sharks). Apparently the biologists will all buy their own equipment, and they'll work shoulder to shoulder "24 hours a day, 7 days a week" basically for no pay. Tim didn't think he'd have enough money left over to pay workers. He also asked where he could get a manager to take care of the day-to-day activities while he travelled through the Amazon jungle in search of interesting animals to examine.
Posted by Mark at 08:42 AM | TrackBack
April 18, 2006
Up north, part II
We had Nath and Diane on the phone towards the end of dinner. Their first train was very late, but they had enough of a layover in Lyon to be on time for the TGV.
Nath says Diane's not having fun. Maui, Nicholas and Jenny's baby, still sleeps a lot. Diane said she thought his eyes hurt. Nath says Diane misses Tim and Emma. She has no one her age to play with until tomorrow. I heard her say she was ready to come home.
Nath sounded fine. Hope she can get some sleep even with Diane in her bed.
Posted by Mark at 08:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 17, 2006
Up north
Nath and Diane are taking the train tomorrow morning at 8:05. They're going to see Nicholas and his family.
Nath was packing during Diane's bath, so Diane wanted to get into the act. After she got out of the bath, she packed a huge pack of equipment for her babies. She could barely haul it over her shoulder. When we told her she was going to have to sleep here tonight -- that the pyjamas she had on were specifically for that occasion -- she was inconsolable until the next interesting idea crossed her mind.
Nath is expecting nice weather up north for once. She's looking forward to a few days away from Tim and Emma's constant bickering. Unfortunately she'll have to share her bed with Diane.
Posted by Mark at 08:55 PM | TrackBack
Later than normal
Nath had me go with her last night to a combination birthday party and anniversary of one of her friends. I was born too old for this stuff, and so left my watch here. We were there with many of her friends and acquantainces from Barraux.
We got down to La Gache just after 7:30 pm, and finally came back up the hill sometime around 2:30 am. Was tired by the time we got to the table.
One thing I still find curious about France is how you always have to dance the La chenille before dessert. What's the cultural equivalent of that in the US?
In the end I got about 4 1/2 hours sleep last night. Nath let me take a nap this afternoon, though.
Posted by Mark at 08:33 PM | TrackBack
April 16, 2006
Happy Easter
Some people consider Easter the ultimate Christian holiday. Other people get up at 6:58 am worried about whether their brother got a head start looking for chocolate.
It rained too much last night to have an Easter egg hunt in the yard. The Easter Bunny left them all right next to the house, under the eaves.
Posted by Mark at 05:05 PM | TrackBack
April 13, 2006
Meat eater
Of the three children, Diane is the one who likes red meat the most. Nath bought a big steak to put on the grill. Diane kept wanting more. Finally we gave her the bone to gnaw.
Posted by Mark at 09:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 12, 2006
Arrival
Mom and Dana arrived today with their luggage no less. Their flights had been on time all along the way.
Mom said not too many people seem to be flying here in mid April. The plane from Amsterday Dana said seemed about only 1/3 full.
The children were delighted to find that the suitcase full of presents had made it through and arrived at the same time as the grandparents who brought it. Tim in particular got just what he ordered, which was small, green plastic soldiers. Mom brought a whole box full of them.
She was then obliged to play with Tim. Setting up the soldiers. Sorting them by color, size, and weapon. Standing by as Tim made gun and explosion sound effects. He was having a great time.
Mom also helped Emma to get started with a stylist's drawing kit to draw clothes for Barbie and other girls. Mom and Emma spent quite a while working on a sand drawing, where you stick colored sand to a board having color-by-numbers stickers that you peel off to reveal adhesive underneath. The sand is supposed to glow in the dark, but Emma hasn't tried it out yet.
Dana, Emma, Diane, and I managed to play a game of children's Monopoly, a simplified version of the real thing. Trouble is, Emma didn't win. Papy Dana won. At least Diane and Dad lost, too.
