More pics of the kids, what else?

This is what happens when you mix a wooden table, breakfast, a cute kid, and photography classes.

Lucie loves to take photographs. It often stresses the subjects as she can barely hold the large camera. In this case, aunt Morgane and uncle Dyfan (hint 1: it's not pronounced how you'd think, hint 2: he's not French).

 They look a great deal more relaxed with the midget photographer IN the picture...

 Some things never change.

 Malo loves the FisherPrice airplane, and has an uncanny ability to sit quietly and play by himself.

 Michele brought back popsicle molds from the US. It was a hit every time.

More Bretagne

Dadouh complains that she doesn't get a lot of pictures on the blog, so here are some. 

Sailing the seven seas in a kayak with Lucie

 Manhandling Malo

 Grandmother hugs are great, why are you making that face, little man?

 "That's a fascinating thing you said, young man."

The other thing that Malo's learned to do really well is point to show things. He spent a great deal of time pointing at birds (aaaak aaaak) and at planes (brrrrrrr).

Lucie hadn't seen our cousin Thibault in a couple of years, and she's always had a thing for him since she was little.

Needless to say, it was a party.

 

Lucie also helped to prepare the sail for the catamaran

Summer in Bretagne

As usual, we spent our summer vacation in Bretagne. The kids preceded the parents and stayed with their grand-parents for a week. It was a restful time for us, and Michele decided to increase the value of our apartment by repainting the kitchen - she swears she'll never do it again, because it took so much work with all of the nooks, crannies, and weird wall angles.

Anyway, after a week of this we went to meet our kids, who'd obviously been mistreated in our absence.

They kept a lookout to see when we'd be arriving.

We also drove Grand-mère Nathalie to Bretagne for a few days. She's got 14 grandkids and about 9 great-grandkids, which is to say that she loves children. Malo enjoyed some special time with her.

He learned how to signal 'I hear' by pointing to his ear. He also has a large vocabulary consisting of animal sounds ("woof" is prominent, "hmmm" means cow, lip-smacking is fish, and he makes a mean seagull impersonation: 'aaaak kaaak', which has recently evolved to 'cok cok' - go figure...)

When he's not trying to run off the beach, Malo's a very good kid who sits and plays quietly.

Once in a while (ok, pretty often), we have to give chase and carry/drag him back.

Meanwhile, Lucie's really into kayaking, and managed to get her uncle Olivier to take her out .

On this shot, you can see Pakkah and Dadouh sailing in the background. Lucie went on the boat twice and loved it, but her attention span means that it's just in/out for about 10 minutes. Still - there's high hope that she'll grow up to be a good little sailor.

 On another day, Lucie went with Dadouh.

Disney, Swim Lessons, and Other Things Done in FL

Lucie's grandparents took her to Disney World! And the best part is me her mother got to skip all the lines and stay at home!! While they were waiting at Disney, Malo and I tried to turn on and off the neighbors' televisions from the sidewalk. It was great fun.

Since we couldn't take photos of the neighbors' confused expressions, here is the castle at Disney. If you try to call this Mickey's house, you will get a HUGE lecture from Lucie about how it is Cinderella's castle and NOT Mickey's house. 

Lucie and her grandfather on the magic carpet ride. I hear the grandfather was scared but the four and half year old was not.

Lucie met all the Disney characters. She had her photo taken and signed her autograph book by each one. (Oh and yes she did go to Disney wearing a princess dress.)

(Note the matching hair and dresses.)

Ahhh! Cinderella!! Lucie's favorite.

Lucie bonding with Rapunzel over what a pain it is to comb your hair. 

And what would be a trip to Disney without seeing Mickey and Mini (who for those keeping track at home, Mickey and Mini do not live in the above castle).

While in Florida, Lucie took swim lessons at the local pool. The big deal was at the end of he lessons all the kids got to go down the slide. Lucie went down twice at the end her first lesson, but then declared it was too scary and was not going to go down again. She did it. No one was going to call her chicken, but there was no need to keep doing something she didn't like.

Here is Lucie swimming with a kick board.

Listening to her swim instructor.

Learning to swim on her back.

Later there was some bicycling.

Followed by some jumping on the bed with Sloppy on Grammy and PopPop's sailboat. 

Eating lunch.

And fishing.

We also went a number of times to the local zoo. Lucie and Malo fed the giraffes.

Malo did eventually get in the wading pool at the zoo and he was kind of happy about it. (I can remember when my parents used to take photos of me. Oh those where the days. Now I'm lucky if even half my head gets in the photo.)

Oh look here's a photo with my whole head! But I'm sure it's only because cutting me out would have also cropped out Malo. 

Yep. Here I'm chopped in half, but don't Malo and Lucie look cute!