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!"

Peugeot 307 SW sport

Denis and I finally found a nice family car within our budget. His knees do not fit under the steering wheel, but otherwise he has enough room. Knowing that it will probably be mostly me driving the kids around and he will take his bike or a bus to work ,we are going with it. We are partial to Volkswagens, but believe it or not it was hard to find a Passat wagon here, with Germany just over the border. I think our VW's in San Diego were made in Mexico anyway. http://www.automattei.com/imgauto/peugeot307sw_1%5B1%5D.jpg

This should show a picture of what it looks like. We get to go pick it up on Friday afternoon- so it will be a nice 31st birthday present for me!

It's still been rough settling in, but we are very eager to go out on our own and find a house. Etienne asks for bagels and for Doyle Park every day. He has acquired a taste for "petits pains" with nutella in the morning, but you just have to watch that he doesn't eat the whole jar of nutella. He also enjoys car rides around Alsace because we frequently see tractors, cows, horses, and even mountains.

Banking in the small villages around here (Masevaux to be specific) is quite frustrating. They will charge us 60 Euro cents each time we look at our account details on line! We are hoping when we get closer to CERN that the bank there will negotiate an "internet" package. I am so used to doing all of our banking online. On top of that, the Credit Agricole bank here does not necessarily transfer our money to the branch of the one near CERN. And, we have to pay for a debit card! Hmmm. We filled up Denis's parents' car that we've been using yesterday for 57 Euros- that's Diesel- but that translates to about 85 dollars a tank! I guess that double stroller is going to get used more than we thought.

More on the car to follow....

Arrived!

After 12 hours of flying, 3 hours of driving, 5 hours of a hellish stopover in London- this is due it's own post as soon as I can bear writing about it-, and very little sleep, we arrived at the Basel/Mulhouse airport around 5:30 pm Friday October 2nd. We were happy to see Denis's parents waiting for us with their car and their truck to hall all of our suitcases. The first two nights were really rough, but last night Etienne slept from 10-6, something close to a real night's sleep, and Xavier from 10-12 and again from 2-6. We made it to Denis's Tata's 70th birthday party yesterday in Rouffach at a quaint little restaurant. The lunch lasted about 5 hours and there were about 5 courses (aperitif, first course of fish and cold meats, second warm course beef stew w/ carrots and mashed potatoes (the creamiest ones I've ever tasted), spetzle (sp?), cheese course, and then many desserts- yummy- wait I didn't mention all of the wine- dry white, red, sweet white mmmm). Of the 5 hours, I think Denis and I sat for about 1/2 each because we were chasing the boys. But, the young cousins also helped to look after them. Etienne was playing hide and seek with Zoe, Elsa, Jeanne, Theo, and Amelia. He didn't eat anything except for many desserts when the time came. Xavier finally did take a nap in the stroller at the restaurant.

I haven't slept, but jet lag is now not as bad as it used to be before kids, believe it or not. Now I'm so used to getting no sleep that it just seems like a normal day that you have to suck it up, drink some coffee and breathe. I was disappointed to recently find out that there are no direct flights from Chicago to Geneva. I thought we were going to be able to fly home directly. We will have to go through Zurich, but that is not too bad. There are however many direct interEurope flights to Geneva.

Now it is time to get down to business: buying a car, getting our blackberries up and running, finding a house, a school for Etienne. We'll be in Alsace until around Oct.18th. We're going to visit my French host family from Angers who now lives near Montlucon in the center of France. We'll stay the night of the 20th with Beatrice and Jean-Paul and then head to Grenbole before we settle into our gite in Prevessin-Moens (http://www.gite-les-demoiselles.fr/index_en.html) We will be in the gite from Oct.22-Nov.7. Hopefully this may give us enough time to find a place to rent.

I was happy to see that there are "pumpkin days" coming up in the village of Masevaux nearby. We can take the boys and at least dress Xavier up in his hand-me-down pumpkin costume. They reassure me that there are now many Halloweeny things here, but I know it won't be the same. Etienne and I are reading Charlie Brown's The Great Pumpkin story that his best friend Jake gave him and he told me he wants to go trick-or-treating. Maybe around CERN we can do that?