Diane got Papy Dana to read to her for a while. She had a great time playing along with the other various games and activities. Mom also found some time to play with Diane, who has a set of flat colored foam pieces that she can stick to paper in the form of animals.
In the end, Dana had to take a nap this afternoon. Mom was almost asleep in the couch before dinner. And that's just round 1. Good thing the children are going to school while the grandparents recover from their jet lag.
Posted by Mark at 08:35 PM | TrackBack
April 11, 2006
La grippe à bière
Diane's noticed some of the children in her class have been absent. She's explained to Nath for the last three days that they're out with la grippe à bière (beer flu).
The world's definitely going downhill if alcoholism is rampant among three-year-old Barrolin children.
Posted by Mark at 08:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 06, 2006
Liars
Nath was telling me a few minutes ago that she's catching the children lying sometimes. Diane's still too young to do that, but Emma and Tim are old enough.
They don't lie about the same things. Emma apparently lies about how much homework she has. Nath says Emma isn't very good at lying. It's so obvious, Nath can tell from her expression when Emma's not telling the truth. Emma doesn't go so far as to fail to note the homework she has in her assignment notebook, so all one has to do is look at that to check.
Nath has a harder time with Tim. He doesn't lie about homework. (He does sometimes forget very quickly.) Timothee lies about personal hygiene. It used to be he'd "take a shower" so fast the water wouldn't even have had time to drop from the faucet to the bathtub, yet he'd already be finished. Now he actually runs the water. Just not on his body. The funny part is that although he doesn't want to take a shower, he's extremely apprehensive about touching his dirty socks or underwear.
That reminds me of how Matt and I used to "brush our teeth," which consisted of waiting for adults to be elsewhere and then thorougly wetting the toothbrush.
Posted by Mark at 09:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 02, 2006
Portrait of a birthday girl
Diane wanted to look through old photos on the computer. We found a portrait of Emma that Diane liked.
Click the image for a full size shot (779 KB).
Posted by Mark at 06:03 PM | TrackBack
Vacuum cleaner
One of Emma's presents today was a big surprise.
Her grandparents got her a vacuum cleaner. She tried it out immediately in her room. (Should've lent it to her brother, too.)
Emma was proud of the seven candles on her chocolate cake.
Posted by Mark at 05:30 PM | TrackBack
Washboard stomach coming up
Since he got back from his friend's birthday party yesterday, Tim's been exercising to develop a washboard stomach.
He figures that if he does 1000 abdominal exercises a day, in three days he'll look like a guy from an underwear ad. Every few repetitions he stops to examine his progress. He claims to see a lot of progress already. The first thing he said when he woke up this morning was that he could see it was going well.
Situps are too tiring, so most of the exercises are twists, whereby you stand upright and rotate your shoulders.
He was going to work on his pectoral muscles as well, but pushups are too difficult.
Posted by Mark at 10:26 AM | TrackBack
April 01, 2006
First birthday
Emma has the first birthday of the year. Tomorrow is the day.
We had the birthday party today, since Saturday is easier for most people than Sunday. As it was raining outside, the children ran riot in the house.
After two and a half or three hours, we were all tired.
Posted by Mark at 07:36 PM | TrackBack
March 30, 2006
Worms
One doctor suggested Diane was waking up at night because of worms. It turns out, Nath learned today, that Diane does in fact have worms. Now we all have to take anti-worm medicine. It's nowhere near as objectionable as having worms.
In retrospect the presence of worms also explains Diane's appetite lately. She's been eating quite a bit for someone her size. Today Nath baked a chocolate cake for Emma to take to school. When she left the cake in the kitchen to cool, Diane ate a big trench out of the middle.
Posted by Mark at 07:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 28, 2006
Going nearsighted
Emma had a checkup yesterday. Although her eyes were fine last September, her vision has significantly deteriorated since then. She'll almost certainly have to wear glasses. Her doctor said to Nath that sort of change usually means nearsightedness.
