All Saint's Day

Thursday was November 1st and thus "Toussaint", the French All Saint's Day holiday. Halloween is of course linked to Toussaint (but not many people in America know about that). At any rate, here in France, everything is closed, and most of the country was happy to "faire le pont" (make the bridge) for the long weekend by taking Friday off too.
We have been happy to have Thomas' parents with us since Wednesday afternoon, here to visit and to take care of Estelle & send us away for an overnight with friends and a day-long spa treatment on Friday.
Friday morning, with lists left everywhere for my mother-in-law, and one last long hug for Estelle whom I have never been seperated from overnight, off we went at 9 am with our overnight bag packed.
Oh, but the cruel joker somewhere who wants to constantly deprive my husband and I of anything resembling a romantic getaway (reference the honeymoon that never hapenned due to chikunguyna in the Indian Ocean - most everyone in my life knows that tragic tale, or The 4-day trip to Corsic cancelled, etc) struck again. We never left our street that day until 6:30 pm that night. Car trouble, turned out to just be a dead battery, and, of course, the day after Toussaint on a "faire le pont" weekend, try finding a garage that is open. Finally Thomas got a battery and all was well, the the spa-day was a bust, but thankfully as it was already paid for we get a credit for another time.
And that night we still went and stayed at our "other" home here, chez Craig and Doug's villa. Where we drank champagne, I played piano on the baby grand by the fireplace for an hour, and we slept without keeping an eye on a monitor. Saturday morning I read a book for an hour over my tea, and Thomas and I spent the day together, alone, tooling around the shops. We felt like we had used a Get Out of Jail Free Card. And yet we were home by 5 pm, patiently waiting to see our daughter again, after being gone only 24 hours.
How will we ever go to Marakesh for a week? Heavens.
Moving on, today we had a play date with Elliott, our half-Dutch half-French friend who knows sign language like Estelle does.
Here are some photos from the park this morning with Elliott, followed by a video of Estelle learning to use a spoon tonight at dinner!