Joyeuses Fetes 2009-2010

In other words, happy holidays from France. We're in the middle of our annual French-Fried Winter Vacation. The first part of our trip was spent in La Baule (on the west coast of France) with Claire's family--lots of fun. We've just recently embarked on the second part, a few days in Paris. So far the weather has been perfectly balmy compared to Boston, so I can't complain too much, even though it's rained a bit. Here are just a few pics, since I need to get ready for our New Year's Eve party coming up:

Max on the slide.
Nice view of La Baule beach at sunset.
Sophie trying on uncle Olivier's Christmas present, a Boston Red Sox hat.

First Real Snow of the Year!

Snow emergency! Boston experienced its first big snow of the year last night, and a good chunk of today was spent performing snow-related activities, such as shoveling, finding parking spots not on the official "snow emergency route", and....cross-country skiing! It was only for a short period of time but I dusted off the old skis (same ones I've used since high school), put on a fresh coat of wax, and took a few laps around the Charlestown High School track while Claire, Sophie and Max froze their asses off.

8 Crazy Nights

Happy Hannukah to all! We've done a pretty good job lighting the candles this year, and towards the end Sophie even began to understand that these weren't birthday candles that needed to be blown out! Thanks to the parents for so many wonderful presents...we have a lot of cookies to go through between now and next Thursday (when we fly to France for Christmas).

Family Photo, Thanksgiving 2009

Here's a nice family photo from our Indy trip for Thanksgiving.  I am wearing my Duluth East high school letter jacket in honor of the fact that (a) it still fits me, and (b) my high school will soon be defunct.  

Christmas comes to Charlestown early!

Here we are checking out the Christmas display that came to Charlestown, just a few blocks down from our home. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"...we just had our first snowfall of the year this weekend!

Indy Children's Museum

Still sharing the photos from last weekend's Thanksgiving extravaganza: last Saturday we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum, which features some kick-ass dinosaurs busting into the museum front:


Inside the "DINOSPHERE"!
Max hatching some dino eggs.
Watch out, Sophie, there's a dinosaur behind you!
Cousin Henry puts the pedal to the medal in his Indy 500 car.
Neato Dale Chihuly stained glass sculpture.

Annual Pacers Game

For Thanksgiving it's a tradition to attend an NBA game at Thanksgiving (which we unfortunately missed last year thanks to Max's birth). The Indiana Pacers always play a game the day after the Thanksgiving, and this is the game we target. This year's contest featured your Indiana Pacers against the Dirk Nowitzki-led Dallas Mavericks...and resulted in the worst home loss for Indiana in the season thus far: the final score was 113-92, and even this does not reflect how much of a blowout the game was, as Nowitzki scored 31 without even having to play a minute of the 4th quarter. We actually dared to bring all four cousins (Sophie, Max, Henry, James) to the game with us and they did a great job cheering the Pacers, mercifully forgiving the fact that they played liked dogs. Max even got a chance to shake hands with the Pacers' mascot!