E, M, J & A au K'nada

Pictures of day to day life in Ottawa, after we got back from our vacation.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

How time flies! Here is Ms M, ready for her second year of school (Kindergarden). No need to say that this time, she was quite in her element

First day at school

Link to last year’s post and picture

We’ve uploaded in our gallery a selection of almost 200 pictures from our July and August 2008 vacation in France. There is a section for Alex’s family part and one for Juliette’s family part. Most of the pictures were taken with our brand new (and wonderful) digital SLR Canon 40D camera. Only a few modifications were made to the RAW pictures in a « digital darkroom ».

Feel free to leave a comment.

Xirocourt

Châlons

finally!

It’s been a week we’re home from France (also our home, in a way). We had a wonderful time over there and here is a quick summary before the pictures come (still working on them) to illustrate these amazing family and friends (and food, and wine) vacations.

• Alex and Ms M left me a week early and went directly to Alex’s parents in Lorraine. There was also Alex’s brother and sister, BIL and nephews. The weather wasn’t nice but they still managed to do a nice walk and picnic in the Vosges mountains and go visit Alex’s grand parents.
• I arrived a week later and joined them. I had missed them a lot particulary because some sad things that happened so I was glad to be with them again. We had some relaxing times just doing nothing, watching the cousins play together and walking in the country side.
• 4 days later my parents came to pick us 3 and we drove to Bruxelles to my little sister’s place. We stayed there 2 days to visit this nice city and we were lucky to spend also some time with Laurence, Gilles and one of their kids.
• Some few hundred kilometers later we settled at my parents’place in Champagne. But not long since 2 days later we were on the road again, this time driving south west to the amazing region of Dordogne for the Baptism of my Godson François, a beautiful 1 yer old boy adopted from Vietnam. We were so happy to see the family finally complete for this beautiful event. We also saw more castles and ate more Foie Gras and Magrets in those 2 days than anybody could imagine. We definitely need to go back one day for some vacations-explorations.
• We left and did a stop in Poitiers for a night to spend some quality time with my grand-mother and finally headed back to Châlons for a week with my parents and nephews. We went to the park, to the movie, at the swimming pool, on a boat ride… On the weekend my sisters and their husbands joined us and we had a fun time at the bowling all together and guess what? eating and drinking more.
• On Sunday night we went to our last stop at my older sister’s house and on Monday morning she drove us back to the airport where we met with my parents and Flotty and her kids for a nice chat and coffee before finally boarding.

The trip back wasn’t perfect with a crappy old plane, separated seats for the 3 of us and Ms M and my passports taken in Montréal by the Immigration staff as they appear to be stolen (??????). The cat nicely decided to pee on most of the carpets to show his disapproval of us leaving him behind, Alex had to leave the next morning for 3 days for work, Ms M woke up very early and playing in her bedroom almost burned down the house, the shelve above Alex’s desk felt down for no reason on the Mac, the house was a mess full of cats hair and the backyard a jungle and of course I had tons of emails in my mailbox for work…

After a crazy week and weekend trying to get back to Canadian time and some much needed cleaning and lawn mowing and grocery shopping and bill paying we are ALMOST back to normal.

Ms Mgoes back to school on Friday and until then is back to the daycare. Alex is not supposed to move this week and I have 3 days to catch up more stuffs at work before a new rush. If the wake up call to reality was tough I would still not change anything as we had just a perfect time with our families in a country we love so much!

Thank you all of you for your time and love, it means a lot to us and we will cherish those memories until next times, especially at Christmas time and other holidays when we miss you so much. Ms M had a wonderful time with her great grandparents, grand parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends. It is so precious to us and it will be to her!

Kenavo,