Look Who's Two!

We had a quiet family party at home this past New Year's Eve for our sweet Emily Claire. It is so hard to believe she is already two. She is turning into quite a person. She loves her brother and sister and she has started talking much more in the last month or so. She loves to sing and to be sung to with favorites such as Jesus Loves the Little Children, Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Favorite Things. She has an obsession with shoes -all shoes - her shoes, my shoes and your shoes. Her favorite movies are Coraline (or Horaline as she likes to call it) and Harry Potter 2 (Hawee Potta) but she lovingly refers to it as "Dobby" most of the time while banging her hand on her head - or her head on the wall - as he is her favorite character. She is following in her sister's girly footsteps and enjoys playing with the Disney princess characters and pushing her stroller and shopping cart around the house. She likes Dora (Dola) and even shoots spiderwebs while pretending to be spider girl. We think she is quite well-rounded. :) Unlike both of our other children it appears she is a lefty... hmm... maybe an artist in the making?

We are so thankful for our sweet blessing, Emily Claire Page. :)

Thank you all for her presents and thinking of her on her special day! We miss and love you all!

Leeks and Potatoes, Who Knew?

Ok, I admit in, in Greenville I was a sub-par cook, at best. I didn't enjoy cooking and found it to be a chore. Meal planning, what was that? At 5pm every evening I was starting to think about dinner which was usually served around 6pm. Will it be chicken nuggets (frozen)? Spaghetti - with jarred sauce? And, I can hardly bring myself to type it, Hamburger Helper? Honestly, I didn't know there was any other way to have spaghetti than with Prego and what else do you do with hamburger besides spaghetti and/or a little help from Betty Crocker. I loved having people over for dinner - and, for those of you that did join us for the breaking of bread I apologize and hope the company was better than the calories you consumed - and even enjoyed cooking those meals but I didn't exactly find the "Joy of Cooking" in feeding our family. Granted, at the time we had a 3 year old and 2 year old and mealtimes involved lots of work and cajoling and bribery so.. that's my excuse and I am stickin' to it. Hmm... now that I think about it... maybe there was a reason they didn't gobble up their grub.

So, fast forward to France. We arrive and find the need to go to the grocery store and you might as well had placed me in a nuclear power plant. I was so lost. As terrible of a cook as I was in the US, I was that times about 10 during our first couple of months here in France. I didn't know where anything was or what it was called. Everything in the US (besides Hamburger Helper Cheesy Noodles) calls for cream of chicken soup which is practically non-existent. Bagels are non-existent and trying to figure out the different cuts of meat while avoiding purchasing pigs brain or duck liver was enough to make us resort to eating McDonalds... a lot.

Then, I guess there is something in the air... or the non-fluoridated water of France. I became a cook! And, not just a cook that plans for and prepares nutritiously almost preservative free home cooked meals but I love it! As I was whipping out my potage parmentier (Potato and Leek Soup) in the kitchen tonight while listening (and, unfortunately for my family, singing) to Hillsong I felt like that is what it must feel like to be in heaven. All was right in my world as I chopped and diced and sprinkled a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It is like a science experiment that you can eat. And, thankfully, the subjects of my experiment have many more likes than dislikes these days.

Here is the website I used for my Potato Leek Soup. It is a great website for recipes and other tips on cooking. David Lebovitz: Living the Sweet Life in Paris

Step 1 of project Potato and Leek Soup - At the grocery store with Sophia and... drum roll... the leeks. You will have to excuse my obsession with this vegetable. I have found them fascinating ever since I stepped foot into a supermarket here. They are almost in every single shopping cart and basket. They are huge and I have had this incredible urge to cook with them ever since.

My name is Jennifer Page and I no longer have an irrational fear or dislike of french grocery stores or their clerks (even though they would not provide toilet paper for my dear Sophia in a moment of crisis during a potty emergency.. no grudge or anything, really).

Step 2: Preparing the Leeks.. a little bit of playing and a little bit of washing and a little bit of chopping and a little bit of crying - as leeks are essentially giant onions.

Wow, they are almost as tall as me!

Really Mom, enough pictures.

Can be used as weapons.

Enough is enough!

Take that Mom!

Our leek beards.


There is little more fun than playing in the sink and helping Mom with dinner.

Me and my petite chef.


My little man... he hung out with Dad while the girls cooked. I wish I could say he enjoyed the soup... Lets just say we had a good learning moment on how to compliment someone without hurting their feelings or lying.

