Monday, January 2, 2017

Friends from France / Celebrating Ruthie

My friend Amy from college married a French guy, Jean, and they live in France and have 3 children. (Laura is 5, Leonie is 3, and Louis is 10 months) They were over here for Christmas and I was so excited that it worked out for us to get together. Amy and I have been friends since the beginning of our Freshman year of college and it was so much fun to catch up!
When we started out planning our get together we were just going to meet up for a few hours. Well, as time went on and plans got rearranged it morphed into Amy and Jean and their kids coming to spend 2 nights with us. To break that down for you that's 4 adults and 7 kids under 7 (5 girls and 2 boys) in our house. It was wild and SO, SO fun! Our kids all got along great from the moment they walked in the door and the adults all had a great time together.
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LeLe and Roo were instant friends. The curly headed babies have to stick together!
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Jean and his family make cognac and so they brought some to share! I give him an A+ :)

They arrived December 26th in the afternoon and so we just let the kids play and then had dinner. The kids were sad to have to go to bed and it was definitely later than normal. I'm just glad they were on separate sides of the house or I'm pretty sure they would have been up all night! When the kids were in the bed the adults stayed up WAY too late talking but it was so fun! It has been 2 years since we've seen them so we had lots of catching up to do.
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Storytime before bed.
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Tuesday was Ruthie's birthday so we got up and headed to the zoo. We were supposed to meet up with another college friend, Marie, and her family but her daughter came down with a stomach virus. We were disappointed not to get to catch up with them. Paul took the day off of work to hang out with us...such a special treat! So apparently they have very few squirrels in France and the ones they do have are red so the best part of the zoo trip was definitely how excited Laura got over seeing a squirrel running around the zoo! We spent a few hours at the zoo and when the kids were dragging we headed home for lunch.
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Leone and Laura were both REALLY brave when it came to feeding the animals! I was quite impressed!
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We were fortunate that the day was LOVELY and so while the little ones napped the older kids headed outside to play all afternoon. They had the BEST time.
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The boys have to stick together!

In our house, when it's your birthday you get to pick where we eat dinner and Ruthie picked Moe's. We lucked out that Tuesday is kid's night so they had a guy making balloon animals while we were there. The kids LOVED it!
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The Rudolph hats ad a blinking light in the nose...super cute!
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Ellie's panda
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After dinner we came back home and had ice cream sundaes and sang Happy Birthday to Ruthie.
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Ruthie had opened up her present from the Pasquet crew earlier in the day (a really cute book...we LOVE books at our house!) and Paul had given her a pineapple flower which she immediately ate and so with her dessert she opened up her cards from family and her present from Abby's family. She loved all her presents and cards and was so animated looking at each one!
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$3 from GiGi and PaPa for turning 3! Ruthie gets VERY excited about money.
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Stickers from Gran and Grandaddy
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Her card from Uncle Ben and Aunt Ruth. They always make the kids a card and the girls just love that.
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A Barbie from Abby, Ben, Elizabeth, and Caroline. This was Ruthie's first Barbie that is HERS and she was so excited!

Ruthie had a great birthday and loved having extra people at our house to celebrate with her. It was definitely a special day!
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The kids were all pretty worn out by bedtime (as were the adults!) and we all went to bed earlier Tuesday night than we did Monday night!

Wednesday morning Emmie and JP had well visits so Amy and Jean and the kids headed out at the same time we did. We were SO sad to see them go. I really hope next time they come it works out for them to stay with us again!
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When they left, Emmie told me she knew something different that French people eat. I was quite interested in hearing her answer because the adults had this same conversation the first night. Emmie's answer based on observation: toast with butter and honey!
Each morning Jean and Amy and their kids had toast and then after it toasted added butter and honey. Paul will occasionally put butter on his toast but he does it before he toasts it so you don't see it once it's cooked. I thought her answer was pretty funny!

Another fun thing we just started doing on birthdays is letting the birthday child stay up later and hang out with Paul and me. Ruthie chose to play Minnie Mouse Candy Land while she was hanging out with us and she was so cute and had lots of fun! I've really enjoyed the nights of having one on one time with the kids!
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