Marisa's France Trip

This Picture I took in the hall of mirrors at Versailles.

Here we viseted a graveyard, even it was pretty!!!

My french family took me shopping in paris, I didnt have much time for pictured, but this i took when we walked by the Eiffel Tower.

In the Graveyard

This was in the Notre Dame of Ameins. It is three times as big as the one in Paris.

This is a gorgeous clock tower in the shopping area of town in Ameins.

This is a window in Notre Dame.

This is Notre dame also, this creepy skull sits high above a grave and in all of my pictures but one it had red eyes from the flash. Very creepy!

Notre Dame.

Notre Dame.

Notre Dame.

Le boulangerie, or bakery.

The bakery counter.

This was at the trench Warefare museum that we visited, we got to walk down and into the trenches of the battle of the Sommes. at the end, one of the stur=dents bought a gas mask used back then. This is John putting it on.

Me in the French Aerican room. I am bored, listening ro my ipod, taking really bad pictures of me.

Trench warefare museum down in one of the tunnels.

Me in the french computer lab, the keyboards are really different! I'm not really like that, that's my "normal" face.

Pidgeons are everywhere! this was the train station down by one of the flower shoppes.

The arrival gate at the airport right when we got there. I was so nervous and excited!

these are all of the french exchange students in our little room. Away from the sea of french.

This is a movie of my French family. I was allowed to take a video of them on condition that I had to eat cake.
It was very good. I took this my last night, they all speak their best English, and some french, take note of the cool accents! They were very nice, all of them. This video introduces them all but Nora is quite camera shy.
They are so great!

Sprink Break

This week was Spring Break and what a week it's been!
Monday we went to a funny movie, Tuesday we went to the zoo and enjoyed a presentation of the elephants (they did tricks and things)And the kids got to ride camels!Wednesday we had hearing and eye tests.Eric got contacts!
Thursday was "Absolutely Incredible Kid" day, wherein we wrote a letter telling our kids why they're incredible and they got free stuff all through town, like doughnuts, frozen custard (which we are waiting for in this photo)And half off at the laser tag place, which was very cool. eric ranked one higher than me, which he loved to lord over me!I had a birthday! Faith made me a beautiful cake.Damian bought me a piano! It was a crazy miracle story as to how we got it. We weren't even really looking, but it was beyond a good deal and we actually had the money for it, so we're now a 2 piano family! It makes for rollicking good duets, and a lot of chaotic noise! The old piano will be moved at a later time.

We also got Marisa back from France as of yesterday!

She brought us cool, yummy, amazing chocolates! These are her favorites--"cherry chocolates", she had a great time, and had a bit of an accent coming home. Now we get to look forward to her French "sister" coming at the end of April.
Au revior!

Out with the old. . .

Hello again after more than a month!

In February we moved to a new house! It's a good move for us (number15!) because the kids are in the same school (which we are now closer to) and the bishop let us stay in the ward, so there was no emotional upheaval, just upheaval of all of our stuff.

This was the pond at our old home that we may miss a little (the grass and tree is how it looks here in winter--snow is the exception. Kind of ugly, but a bit more warm)Here is Eric and Marisa managing a bed up the stairs in our new (and larger) home. I'll have to send more pictures of the house at a later date.Faith lost her first tooth!Marisa is in France right now on an exchange trip. She's staying with a host family with a daughter her age there, then at the end of April we'll have the daughter of the family come and live with us for a couple of weeks. So far she's having the time of her life. In her last email she asked if she really had to come home! These are the 11 kids from Holland Hall that went on the trip (two of our teacher went too).Me and Marisa at the airport (yes she IS taller than me when she stands up staight!)Goodbye to Faith.Jared built a very cool space shuttle pinewood derby car for which he won the covetted "most creative" trophy.Damian had a birthday (cake 100% made and decorated by Faith! She loves to bake and is actually really good at it.)We were going to buy some new couches for our new home, when a kindhearted woman offered us some that she wasn't using--She's the type that you don't really say no to, and so here are our new couches. Not what I'd envisioned!Iwas able to find these great stretchy slip covers for under 100 dollars for both the loveseat and the sofa! Pretty good deal for new couches! I like how they turned out. What do you think?

Polar Regions

In January we studied the Polar Regions, even though it didn't feel very cold in Oklahoma. We had to make our own snow because there was none here. We learned about Penguins and went to the zoo to see them fed.

There are penguin statues all over the city of Tulsa, all decorated differently. It was an event to raise money for the penguin exhibit at the zoo.

Then a couple of weeks later we had an ice storm that had the schools shut down for three days! Ice covered the trees, and every individual blade of grass! It looked really "other-worldly" to me. When the sun shone, the trees looked like they were made of glass. Some snow came, though it was really hard to play in. Eric was able to work out a couple of snowmen out of this dry snow.

Faith made this one "super"

It's warm again now, and it's hard to believe that we ever had winter!