And... the finished product. I promise it tastes more appetizing than it looks. It is a simple soup.. quite inexpensive and very easy to make but hearty and tasty. And the leeks just makes you feel all fancy cool french... well, maybe that is just me.

Le Mont Dore et Puy Sancy

Look Dad! A snowball!

Yesterday we decided to go on a Page family adventure in search of snow. Never minding the fact that it was 50 degrees in Clermont-Ferrand. We willed our way to Le Mont Dore, France - an adorable ski resort village in the Massif Central chain of mountains - located about 45 minutes southwest of Clermont-Ferrand and a short 10 minute drive from the Puy Sancy - a volcano and the peak of the Massif Central chain. Thirty minutes out of town and we were already winding our way through twisty mountain roads with no snow capped mountains in sight. We watched the car's thermometer drop from 10 degrees Celcius to 8 to 4 and it was around that time that we spied the Puy Sancy with visibly groomed snow in the distance. We found a delightful little traditional Auvergne, France restaurant in Le Mont Dore where we dined on truffade (a cheese and butter laden dish similar to scalloped potatoes), saucisson, confit de canard (which I think is essentially duck cooked for an inordinate amount of time in an inordinate amount of its own fat and my goodness is it good) and an Auvergnate salad of greens, smoked salmon and blue cheese. Oh, and followed with tarte de myrtilles (blueberry tart) and tarte au amande (almond tart). Thankfully, that was succeeded by copious hiking (in my dress boots with no grip, no less) up the mountain again and again and again (and again and again...) to keep up with my persistent and determined (and sometimes angry) future professional sledder, Joshua.

Sleepy Emily living it up being pulled while relaxing in the sled. She was such a trooper... an angel at lunch and hardly any tears on the mountain even though it was right in the middle of her naptime. Not to mention the fact that the poor gal could barely stand up without waddling over in her one piece snow suit (think "A Christmas Story").

Sophia and I are in the background and Josh is in the foreground doing his infamous "lean to the right move to go right" maneuver which ended in a tumble, flip and fist slam on the snow or sled every time.... followed by another hike up the mountain to give it another whirl. (Note to Josh - Don't listen to advice on physics given by Mom and two words - "anger management")

Disregard the look of fear on my face... I don't care how old you are ... sledding is beaucoup de fun! We are more excited than ever about our upcoming trip to Chamonix, France in the French Alps with our friends, the Cabes. I think it is going to be fabulous!!!!

C is for Cookie

"Sometimes Me Think What Is Love, And Then Me Think Love Is What Last Cookie Is For. Me Give Up The Last Cookie For You."- Cookie Monster

This week while Joshua was at the Centre de Loisirs in the afternoons, Sophia, Emily and I baked our way into a Christmas spirit while blending and rolling and cutting out some Christmas sugar cookies. They turned out simply scrumpdilyumtious!

Mmmm... Butter.

Cooking baking with a side of juggling?

Our first French Christmas tree!

Emily arranging the nativity scene.

Mommy and Daughter.

Sisters.

Emily Claire Bug - Our almost 2 year old.


The morning after.. getting ready to cut some COOKIES!!


Ok.. so the not so Christmas sugar cookies consisting of hearts, ducks, airplanes, tulips, crosses and stars. The crosses and stars count, right?

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! :)

Loving to Learn at Ecole Page

We began home schooling the children the first week of October. It is going really well as I love to teach the children and Joshua and Sophia are spectacular students. Sophia is a little more motivated than little Joshua who tends to sometimes squirm in his seat ready for the next adventure but, nevertheless, he is reading and, more importantly, is excited about it! We have BOB books and his face gleams with pride when he can finish the next book in the series. Yesterday he read Goodnight Moon to Emily, with a little help from Mom on the more difficult vocabulary words, and I am not sure who was more proud - me or him. It is very fulfilling to watch a whole new world open up before your child's eyes. He is quickly working his way through our math curriculum and seems to have an affection for the numerical world - kinda like his mama... there is nothing like the predictability of pluses, minuses and equal signs.

We started our school year quite ambitiously with weekly lessons plans filled with reading, writing and arithmetic plus art, science, literature and social studies/geography. That worked well when Emily was napping in the morning but now that she has changed to just the afternoon nap our schedule had to be modified as well. We aim for reading, writing and math every school day but I like to add the other subjects when I am able. I have attached some pictures from the day we read The Tortoise and the Hare and had an indoor "push the egg with your nose" race. Last week on our science day we read about volcanoes and the children created a volcano out of Playdoh and we created an experiment with baking soda, dish soap and vinegar that made the volcano actually erupt. It was fascinating!