This photo above is from this summer/4th of July, but that little girlie peeking out is Heather, and today is her 4th birthday over in Vermont - Happy Birthday to my goddaughter! It is also my nephew Jacob's 13th - officially a teenager today!
Yesterday morning, we took a stroll over to the Christmas Village, right when it opened at 10:30. Estelle was the first kid in to run around on the trampoline, her favorite. Meanwhile, Léna was in the Flintstone's car:
Here's Estelle running from one trampoline net to another. Normally there are 2 or 3 kids per net. Estelle had all 10 to herself!
Photo op on Santa's sleigh:
And here's "Santa's Reindeer Stable" (in English). Interesting, Dasher and Donner don't make the cut apparently. Only 6 reindeer! I loudly protested, singing the song for any passerby, noting with wild gestures that Dasher and Donner had no representation here!
Earlier in the morning (like 9:30) I had ridden my bike over to our old neighborhood to the bakery we used to live above, just to get some Buchettes de Noel. This is the 3rd time in a week I have gone, the other times there weren't any left because I went in the afternoon.
Above, clockwise: pink = buchette de fruit rouges (berries), then lemon (with coconut, I discovered upon tasting, blech), then praline with the deer, lastly, chocolate mousse. Below: close up of the deer, may be the closest some of my brothers get this deer season. :-)
And here we see Estelle, who will not eat an orange or a strawberry, eating a boiled quail's egg, with salt. She loves them, ate 3 in a row. Who can explain children's gastronomic tastes?
This morning we ate "oeufs à la coque", i.e. soft-boiled eggs. We have no less than 6 egg cups in our little apartment, a traditional gift at birth. For the first time ever, we used them. I just tried soft-boiled eggs for the first time in November courtesy of my friend Melanie and found I liked it very much.
Like I said, she won't eat a sweet juicy grape, but a soft-boiled drippy egg, no problem. Here she is:
Estelle demonstrates dipping her "mouilette" (thin stick of toasted bread with salted butter on it , literally means "a little wetter") into the liquid part of her oeuf à la coque:
I had two lessons at home this morning (yes, on the Sabbath!) with my favorite 2 brothers, Thomas and Quentin, home from the Naval Academy in Brest and Saint Malo and in need of some specific English assistance. While my Thomas was at the market with Léna, Estelle played quietly in her room during my lessons:
She was a good little girl - but she knows Thomas & Quentin well, sort of like her big cousins so she was not phased by them in the living room working with me. A close up of this little tea party. She told me they were eating soft-boiled eggs.
The rest of our day might involve some cookies. Who knows!
