Vermont, Part Deux

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Technical difficulties and a poor internet connection means that all these photos are not necessarily with their rightful caption. I'll fix it soon, but don't have the patience now!)
A lot can happen in a week.
For example, you brothers can bag a moose during moose season. Here's hubby and brother at the site.

After snow on Wednesday, Thursday was lovely. Here's "Baby Elijah", Estelle's youngest cousin, showing us how much he can cruise around.

Aunt Sandy and the gang

Friday we went to Burlington for the day to do some shopping. Estelle preferred to stay behind with her cousins. When we returned, Aunt Lisa, Aunt Mary and Grammie had arrived. Here's Lisa reading to the girls:

Saturday was the Painting Party and Wes & Darlene's old house. Grammie and I were on kid duty. We went for a little stroll:

Action shots of the painters - first Lisa:

Wayne cleaning windows

Martha

Scullery Maid Joan

Mary a.k.a. Drippy

All 6 sisters at the scene

Dinner back at the main house included a 6-month belated 50th birthday celebration for Laura

The kids want into the cake

Surprise visit from Peter and Jeanne and Lizzie (not pictured)

Finally we get Darlene in a photo

What the dinner mayhem looked like - boy did we eat well over this weekend! chili, spahetti, pulled pork, coleslaw, you name it

Estelle and Cole enjoy a moment

Sunday most of the sisters shipped out and 3 of the brother came in for a nice visit. In the span on 24 hours, all 11 of us were in the house. Here's Ed telling his moose story

It was so warm on Sunday that we could all eat on the porch - just 4 days after the snow!

Ed, Sandy and Elijah

Paul and Lesley with Chelsea and Lauren and the Gang

Enjoying the girls and their daddies on the swings

Going for a nice walk Sunday afternoon with Cedric, Susan and Lillian

Heather and Estelle get a ride in the stroller

Walking up to the old Perron farm where Mom was born

Lillian with the mountains

Monday we went down to Burlington to see Dad's other 2 sisters. Here's Rebecca:

Eleanor and Uncle Jake

A stop off at Burton Snowboard Factory

Visit to Martha's and to see cousin Alexandra and her bunny, Coco

Enjoying vintage Fisher Price with Aunt Martha

Alexandra does her homework with comments from MOI

Tuesday afternoon we carved up some amazing pumpkins from Peter & Jeanne's garden



Wednesday (yesterday) SNOW AGAIN! It snowed all day long

The girls enjoyed playing on Grampie's trackster in the shed

A gift box arrives from Darlene's parents in Maine, even a big Trick or Trick bag for Estelle!


Thomas and the kids have fun growing sea creatures in water

As you can see, we're busy. There are no photos of our lunch with my friend Becky, of Thomas donning skates and joining Wes in Stanstead on the ice, nor of Thomas speaking at Katie's French class at North Country High School, nor of lunch with Tyler in Newport. Oh well, I can be snapping photos every second! Or can I?

Home

A few photos from our trip so far.
The weekend in New Hampshire - visiting the New Boston town square's scarecrow display and farmer's market with Lisa and Dan and Grammie...

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Anna on the swing with Estelle

Grammie reading a book to Estelle

Pumpkins

Len and Eliane Rothman, my brother-in-law Dan's parents, joined us Saturday for lunch. What a treat! (so did my sister Laura and her husband, "New Paul", but somehow they escaped the camera!)

Cousin Emily comes from NYC and gets her hair done by Estelle

Joanie came from VT Saturday and spent the night. We drove up to Glover with her on Sunday. We stopped for a picnic lunch in Bradford, VT, and a beautiful rest area on the site of the farm on the man who invented the globe!


We arrived to a wonderful greeting at Wes' house (mom's old house) with his family and sister Martha and Chris, who came with a great meal, on the heels of all the amazing meals we had over the weekend courtesy of Lisa! (who also escaped photos!)
We all enjoyed the beautiful afternoon and walked in the lovely fallen leaves by the old stone wall

Joan and Heather

Estelle and her escorts

Later after dinner, Thomas relaxes with all the kids with a little cartoon

Heather and Estelle enjoy their bath together each night

Tuesday we went to visit my dad's sister Aunt Elaine and Uncle Bernard in West Glover. Estelle enjoyed playing with them


Today, Wednesday, we awoke to SNOW! Can you believe it? Happy birthday to Miranda Sullivan, aren't you glad you aren't in Vermont for your birthday? If you were, you'd be under snow!
We got right out there at 9 a.m. and had a blast! It was sticky snow too.