The earliest appointment Nath could get with the eye doctor is in the second half of April. In the meantime she's asked Emma's teacher to move Emma to the front of the class. Emma's teacher didn't want to at first. She said, "But Emma's so tall!" Nath insisted though.
She told me Emma was very nervous when the doctor gave her the eye test. At home Emma was having lots of trouble reading and even making out letters any distance away. We suspected the problem last month.
Posted by Mark at 12:51 PM | TrackBack
March 24, 2006
Short haircuts
Emma and Diane went in Thursday, but Nathalie didn't have time to take pictures until today.
Posted by Mark at 08:30 PM | TrackBack
March 22, 2006
Director's chair (& desk)
Immediately as I walked in the door this evening, Tim took me to his room to show me how he'd rearranged his desk.
On the front is a colorful sign:
The desk is turned so a visitor to Tim's office can sit on a stool in front, while he reclines in the other chair behind the desk, looking out over the top of the old laptop at his guest.
The yellow thing above the word scientifique is a corpse under an emergency blanket.
Posted by Mark at 07:55 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 19, 2006
Poses
Emma has been trying some more portrait photography.
She doesn't want to be left out herself, however.
Posted by Mark at 02:23 PM | TrackBack
Collet d'Allevard again
Nath said earlier she wanted to take Tim and Emma skiing if the weather was nice. But Nath wasn't feeling up to it this morning.
My legs are sore, but Tim wasn't ready to do anything very tough, so it worked out fine. Emma didn't want to come along this morning.
You can almost make out Mont Blanc in the very upper left corner of this photo.
Posted by Mark at 02:10 PM | TrackBack
March 17, 2006
Remodeling
My mom and stepfather are remodeling the basement of their new home. (My boss is off making home improvements as well, but I don't have pictures of his place.)
When they finish, they'll have about as much indoor space per person as we share among the five of us. Times have changed and so have expectations. I recall stories of people sleeping together in the same bed, not just the same room, and not only people who are married or otherwise doing so out of choice, only a couple of generations ago.
Posted by Mark at 07:39 AM | TrackBack
March 14, 2006
Photographer
Emma's been taking lots of photos with her digital camera from uncle Matt.
She takes some pictures of people, more than her brother. At one point she decided she wanted to take pictures of the television. We must have 40 or 50 from an episode of Dora the Explorer.
Posted by Mark at 09:22 PM | TrackBack
Tim discovers information reuse
Tim's preparing a presentation on sharks for his class. He's been using Google to find images. The Google results for requin seem to be safe for children.
He was having more trouble finding information. I pointed him to the French Wikipedia home page.
A few minutes later Tim said he'd finished his report, sending me the whole thing as email so I could print it on the computer upstairs. (I haven't shared the printer over the network because I don't want Tim and Emma to be the ones deciding how fast we go through paper and toner. The printer is mainly for Nath.)
As I gave him the page, I explained why we cite our sources, saying who did the work not just so other people know it's not ours, but also so that we ourselves know it's not our work and that we didn't make it up ourselves. I was more or less talking to myself. Tim had found some paragraphs that he could much more easily copy and paste than write himself. It was like the reaction I'd have if I suddenly found a cheap lawn mower that would do the job quickly while I sat down and read a book.
Wikipedia by the way is copylefted, meaning that if you reuse the work, you also have to share your content with the next user. Tim was interested in three sections on from the article on sharks: reproduction, danger to people, and vision.
Gmail curiously turned up a news feed hit next to Tim's mail about sharks, Is Your Manager Earning His Keep? over at Business Week online. The manager in question is your mutual fund manager.
Posted by Mark at 08:52 PM | TrackBack
March 12, 2006
Wiggle worms
We did get them out of the house this afternoon, but the wind was blowing too hard to stay outside.
They played together for most of the afternoon. It ended in a pillow fight, and rolling around on the floor, looking silly for the camera.
