Hooray for Nina!!!

Denis and I agree that the past 3 or 4 weeks have been some of the most challenging of our lives. We have asked each other several times if we made the right choice to leave San Diego. We finally are in a "gite"/ guest house in Prevessin-Moens near his work at CERN. It helps a lot to be just on our own- us 4. For the first time since we arrived in France the boys are in bed at a decent hour. The house is a little humid, but it is very lovely. The kitchen is fully equipped. I even made tacos tonight! I bathed Xavier in the kitchen sink also tonight because there is only a stand-up shower here. Etienne likes the shower now, so that's good.

We found a park down the road to play in this afternoon, but it started raining pretty hard and kids started to flee for home with their parents. Etienne started crying because well, frankly he has never had to leave a park due to rain. He was so sad to see the kids start to leave. We had to drag him to the car kicking and screaming. He is a San Diego boy through and through. He really misses his friends and contact with other kids. We are starting to look for a house, but our things won't arrive until the end of November. And without us living in a house we can't actually sign him up for the correct school. I did find out today that I can leave him at the daycare in the mall for up to 2 hours. 2 hours costs 3 Euros ($4.50). It's opened on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Little kids here have Wednesdays off of school and many then go to school Saturday morning. Denis tells me that the good cartoons were always on Wed. morning. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I think I will try to drop him off and see how it goes????

And lastly, the subject of my post "Hooray for Nina." Upon returning to our "gite" this afternoon, the owner of the house gave us a package that came for us. It was a huge Halloween package from my mom and dad (the boys call mom Nina). It had pumpkin and maple leaf garland for decorating, Halloween plates and napkins, marsmallows, Reeses peanut butter pumpkins, skittles, 3 boxes of goldfish crackers, pumpkin flashlights, cool Halloween cards. Etienne was so happy to get a present and Xavier just said "wow". I said "Hooray for Nina" and Etienne replied, "Hooray for marshmallows!"