This of course meant hot chocolate upon returning inside.

Stayed tune for more fun here on the American side of the Atlantic!

USA or Bust

Off we go at the crack of dawn tomorrow, thru London to Boston and eventually VT.
The World Series, Fall Foliage (or what's left of it), the Election (!), Moose season, Halloween (a first for Thomas) and every other red white and blue pleasure under the sun await us. We are thrilled.
For viewer's amusement until the next post (could be a long time), here's a another singing video of Estelle's new favorite song, "une souris verte":



Here's what she is singing:
Une souris verte (A green mouse)
Qui courait dans l'herbe (Who was running in the grass)
Je l'attrape par la queue (I catch him by his tail)
Je la montre à ces messieurs (I show him to these men)
Ces messieurs me disent (These men tell me)
Trempez là dans l'huile ("Dip him in some oil")
Trempez là dans l'eau ("Dip him in some water"}
Ça fera un escargot ("It'll be a snail")
Tout chaud ("Nice and warm")

What's with creepiness with the nursery rhymes? How about Twinkle Twinkle, for heaven's sake?
Last night in the dark in her crib Estelle hollered this out at the top of her lungs 22 times on repeat. I have never sung this to her because I can't master the words and once I listened I thought it was a big "gag". Yet last night, little Miss Broadway was sometimes taking on different tones and voices for the men, which was alarming. On many levels. At the end of each round she would shout out "Bravo! Bravo!" and then clap ardently for herself before starting back up again. Can't imagine where she gets that from.

Fun Times

This weekend brought some casual moments at home.
Some we don't have photos of: making blueberry muffins, playdough adventures, tricycling to the park, Thomas making pear-filled crepes last night for Estelle. Others, we do:
Discovering that under the desk is a fun place to hide:

Trying own Halloween costumes and pretending to sting your parents:

Building a fort using most of the furniture and blankets we own:



Showing your doll-baby your new fort:

Making oatmeal butterscotch cookies with lots of old photos of Cousin Wayne hovering above:

Waiting patiently in favorite new desk-hideaway for cookies to be ready to eat

C is for Cookie

Bolstered by butterscotch sugar highs, off we went to Parc Vigier. In passing by the port, I noticed this one little fisherman boat with the massive cruise boat as a backdrop:

And who do we run into at the Parc (not our usual haunt park, either!) but Ines and her Dad. These girls were happy to see each other. They shared a springy-thingy and managed not to kill themselves.

First Estelle in front

Then they had to switch

Then they wanted to pick all the flowers

Then they walked/skipped/jumped/hollered their way back to our neighborhood together, much to the calamity of the parents hollering behind.

The Saulniers

This past Sunday we drove to Mandelieu, which is on the other side of Cannes from Nice, to visit the Saulniers. They are very very good friends of the Ouillade family in Angers and were in the area on vacation, so we went and met up with them. Note to my family in America: remember Virginie, the French gal who came to the VT wedding and Paul picked her up at the airport, she used to work for Agrimark and often went to Cabot, and her luggage never arrived so she had to wear one of my dresses to my wedding? These are her parents!
Roland and Claudine were in a lovely resort that had a FIRST RATE, little used and brand new playground. We were there 3 different times in our 4 hour stay!


Roland and Thomas visit next to the pirate boat on the playground.

The resort had an artificial lake/pond in the middle of it and you could walk the perimeter on these floating dock-like structures. This provided lots of straight-away running practice for Estelle.


Can you make out the fountain in the middle of the lake?


We had a nice visit and meal with them. Estelle enjoyed tearing the place apart. She was asleep in the car before we even got to the highway.
She also came away from the day with presents from her grandparents sent via the Saulniers. Some lovely new clothes and also a few books. Here are photos of Thomas and Estelle enjoying reading and singing together:

Notice Thomas' amazing tambourine technique...