Posted by Mark at 08:32 PM | TrackBack
March 09, 2006
Out riding
Nath accompanied a group of children, including ours, to ride the donkeys and eat a snack at La Fontaine aux anes Wednesday. Emma enjoyed it a lot.
Posted by Mark at 10:15 PM | TrackBack
March 07, 2006
All dressed up
The children in Barraux had a sort of late Mardi Gras celebration today with costumes and cake.
Posted by Mark at 09:34 PM | TrackBack
March 06, 2006
Snow in the mountains
Nath copied the photos from her camera to disk this evening. She had taken fewer photos in a week than I took in 36 hours on my trip to Paris this weekend. They had snow almost all week long. No pineapples growing up there above Beaufort.
Posted by Mark at 09:03 PM | TrackBack
Sillyness with webcam
Tim discovered the webcam this evening. He spent a long time, perhaps as long as 20 minutes, just making faces.
Then he found out that I could take snapshots of his antics, and started to look for crazy things to do on camera. He had the Darth Vador mask out before this. He tried to get Diane to strike odd poses, but she moved around too much.
The trouble children have with the webcam is that they move around too much. A webcam does not take 24 exposures per minute. It seems to average less than 10. The picture starts looking blurred or just weird if you move much.
Posted by Mark at 08:54 PM | TrackBack
March 03, 2006
Just one more star
Timothee got his second star today, passing the skiing test. He was so impressed with himself he stopped watching TV for about 8 seconds to come tell me about it on the phone.
Emma apparently did not get her first star. Nathalie said only 5 of the 12 in Emma's group got their stars.
They've been having rough weather up in the mountains. Nathalie said there are about 70 cm (more than 2 ft) of snow on the car since last Saturday afternoon. She's worried about coming back down the hill. They hope the road will be cleared off for the Saturday traffic.
Diane has not gone back to day care. She kept feigning aches, pains, and mental anguish at the thought of not being able to get 1-on-1 babysitting from one of the adults.
Posted by Mark at 10:33 PM | TrackBack
March 01, 2006
News from the mountains
Nath says that for the last two days Diane hasn't wanted to go with the other children to kindergarten. Too bad she paid in advance. Maybe she'll be able to convince Diane to go if the weather's nicer tomorrow.
Today they had lots of new snow, which prevented Colette from enjoying the skiing this morning. Nath says Diane loves rolling around in the snow and making snowmen, however.
Emma and Tim are doing well. Tim's ski instructor taking them on the red slopes, and Tim's able to go longer and faster on the red slopes than Nath after his lessons.
Emma's ski instructor says she's still snowplowing sometimes, but Nath says that disappears in the afternoon, when Emma can go with the family. And Emma's made some girlfriends with her class, and so is relatively happy to go.
Posted by Mark at 07:16 PM | TrackBack
February 25, 2006
Ski vacation
Everyone piled in the car a little while ago. They're headed up to the mountains to ski.
They were trying to figure out how to get up there without going into the thickest part of the traffic. Of course Saturday afternoon during school vacation is a bad time to drive up to the mountains, but everyone goes then.
They all looked excited. I don't think anyone realizes what it's going to be like for three adults and three children to spend a week in a 290 sq. ft. apartment.
Posted by Mark at 03:30 PM | TrackBack
Puppet show
Nathalie had this photo in her camera. Tim did his puppet show a week or two ago.
He's the one standing behind the green puppet on the right. Most of the photos turned out too dark.
Posted by Mark at 09:23 AM | TrackBack
February 18, 2006
Diane's handwriting
Nathalie was surprised Friday to see Diane rush to her seat at the beginning of the school day. She wanted to write something down.
We have no idea what it means. She's doing a good job getting the letters right however for someone not quite four years old who's never been shown specifically how to write.
Posted by Mark at 03:53 PM | TrackBack
February 12, 2006
Magic and makeup
Chloe and Matthieu have been visiting on the way home from skiing in Areches.
