assorted recent turn-of-the-new-year stuff...

OK, so there hasn't been any specific events of late that I felt warranting of a particular post - so here are just some pictures of the things of daily life around here the past month or so:

Dec 26 - sledding with our friends the Royers who were down from Versailles for Noël.  We drove just up from their place to the most picturesque sledding hill I've ever seen

In the picture below the view is over the valley - towards our place.

nothing particular here - late Dec our neighbours left their yard light on - this is what it looked like.

Dec 31 - One last chance to play in the snow

This is Alma.  She is cute. This is almost a month ago - see below for how much she has changed.

The novelty of having a younger sibling has not worn off at all for our older three. They still have to take turns to hold her, and play with her - we even still have offers to change diapers!

The other day when I got off the bus it was close to 8:00.  At first I remember thinking - what a crummy way to end a long day - hiking up our hill in the cold, pitch black (it was a new moon- and the closest street/yard light is about 1km from our place)  As I started walking I looked up - the stars were absolutely amazing.  The sky is so incredibly clear here - that it sometimes feels as though you are inside looking at projections of the stars.  I got home just as the kids were going to bed - got to talk and pray with each one of them - then have supper just with my beautiful wife - who had made an amazing supper.  The extra amazing part of this (beyond the fact that it was baked St Marcellin cheese & roasted garlic, wrapped in filo pastry with cranberry chutney on it, with roasted sweet-potatoes and a salad) was the fact that 1) it was not just completely made from scratch (which everything she cooks is) but also that it was something that she just made up 2) she had made the same thing for our kids earlier!

Even though Jonah's birthday was Dec 28 - he waited until friends were back from holidays -and had his party this past week.  Our tradition is that you get to pick supper on your birthday - so crêpes it was.  Crêpes with cheese, ham & veggies for supper - crêpes with Nutella, bananes and whipped cream.  10 year old boys serving themselves whipped cream....it ended up as you can imagine it would

This one was just the other day

Alma was laying on the floor here  - and doing what she does best - smiling and making cute little cooing noises - then she thought she'd give rolling over another shot.

But she got kind of tired - and decided to just lay there and suck on her finger instead.

We celebrated Epiphany in the traditional French manner - eating a cake that is super good, containing a prize and a paper crown.  If you want more info I wrote about it last year here.  Suffice it to say that Matéa decided who would be crowned royalty in our house.  Kind of like when Charles Martel, Grandfather of Charlemagne, fought off the Arabs when the last of the Merovingian Kings - les Rois Faineants- wouldn't do anything - then arbitrarily decided that his son Pepin le Bref would be the first of the Carolingian kings even though he himself was only the maire de la palais....if you know what I mean  (I may have been helping Jonah study for his history test yesterday)