Later on I found Estelle quiet as a churchmouse for 30 mins, sitting on our bed, looking at her books. The photo quality is poor, but you get the idea!

Nascar

...or a French version.
Here's a little video fun from our recent "other half" weekend:

I'll copy one of my sister-in-laws and simply say "please ignore the goofy parent commentary" (or, in this case, giggling).
There's something completely surreal about watching your 2-year-old operate a motor vehicle, steering and everything, not to mention backwards.

Tom Stoppard and Me are NOT dead

Tom WHO? you may be asking....

Did you see the film "Shakespeare in Love"? He wrote the screenplay. The riveting play "Invention of Love"? His. The historically groundbreaking 1966 "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"? Also his. I could go on...

Suffice to say that Mr. Tom Stoppard is one of, if not the, most famous contemporary playwright alive today (with the exception of my friend Roberto). At 71, he is still producing big critically-acclaimed shows.

I went to see the most recent show of his "Rock and Roll" on Friday night with my friend Philippe. This show has been on Broadway just this past year (after its premiere in London). It was the opening show for the new season at the Theatre National de Nice, where I have been a subscriber for 7 years now. Now, like any former theater major and avid theater-goer, I've seen a lot of Stoppard - but this was my first Stoppard in French! A big epic show, spanning 3 decades and focusing on the "Spring of Prague", or what was the crushing of an attempted revolution against communist oppression in Czechosolovaki in 1968.

The absurdism of "R & G are Dead" is the touchstone for much theatrical analysis - the two low-level characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet develop into their own right and inadvertently tell the tragic prince's tale from a different view. But this Rock and Roll play, written 40 years later by the same man, was historically interesting and still Stoppard. It is set against the backdrop of the development of rock and roll music, specifically Syd Barret from Pink Floyd, the Stones, and the Czech group Plastic People of the Universe who were instrumental in the overthrow movement and were imprisoned many times.

At the curtain call, the lead actress disappeared in the wings and hauled out Daniel Benoin, the artistic director of the theater and the show's director. He took a bow and then held up his hand for the applause to stop, which it did. He pointed to house left in the orchestra, just below my view, and announced "I would like to say that Mr. Tom Stoppard is with us this evening... Tom, if you'll stand."

I clutched Philippe and practically fell over the balcony railing. Could it be? Tom Stoppard in the living flesh, just below little old me? I could have spit on him (which, needless to say, I did not, nor did I want to - but he was that close).

Instant goose bumps, just to be in the same room with a playwright giant like that. What a mind, what a creative mind, all those stories and dialouges he has told! I was truly awestruck.

The curtain calls ended and Philippe and I slowly made out way out and down and thru the lobby and out of the theater. This theater is up on a huge raised plateau, facing the Modern Art Museum which I featured in my mother's day posting. There are fountains and sculptures encircling it. People mix and mingle outside. I looked to my left and there he was off to the side, Tom Stoppard with a female companion, having a smoke. Not a soul was approaching him. I said to Philippe "Stand back. I'm going over there." "What?! You're NOT!" gasped Philippe. I leaned into him and said, "Like Big Sam says in Gone With the Wind, 'Horse, make tracks'". Philippe rolled his eyes and said "Is there any situation where you DON'T find a quote to insert from that godforsaken film?" And with that, I marched right over and stuck out my hand, looked Tom Stoppard in the eye and said "May I?"

We shook hands and had a nice little chat for 7 or 8 minutes about the theater, the director, going to the theater in French, etc. The woman turns out was his agent. I said, "If you don't mind me asking, how is it that you are here this evening?" "They asked me to come" he said matter-of-factly. "Simple as that?" I said. "Simple as that", he replied.

And that is how I shook hands with a great creative mind. Of course I've replayed the conversation a million times, mostly what I should have ASKED him, what I would have liked to have asked him! But the moment was so unexpected, and I was in such shock, that in many ways the whole conversation is a blur - I was so nervous and also very conscious of wanting to seem composed and not-too-intrusive.

But wow! What a thrill!