Although the boys spent some time with the PlayStation, the children have most fun with the costumes, of which there are two laundry baskets full. Matthieu pulled out Tim's magicians gear and showed us his tricks. The tough part is having to ask the audience how to perform the trick before you do it. Only spoils it for people over 8 years old, though.
The girls have applied lots of makeup in the last 24 hours. We had company for the aperitif this morning, Emma's former babysitter, Nathalie. From across the room Nathalie thought Emma and Diane had chapped and bleeding lips. They've both gotten the idea of which general part of the face to apply the lipstick, but haven't quite narrowed down the boundaries, yet.
Now we have three snowboarding on the PlayStation. They've come home from running around the lake near Les Marches in order to have a snack, and because the cold mist is coming back.
Posted by Mark at 04:58 PM | TrackBack
Soon to be a major motion picture
Tim's latest idée fixe is the horror film he's planning with buddies. So far the script is still unfinished, though he's been working on the story since last Tuesday:
UN Martien Nomme Phenix s'appreta a aterir sur terre. Il alla prisonnier le president du s.a.s. carmen et son cousin parte
He's already prepared the box to hold the DVD however, with space for a bonus disc including previews of the sequel.
Posted by Mark at 04:52 PM | TrackBack
February 11, 2006
Skiing in Areches, part II
Matthieu and Chloe are back from Areches. Both have earned their first snowflakes, having learned to ski this week. Both tell me it was too easy, no problem at all.
Posted by Mark at 06:53 PM | TrackBack
February 08, 2006
Skiing in Areches
Nath took the three children to the ski station in Areches-Beaufort, where Colette and Michel are skiing this week with Chloe and Matthieu. I don't see any of them on the webcam.
The girls were very tired when they came back, although they'd slept in the car. Now they're having trouble going to sleep.
Tim was in better shape, and even agreed to help me set the table. Nath says she's exhausted.
Posted by Mark at 09:10 PM | TrackBack
February 06, 2006
Ran out of Kaplas
Tim reminded me that I'd not posted the photo of his Kapla tower. He managed to use all 200 blocks in this one without making it too high and rickety. Tim's still a long way from the world record 51' tower, but the people doing that probably do not have to contend with Diane.
The idea to get these for Christmas came from watching the kids play with the blocks over at Ludo's. It really was a good gift idea, on the same order as Legos used to be. He seems to play with these more than he watches his Star Wars DVDs or plays with his PlayStation.
His latest idea is that, since he's able to build a tower that uses up the entire box of 200 blocks, he needs a whole lot more. Nath and I don't want that. When he gets all of what he asks for, he's no longer interested soon thereafter.
Posted by Mark at 09:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 05, 2006
Overnight
Michel, Colette, Matthieu, and Chloe left mid morning today. They're driving up the mountain to the ski resort where both children are going to take lessons starting this afternoon.
The boys were together at the PlayStation first thing last night, and again this morning, though they took a few moments to get into Jedi disguise.
Diane was showing off her Sith frown, though the pink pyjamas kind of ruin the effect.
Emma and Chloe decided instead to get a little exercise before dinner. I'm sure Emma will be showing off her washboard stomach soon.
Posted by Mark at 10:51 AM | TrackBack
February 04, 2006
Heavy traffic
Michel, Colette, Matthieu, and Chloe are coming down to the Alps to ski. This is the first week of school vacation for the Paris zone.
We tried to convince them to make the trip Friday afternoon rather than Saturday, but they didn't agree and expected to be able to make good time. It turns out our estimates were better than theirs. By 3:30 pm, they'd only made it to Beaune, and were getting something to eat.
At present they're in between Bugey and Chambery, however. The thickest of the traffic must now be in the valley between Chambery and the Alps. Nathalie's telling them to get off the autoroute and onto the national road, but if I understand correctly they already did that.
