Lona is always asking for a sister.  She has no one to share her room with. Most kids would be happy for their own room but the rest of the family has someone to share their room.  The boys bunk together and well of course so do John and I.  Lona is all alone.  She hears the boys talking before drifting off to sleep.  She hears them goofing off while cleaning their room and she has no one.  Last week she had a friend spend 4 days while her parents were out of town and so Lona finally had a "sister".  Only for a week.  It was a very enjoyable week if only she didn't have so much school work to do.  Unfortunately school happens even when having a temporary sister.

Why?  While I was away, John allowed Job to purchase a blow dart gun.  He bought metal tipped darts, (yes, really), bamboo tipped darts, and stun darts.  It will even shoot nerf darts and I guess they pack a punch.  It is a weapon and is treated just like all of our other weapons; the bow and arrows and the bb gun.  Right now, Job wants a pulley really bad.  He's trying to rig up a way to make a moving target. Maybe this is a lesson to me, not to go away to long. 

My time in France with my Grandparents was relaxing to say the least.  That slow pace of life and not being plugged in was a little slice of heaven.  I do like Facebook and my blog, classes on the internet, inspiration from pinterest, checking emails, but I have to say that not having all that for two weeks was wonderful.  It was hard to come back to all of that.  I ran or walked almost everyday.  My only schedule on time was making sure I was around to help with lunch or dinner.  In France, the streets or roads aren't straight.  They twist and turn and loop around.  Usually I'm fairly good about getting to places but there, I am at a loss.  Thankfully there are maps at almost every little neighborhood and soon I learned where everything was.  I started of running just to Le Coin, then I ran to Vovray, and lastly I tried repeated to run to the top of the Saleve.  I knew that this was an unattainable feat but just trying felt good, really good.  I didn't even make it half way.  I just made it to the aluminum stairs that go to who knows where.

This is a trail through the forest, you just have to watch out for falling rocks.



I would run from La Combe to Le Coin then on La Croisette to the Saleve



Le Little Refuge, very unique studio

You can't tell how steep this was, it was hard to show that in the photos

I made it to the cloud level

On the way back, I would run past corn fields and vegetable gardens, on a little path that I found

Presentation is the key.  We are a little bit lazy here in America when it comes to presentation.  Oh, we go over board on birthday parties but the everyday presentation we aren't so hot at.  Then there is the selection of meats and yogurts and deserts.  We have Greek and regular yogurt, we have ice cream and pudding, we have pork, chicken, and beef.  They have lamb, beef, pork, chicken, roster, and rabbit.  We have liver, they have pate.  Our pudding is for school lunches, theirs is for everyone after dinner as a dessert so it's in glass containers with beautiful swirled whip topping and shavings of chocolate.  We mostly buy prepackaged meats, their meats are laid out nicely with displays of carved fruit or on silver platters.  They hang their bananas, makes sense.  It takes up little room.  They don't need to refrigerate their milk until they open it.  Of course they don't drink as much milk there as we do here but they eat more cheese.  The presentation doesn't stop at the grocery stores or the butcher shop.  It is seen in the restaurants. Unless it's fast food here, presentation is important here too in restaurants.  My cousin showed me how to fold napkins in different shapes like they do in the restaurants.  Food presentation is important at home as well.  When my grandmother put out cold cuts for dinner she arranged it on a platter to look nice.  Here, well, we would have just stood infront of the refrigerator and eaten ham out of the package.  There, we all sit down together and make a meal of cold cuts, cheeses, breads, salad and then dessert of fruit and of course a cup of coffee to finish it off.   

Quite possibly my all time favorite food found only around Geneva.

Even the French fries have their own dish.

The top left cut of meat is a whole rabbit.