So this is the shirt I got from my kids last father’s day. Impressive, no?   I thought so. It’s me being declared “Papa de l’année” by someone with as much authority as Darth Vader.  It is a feared and respected Jedi Knight telling people that I – am the Father of the Year. On…

It’s true that living far from family is often most noticeable around those times of the year that tend to be most full of family.  Holidays are the most obvious, and Christmas – at least for us – is the most extreme. When we lived in Edmonton, we lived close enough to both our families…

In October, Heather and baby Desmond travelled to France to spend 2 weeks with us.  We had never met Desmond before, and they had never met Alma….so this was a very special trip.       Almost every afternoon, George worked from home and watched over our two sleeping babies, and Heather and I took…

So it’s almost the end of the kid’s Toussaint holiday here, and today was Halloween. And for the first time since we lived here – we actually did something for it. The French  – like most Europeans  – don’t really have Halloween. It is growing here by just a bit every year – Susan said…

  The Tour de France 2013 wound its way pretty close to us again this year (well…not a few hundred meters from our house like it did a few years ago) James and Nicole arrived just a day prior to the stage which came closest to our place. Lucky for them, we don’t believe in jet-lag… The stage we went to see…

Back in July we went to our friendly, neighbourhood chateau for a festival celebrating the French Revolution.   There were lots of activities, games, people dressed up in character, plays, music etc….and of course  — a giant guillotine.     This was just a few days after Nicole and James had arrived, so it was…

Last month was Alma’s second birthday. She was kind enough to be born on le neuf / neuf  – Sept ninth – to make it easier to remember. (Yes, I suppose “9/11” would also have been something that you recall without too much difficulty…but I’m happy with nine-nine) I know it’s so cliché -and I…

Yesterday was the kids first day back at school. Of course, today is Wednesday – so they’re off again… so they’re sort of easing back into it. This is now our kids 4th year of school in France. (If you want proof you can look at les rentrées:  2010, 2011 & 2012 ) That means Jonah is starting his 4th…

  አዲስ አበባ I know its overly cliché to say so about a city in a developing nation – but Addis Ababa really is a city of contrasts.   I don’t intend to give the perception that I really understand the city – having only spent a few weeks there – but it definitely is…

When Susan’s parents were here in June we took a drive up to Annecy for a day. Annecy is a picturesque little city on the shores of Lac Annecy, with mountains rising up all around it, not far from the Swiss border.  It has canals, plane-tree lined streets, a huge green parc right next to…

  The last Sunday in June I was part of a relay team that ran an Ultra Trail race called the Grand Duc. Well, actually we had two teams of 5 between our little english-language church and a French church that we partner with.  Having two teams made the run even better, as we could then have…

On my way home from Ethiopia I had a 24hr layover in Cairo.  Considering the recent spats of unrest that Egypt has had, tourism is WAY down. However, this means that places are not crowded, and there are many well qualified guides who normally are running group tours, that are available to hire for the…

I realise there hasn’t been much in the way of updates here for a while, so I thought I better get some pictures of Alma up. Not (just) because she’s arguably the cutest – but because she’s still changing so much. So without further ado….  

This is just a series of unedited, unfiltered pictures that I took with my phone as I went for an early morning run outside of Yirgacheffe in southern Ethiopia. Of course it goes without saying that the pictures in no way do justice to the reality of that jungle-like environment.  It had rained pretty hard the previous…

On the way back into the city Z wanted to stop and buy some onions for her mom- as her sister’s wedding was coming up and many traditional Ethiopian dishes rely heavily on them. They were cheaper and better in the area we were driving through than back in Addis – so we pulled over…

    I landed at Bole airport in Addis Ababa around 3:30 am. But by the time I realized that – in fact -my bags had not made the connection in Cairo (which I had suspected – and specifically asked the EgyptAir agent “but my bags were only tagged to Cairo – how will they…

Since all we had to do our last day in Jerusalem, was wake up, get the bus to the airport and leave on a 1.30pm flight, you’d think that there wouldn’t be much to say. well – you’d be wrong. I got up early to go for a run. I was running along some of…

Last year after I crashed my mountain bike down the side of a mountain while out in the middle of nowhere by myself and hurt my shoulder pretty bad – I took up running to keep me from getting too sedentary. I decided that I needed some goal to aim at – or I knew…

Our last full day in Jerusalem didn’t start out so great – well at least for some of us.  Micah (who had previously been sick the day we went to the Dead Sea) was eating his breakfast at the table when he suddenly vomited between bites of corn flakes. So we decided that perhaps he…

The next morning we returned the rental cars and spent the day back in Jerusalem, which meant it started off like every other day we had in the city….walking from our place over to the old city. We walked through the old city, out the Damascus gate, and over to what is known as The Garden Tomb.…

The next day we got up and started heading north.   Our destination was the Sea of Galilee – and once we got there our first stop was the Galilee Boat This is a 1st century boat that was found after the sea receded quite a bit during a drought in the 80’s. Some amateur archeologist/fishermen brothers found…

Our fourth day we picked up two rental cars so that we could see some of the sights farther outside of Jerusalem.                     We headed from Jerusalem east on the road to Jericho, which takes you pretty quickly out of the city and through hilly dry…

  In the morning we went to Christ Church in the Old City, apparently the oldest protestant church in the middle east.     We headed out to Bethlehem after that.  That meant walking through the old city over to the bus station by the Damascus Gate.   The Arab busses run out to Bethlehem – as…

Saturday was our first full day in Jerusalem     Since it is the Shabbat, most things are closed – but there was a museum that was opened – and has free entry for kids on Saturday.  Since we had 8 kids, this seemed like a good opportunity for us.   Since there are no…

After a 3:10 wake-up to meet at the IKEA parking lot at 3:45 to get to Geneva airport by 5.00 for a 7.00 flight we were on our way.  It’s only a 4-hour flight to Tel Aviv, which seems long at the time when you have a wiggly 18month old who doesn’t sleep – but…