Posted by Mark at 05:02 PM | TrackBack
February 02, 2006
Video games
Tim's off school today. His teacher is striking. I took the day off work. Nathalie has to work this afternoon, and somebody needs to stay with Tim.
Nath gave in to Tim's request to go have a look at used video games. So the three of us went to the store together this morning. The used video games are generally much, much cheaper than the new ones.
Nath didn't want Tim to get anything scary or violent. That's a tall order, it seems. Most games are either scary, or violent, or both. In the end Tim got one that's a little bit scary and violent, one released as part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy marketing campaign. He's playing that now. It comes with clips from the movie to help situate the butchery in some sort of story, and plenty of dramatic music.
Tim also got one of the Gran Tourismo series. That's as close as you can get to not scary and not violent, plus he can play with his sisters. Trouble is none of them know how to drive. I tried to explain that you're not supposed to accelerate into a turn, but maybe they need their uncles to give them a clue.
Posted by Mark at 12:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 25, 2006
Another short night, part III
Diane's ill, rash and earache. Horrible, short night. Nathalie's taking Diane to the doctor this morning.
Posted by Mark at 10:11 AM | TrackBack
January 22, 2006
Pyjama princesses
Nath took pictures of Emma and Diane wearing the wedding veil that Mom made for Emma's wedding costume.
Emma has become more discrete with her makeup... sometimes. The pyjamas don't really go with the rest of the costume, however.
Diane wouldn't let her go until she handed over the veil. Neither one of them wants to be the groom, and Tim definitely isn't interested.
Posted by Mark at 01:27 PM | TrackBack
January 21, 2006
Bringing them up right
Nathalie's bringing them up right. As we were cleaning up this morning, I had to stop Tim and Emma from fighting over who got to push the vacuum cleaner around.
Posted by Mark at 01:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 16, 2006
Mount Pisgah
Mom and Dana walked some of the way to Mount Pisgah. They couldn't take the road all the way in to the parking lot, and ended up having too far a hike therefore to do the whole thing on the spur of the moment.
Mom noticed a bunch of big rhododendrons growing out of the rock next to the road along the way. Mom says they're going to try the hike today with water and a picnic lunch, weather permitting. Dana tells me that the weather's often permitting during the day where they now live, or at least has been the last few weeks. It's up into the 60s (F) during the day. But they get big temperature swings, sometimes 35-40 degrees between nighttime lows and daytime highs.
Posted by Mark at 06:51 AM | TrackBack
January 15, 2006
Station de Granier
Today Nath decided we should go to the Station de Granier, which is only a few kilometers away as the bird flies, behind the ridge that ends in Mont Granier. This may have been the first time Diane went skiing instead of sledding. She probably skied a total of 40 minutes, but enjoyed it plenty. She told the woman renting skis that it was, "Too super!" They have a flat, short "baby" slope where it was easy to have her ski between our legs.
Another nice feature of the baby slope is that we could let Emma go unassisted, which built her confidence. Nath says Emma has forgotten how to ski in parallel. So she was trying to snowplow down a fairly steep blue slope, and had to do the last bit on her bottom. She wasn't phased however and enjoyed the whole time we were there.
Tim of course reckons he could've done a lot more impressive skiing if he hadn't had to wait sometimes for his middle sister and his mom.
He enjoyed the steep blue slope, but also the shorter green slope and the baby slope while he was waiting to go higher.
Posted by Mark at 04:52 PM | TrackBack
January 11, 2006
And now for something completely different..., part II
This was the photo of the only two guys not watching Mr Bean that day.
Posted by Mark at 09:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 09, 2006
Aunt Arlecia et al.
Since Mom moved to North Carolina, she's a lot closer than she used to be. She went to visit Aunt Arlecia, who I don't know yet, and who lives in Greenwood, South Carolina. They watched home movies. Mom's also planning to visit her cousin Gordon sometime, now that she lives only 120 miles away. I'd heard we had family down there but never really realized it. In the US you can end up having lots of family you never see.
