Planting lettuce

I don't know what got into me but I decided it was high time we tried to grow something on our little deck.  Knowing we have at least 3 more months here it seems like that should be enough time to grow something.  So I bought 6 tiny lettuce starts at the market and here we are planting them.  I hope they grow!

Spring Has Sprung (or has it?) Part #2

The last round of pictures from our beautiful picnic day at the park after church. It is so refreshing to have some almost-warm days with SUN! Love it! Hopefully we'll have another day like this soon for picture taking for our next newsletter!

This boy is always on the move! 

Who is that pretty girl in the tree!

Spontaneous family pic...not tooo bad!

The lovebirds:)

Rachael and her mini-me in many ways

Looking forward to many more days of spring outdoors!

Spring has sprung (or has it?) Park pics #1

Carnaval!

We had a fun and busy end to the girls' school vacation. Now that we feel "settled" here to some degree, we are trying to take advantage of the time we have left. We know there won't be a lot of opportunity for settledness or a Western type life for us for awhile so when opportunities arise we are trying to make the most of it. So this weekend we went to a Carnaval, which is a specific type of french parade/festival. The kids dress up and the parade is all-out! We really enjoyed it. The under the sea theme was super cool.

Watching attentively with a chunk of sugary goodness in our mouth:

Not sure about the crazy costumes!

So many beautiful balloons!  Marianna was upset though and wanted to be assured that at least they were up in heaven (we didn't assure her of that but tried other distractions:)

The kids, Rachael and Sarah, our friend and fellow french student

At the elephants with friends (with cooler costumes than ours:)

Pretty girl

More balloons

Fancy tricks high in the air on a pole!

Some of the costumes were a little more scary than what we're used to in the US

One of the few marching bands

Another elephant pic (with the cute friends!)

Dance club dressed as babies in pjs

Tractor pic for Louis

The coolest bird ever, it was one of those you had to be there things to believe it.  It "flew" with some super intense music in the background.  Kinda gave you goosebumps

The birds on stilts walked with the flying bird thing.  They were super cool too.

Handsome boy taking it all in

Mama and Liv...yes I stole her mask.  She didn't want it:)  Grandma Kathy sent these to us from good ole WA state:)

Batman of course

Amazing Red creatures

Superman!

Octopus lady.   So breathtaking also with the music and all that.

We had an awesome time complete with no major meltdowns.  Yeah!