Still kickin'

Mom pointed out last night that it's been a whiiiiiiiile since we updated the blog. It's not that we don't miss you! In fact, it's quite the opposite, as we've been feeling the distance a lot lately. It was somewhat assuaged by having four sets of friends visit between March 13 and April 5. Add it up - 21 nights out of 23, or 59 person-nights of visitors over the course of just over 3 weeks. We really enjoyed seeing Cath, Jessie, Dave & Tyson & Cora, and Julie & Tom & Mathew & Emily Magee (that's the Magee kids with our boys at Parc de Sceaux near Paris, right). The boys definitely enjoyed having live-in playmates, too! I ducked out to Brussels for 3 nights to see Gary while Cath was here, then the boys and I took off to Normandy (see Calvin in a bomb crater, right) for a couple days with the Magees. Meanwhile poor Betsy got to work hard all day then stay up late being social. Wow! Now I realize why we're all still exhausted and the apartment's such a mess. Oh, and Betsy and I took a day off and went to the big wine salon in the morning, then toured city hall in the afternoon. Oh, and we took a steam train to Provins (a medieval hill town) for Easter with friends. And had Calvin's birthday party. And I might be forgetting something ... I'll go through the pictures and let you see some of it for yourselves.

So we've been mostly recovering this week, apart from our usual dull roar of activities - me with the boys and apartment, the boys with school and Betsy working hard to get ready for an all-week meeting next week in Nancy, 400 km east of Paris. After that week, the boys have a two-week vacation, the last one of the school year (really!). We've just made plans to go to Istanbul for the first time, from the 24th through May 2. And we're working on our summer plans, which will have us in the US for basically the whole month of July.

In the meantime, off to try to whip this apartment into decent shape, otherwise known as avoiding the taxes!