Meanwhile, here's our great nanny Cathy holding Léna...
The cake table. Estelle is a year younger than all the rest of these kids. Which explains why she was teary eyed about not getting the first piece of chocolate cake!
Below: Marie, Mila & Carlo. The little pig-tailed girl and Spiderman are not kids we have met before but rather classmates of the other 3. Notice Estelle is just as tall as the other kids.
There were costumes for everyone to try on throughout the party. Below: Marie as a tiger enjoying an old slot-machine game that her late grandmother had brought back from a trip to Vegas. This thing was fascinating to the kids and REALLY ANNOYINGLY LOUD.
Everyone dances the techtonik. It had rained so at this point Estelle is wearing mudboots.
Back at the ranch, time to get busy with the Duplos.
And Léna, much to our delight, starts eating puréed vegetables. Eating = sleeping better = saving my sanity.
She loves the vegetables, but for the moment won't take any fruit compotes whatsoever. Hmmm....
Just a few days later, on Tuesday the 22nd, my beloved turned 32. What he thought was just an impromptu let's-go-out-for-a-burger was really a carefully orchestrated surprise by yours truly. About a dozen guys from the hockey team showed up. I managed to get a photo off my phone:
That's a VT Fish and Wildlife hat from my brother that I had jammed into my purse, along with tape, string, ballons and scissors so as to fashion an appropriate headdress once the surprise was out of the bag (or purse, as it were). I left around 9:00 to go home a relieve Oana, who is expecting herself a little girl in January.
Here's my cake that I was frantically frosting when Thomas arrived, so we just slapped the candles on before I finished and sang him Joyeuse Anniversaire just th same!
He had a fun night out with his buddies.Meanwhile, backtrack to a few shots from our weekend near Avignon with my old boss Michael from DC. You've seen the amazing mansion before both last yr and the year prior, so I'll just include some shots of other/new stuff:
The pool has these 2 slides with water that runs down them. Estelle thought it was VERY fun. Thomas and I catapulted down the larger slide - that was wicked fun, as we say in VT.
Snacks in the poolhouse, set quite a ways away from the mansion. Below, a star is born:
The other side of the poolhouse was like a nurser's paradise. Total privacy, beautiful billowing white all around, a view to the pool and the grounds, calming water running down the slides was like an automatic milk let-down reflex, and the maids bringing me fresh cold bottles of Evian. Don't worry I photoshopped this picture into a blur to eliminate anyone thinking they were seeing anything they shouldn't - even though you couldn't, but this way no one thinks they have to look away...ha ha!
One fun thing we did was dinner out in Carpentras nearby. The restaurant owner has gotten to know Michael over the past few years, and we were treated to a 6 course all-truffle menu. These are "summer truffles" so are lighter than the heavier truffles to come later in autumn. 6 courses with mushrooms, essentially. Can you imagine? Topped off with truffle honey apple tart. It was WILD. Thank you Michael! Here's a view of our group (the other couples are Michael's friends who were also at the mansion).
One morning we walked around the village of St. Didier and visited its many fountains.
There is a well-known nougat producer in this village and I couldn't get there - next year!
Our first night the staff served us dinner out on the back terrace.
New addition: the tree house (below you see just one part of it), which has 2 long zip lines along the back line of the property for the daredevils amongst us, will soon have a water-wheel clock complete with water piped up through bamboo. This photo below is Michael up in the tree house turned the wheel/clock and trying to figure out how it will all work. He's actually quite far away and I'm using the zoom....
Here we are with Allan Wynn and his wife Susan. Allan is Michael's lawyer in DC for the past several decades and one of his best friends. I spent many many hours on the phone with him whilst working for Michael.
And here's me with Michael and Richard Becker, Michael's best friend and lawyer. Richard lives in Louisiana but he made regular trips up to DC and I spent more time taking care of these 2 guys back in the day than I care to remember- ha ha. I haven't seen Richard in 9 years. What a delight! I adore him.
We are laughing in that photo because Léna had a VERY smelly diaper and so there were a lot of jokes while Thomas was fiddling with the camera.What a nice weekend, being taken care of all the time, but best of all to see old friends.
