Well, perhaps not an epiphany but we have celebrated the traditional festival of Epiphany (as in the Christian festival that is meant to recall Jesus Epiphany – becoming known/ manifested to the non-Jewish world through the three Magi – the “King’s” who came from ‘the East’  outside of Israel) – where the French (based on their Roman Catholic past) celebrate with a…

Just wanted to let you all know that I am still doing fine, am feeling just bruised and sore – as if i had a bad fall on my bike or something.  The day it happend  our neighbour told Susan that  she had seen almost this exact same thing when she was first practicing as…

Yesterday morning at about 6:30 I woke up with pretty bad pain in my chest; left-hand side.  It was so bad that I basically lunged forward to sit up, as almost a reflex -and it got worse. It was then I realized that my chest was so tight and there was so much pain that I really…

For Jonah’s birthday I took him skiing – for his first time. It’s something that he’s wanted to do for years – but I could never justify back home. Either skiing on such a small local hill, or making the trek to the mountains just to learn.  Here we drove a little further up the mountain that…

Christmas was quite different for us this year. Instead of gathering like we normally do with dozens of family and friends on the 24th, 25th, and often the 26th (which usually spills over into the 27, then Jonah’s birthday on the 28, which is followed by 2 days off, then New years eve…) – we…

I’m not sure what’s a bigger Christmas miracle: the fact that we woke up the morning of Dec 24th to a beautiful snowfall (started in the night – forecasting up to 30cm at higher elevations) or the fact that the snow tires that I started trying to get over a month ago  – arrived the…

Today is the first ‘school day’ that the kids aren’t going to school – so it feels like the first real day of les vacances de Noël. We got snow again last week – so the kids had a snow-covered school yard complete with snowmen and forts for the last week of school.  The nice thing…

Last week we got ourselves a tree.   Since we live up in the French alpes – surrounded by forests on virtually every side – we got our tree in the manner that you would expect – we drove to IKEA and bought it.   (seriously – they were €20  – and if you  bring it back to…

As of Monday – our snow started leaving us…fast. It’s been 10 – 16 above for the last few days – and with the rain, it almost seems as if it left as fast as it came The only snow that’s left is along the road where there just a few days ago was waist…

Last Saturday was our first taste of Alpine winter. The kids spent all morning sledding down the hill in our yard. There was tonnes of snow  and it was beautiful and warm out.  Saturday was also the Marché de Noel in our village. We walked down the hill (as we had to abandon our car…

Last Saturday was our first taste of Alpine winter. The kids spent all morning sledding down the hill in our yard. There was tonnes of snow and it was beautiful and warm out. Saturday was also the Marché de Noel in our village. We walked down the hill (as we had to abandon our car…

Overnight last thursday we got our first snow. 10cm (about 2.5 acres for you Americans) when we woke up.  It wasn’t that cold (at least for us) so the kids were out a LOT. When Nathan got here we were almost snowed in.  We went for a walk up towards ‘Le Pony Club’ and watched some…

Question #1: Le Beaujolais Nouveau is: A) the third Thursday of November B) really mediocre red wine C) a trick the French play on the rest of the world D) a party at the kid’s school Wong – the answer is…all of the above, let me explain. A) The third Thursday in November has been…

We continued on, along the winding road that shadowed the river at the bottom of the gorge until we got to the grounds of the museum and had our pic-nic. It should be noted that a French grocery store is a great palce to get everything that you need to get a real pic-nic going.…