Yesterday afternoon the kids and I drove up to Chamrousse to see if we could watch any of the Snowboarding festival.  I was skiing up there on Thursday (side note: hard to beat skiing with a friend who has an extra ski pass) and we saw this massive snow park that they had set up.…

For those who have not yet heard..we do have some very exciting news…We are in fact expecting. Yes – that’s not some tricky code for something else…Susan is pregnant The little one is due mid-September (this would be a good time to NOT remind Susan about 35 degree days in July and Aug here) We…

For those who have not yet heard..we do have some very exciting news…We are in fact expecting. Yes – that’s not some tricky code for something else…Susan is pregnant The little one is due mid-September (this would be a good time to NOT remind Susan about 35 degree days in July and Aug here) We…

Let me just say this upfront…if you are a person who is inclined to get bitter at the good fortune of others, and you currently have over 1m of snow on your grass….maybe just move along. There is an incredible amount of daffodils that grow in our yard (OK -technically not “our” yard – and no,…

So today  we have done the last step – en principle  -to get our carte de sejour. That’s right – we may actually get a visa.  We are one step closer to not being illegal immigrants! What a thought.  The last step was just to pay for them.  For some reason the kids have 1-year renewable visas that…

Sometimes – scratch that….. often, things happen here that I just don’t get.  That’s just what happens when you live in a culture other than the one in which you were raised. I get that. However – it seems with our kids in school – this happens a lot. Perhaps it’s because they still don’t…

On our last full day in Rome we ventured out to find the remaining quintesentially Roman things to see.  Basically – all those things that you see in every guide book, that we hadn’t seen yet and would feel like we lacked something if we missed. We got on this really cool mini-electric bus to…

On Wednesday we decided to set our sights for the Vatican. (which technically was the third country we were in since leaving home on Monday) We decided to take the Metro to the Vatican as it was pretty much clear across the other side of the old city, and rainy.  That plus the fact that…

20 min drive from our house to parking at the side of run so we can just put on our skis at the car and go + Not a cloud in the sky, around 0 all day long + Bumping into the kids friends from school on the hill + spending the day with my…

This was our first full day in Rome. It was cool and rainy – but that was the forecast for the length of our stay – so we thought since it wasn’t really raining – it may be as good a time as any to go do some outdoor things: the Colosseum and the Forum.…

Rome. The Eternal City. Cradle of the great Roman Empire – and the Republic before it. We had never been to Rome before – so we (all 5 of us) we’re pretty excited for our trip during the first week of the kids 2-week vacation. It seemed like perhaps our trip was off to a…