Posted by Mark at 08:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 08, 2006
And now for something completely different...
We took so many pictures with Nath's new camera between Christmas and New Year's.
This one is at the opposite end of the spectrum from concerns of central planning vs. subsidiarity. It's the whole family watching Mr Bean together.
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January 06, 2006
Another digital camera
Nathalie got an inexpensive digital camera for Christmas. It is more sophisticated than Emma's, with zoom and various different kinds of functionality. It also takes 5 Mpixel snapshots.
Those lead to 2.4 MB JPEG photos. No wonder it takes a second for them to get written to the flash memory chip. It took me several minutes to download a copy of her photos, but then I noticed 118 photos take up 277 MB of disk.
The downside is that the camera doesn't do a pre-flash, so you get red eye. That can be fixed using the Gimp, as I did inexpertly with the photo in this entry (reduced 10:1).
Posted by Mark at 08:34 PM | TrackBack
January 04, 2006
PlayStation all day
Tim apparently played a lot of SSX, the snowboarding game, today. After dinner he played with his sister, then his mom. He was about 25% faster than yesterday evening.
Must keep your priorities in life straight, you know.
Posted by Mark at 08:39 PM | TrackBack
January 03, 2006
The magnificient seven
Here are the seven who were together most of last week at Mamie and Papy's.
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January 01, 2006
Pictures from Christmas vacation
Haven't downloaded pictures from Nathalie's camera yet, but here are four from Emma's camera.
Diane's eating mussels for Christmas dinner. Emma's posing in front of her grandparents' microwave. Timothee's on the TGV coming home today. The girls are at the dinner table in Desvres with their aunt Jeanne and uncles Fred and Mike.
Posted by Mark at 10:12 PM | TrackBack
December 30, 2005
Maximum density
Today there are only 15 of us in the house, with 7 under the age of 9 years. The moments when you can hear yourself think are few, far between, and fleeting.
Since French is not my native language, I can almost pretend not to understand. Nathalie says I close my ears. If you don't understand what is said, it resembles a bunch of birds chirping.
Posted by Mark at 12:40 PM | TrackBack
Colette's birthday
Yesterday 18 of us celebrated Colette's 60th at a nearby restaurant she'd chosen with Michel. Only about 4 h 15 m at the table, but the children had taken activities with them, and the folks at the restaurant put us in a special room where the noise wouldn't bother the other patrons. A great time was had by all, as they say.
The temperature was just right for a snowball fight afterwards, and there was plenty of clean snow next to the road, so nearly everyone climbed back into the cars with wet hair and cold hands.
Posted by Mark at 12:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 29, 2005
Many pictures, slow connection
Nathalie's new digital camera has many photos we'd like to show, but the connection's just too slow to upload them. Maybe soon.
Posted by Mark at 11:05 AM | TrackBack
December 26, 2005
Star Wars on DVD
Tim's watching Attack of the Clones for the third time since yesterday morning. He says it's his favorite, except for the latest one. He doesn't have that DVD yet.
Of the others, he's watched Phantom Menace once and the (almost) original film once. They seem to have edited it. I walked in at one point and saw Jabba the Hut, who I'm sure wasn't in the first one before. Mom says they fixed some parts to make them jibe with the new trilogy.
Tim's conversation has taken a decidedly Star Warsian turn over the last two days. I also noticed his lips moving in sync with the actors for some of the dialogs.
Posted by Mark at 06:00 PM | TrackBack
December 25, 2005
Two princesses
Here are the two princesses in their new dresses.
Emma and Diane are both wearing lipstick from Emma's new vanity case full of adult makeup. They're also wearing a bit of lip gloss on their eyelids. Emma's still working out which makeup goes on which parts of the face. Yet she was truly happy to get more makeup, especially since this set is not for little girls. It's the real thing.
You cannot see them here, but both princesses have high-heeled shoes as well that go click-click-click as they walk along the floor downstairs.