Countdowns & Downsizing

This weekend Kyle and I made huge progress getting the apartment ready for a serious cleaning before we move out.  We had all this furniture in the way, and thankfully our friends took a bunch of it off our hands.  We still have so much more to give!  Alas, let's take a look back at the first transformation that turned this dorm into a home and what it looks like now!

The kitchen~outfitted with one hot plate, an oven, and the largest cutting board that would fit in our apartment.  Kyle's first home improvement project was building the spice rack/knife holder.

What was once a pantry & cupboard is now merely a bookshelf with a microwave and everything edible in our home.

A bit of a throwback, but this was our cozy and inviting living room.

All that remains is a bookshelf with a small number of belongings.

I'm not even going to show you the bedroom because our Dr. Seuss comforter was pretty much the only interesting thing about it.  Without it, it's just two twin beds pushed together a la Dick Van Dyke & Mary Tyler Moore.  To reward us for all our hard work, Kyle and I had saved some very special instant chocolate pudding that his parents sent to us ages ago.

Nothings says a job well done quite like a cup-o-purding (as Miss Foo would say).

Anywho, as we simplify our home, our schedule has filled up.  The Lord has been good to us by providing time to really say goodbye to a lot of our friends.  There really isn't a day where something isn't planned.

I couldn't kick the colored pencil habit after school let out.

We visited the Pounds family Saturday night and had a delicious meal and played fun games.  Yesterday we spent a lovely time with our church family here: Jack, Claudine, Bridgette, JP, Su, Nyanza, Dalip, Joanna, and our Iranian friend (his name is difficult to pronounce so I won't even try to spell it) as well as new friend, Anna.  Only Vincent & Cole were missing... Jack and Nyanza had little surprises for us, which is ridiculous since they gave us tons of gifts back at our Christmas in July celebration.  Nyanza spent the better part of her summer in the U.S. volunteering in Seattle~plus her big sister got married earlier in the summer...

I love a postcard.  My friends Zach  and Evan used to send them to me all the time~my favorite one was from Roswell, and it depicted some creepy alien thing.

A small token from Kahindo & Emmanuel's wedding~we become friends in Strasbourg at Nyanza's birthday bash weekend.

Meanwhile, Jack wanted to help us to keep the gospel close while still practicing our French yet not making it too difficult.  Thus he found the perfect gift~seriously, I have never been so surprised by a present ever.

This is the Manga (re: anime) version of the Gospel (I believe according to Luke) written in French.  When the culture of the Japanese, French, and Israelites combine, it produces something quite spectacular.  That hunk with the long flowing locks in the upper left corner~that's the angel Gabriel.  The best part is the tag line at the top~"Has he come to destroy the world or save it?" So epic.

This whole entry has felt a little like SHOW & TELL, but I am thrilled to bring back this element of the blog one last time!  As I promised long ago, I want to share with you our wall of cards.  Thanks to your thoughtfulness and willingness to seek the appropriate stamps, we were able to have lovely wall art for free and make our dorm feel more like a home.  Kyle and I are so thankful to have friends and family who sent us nice things while far from home~thanks yall!

This would not have been possible without the Hamiltons (extra points for Susan for homemade cards!), the Milligans, the Hudsons, Miss Foo, KDub, Alli T, K8, Lindsey, KHam, my Aunt Pam, Nyanza, and various Globalscopers.  I hope I didn't forget anyone~please forgive me if I did.

 The final item I'd like to share was a drawing from my friend Julie.  She just turned 7 last week and invited me to her ballerina birthday party.  Since we'll be moving so soon, she gave me a little picture for me to remember her.  I'm going to miss her and her family (with whom we do a weekly Bible study) so so so much.  Thankfully we'll see them one last time on September 29th~our last day in France.

Julie and me playing in her yard.  It's fun to be the same size as a 7 year old (she's the brunette & I'm the blond).

The artist's signature

There you have it folks~ as you may have seen from the calendar, we have a good deal of activities going on this week.  On Friday we set out to Paris with our friend Vinod to meet the Hamiltons on Saturday.  If you're the praying type, please lift up safe travels for the whole Hamilton clan flying over on September 10th.  Everybody gets a little uneasy around this time with air travel, but we have high hopes that nothing will be amiss.  Also, there are protests in Paris this Saturday~ The Islamization of Paris has been in headlines a good bit this week.  We hope not to get caught in the fray while sightseeing.  It seems every time I go to Paris, something a little wild his happening.  Last time was in the spring of 2006; there were riots about changing labor laws.  What do you know?  This story has its own wikipage!  I'll be praying all the excitement we get is climbing the stairs in the Eiffel tower and enjoying some ridiculous food with the fam.  I'll keep you posted....

A day in the life...

... of a SUPER housewife.  Well now that I'm a full-time homemaker, I thought things would be dull.  I should have learned this lesson by now, but free time always fills too quickly.  In my day to day I try to set aside chore time, reading time, and social time (though this is not everyday).  Chores range from doing the dishes, making the bed, tidying up the dorm, and manage our grocery list and calendar.  I also kill bugs because we keep the windows open and have no screens.  Soon I hope to venture to the grocery store solo~typically Kyle and I go together because it's sort of a team effort, but it'd be nice to give him a break.

My reading time is the highlight of my day~I have 4 areas of reading.  I try to keep up with the news on a few different websites each day.  I have just started reading the Old Testament in chronological order and taking notes to what God illuminates during my studies.  I have a textbook called La France contemporaine; this is so I read in French and learn more about my current home.  Lastly is fun reading.  I have a whole bookshelf full of books that have been scavenged from the GTL communal library.  In the past month, I picked up 10 books... a bit ambitious, but I'm optimistic.

Social time has been the best.  I'm sort of a homebody, and I was seriously bad about spending time with our friends on school days.  In the past week, Kyle and I had Bible study (like always) on Monday night.  On a lovely sunny afternoon Lauren and I sat lakeside and knit.  We met a funny French fella who chatted us up for a while (or should I say, "il a drague un peu avec nous").  Lauren got a bad sunburn on her legs except on the parts where her project (a cute angora sweater) covered her fair skin.

On a brief tangent, I had once been an amateur knitter as a young girl.  My aunt Pam decided to take knitting classes at a local Michael's craft shop.  Somehow or other, I was volunteered to be her knitting partner.  It was quite fun because there were limitless resources in the store.  I never completed any project; I was very bad at following through on things I started without the proper motivation (i.e. my mom's reminders).  Anywho, my great aspiration to make a knit cover to a pillow was never achieved, but I did successfully decorate a wicker basket with fake sunflowers to hold all my knitting materials...

Back to modern times~this is what I achieve on our knitting and sitting outing:

The color seems a bit muted in this picture~it's more of a Kermit the frog green (or lime green if you are my old step-mom Lane.  I mean old because she no longer is my step-mom, not because of her age....).  I call it Squiggly Rectangle.  It's still on the needle because I'm out of yarn and don't know how to terminate the project.  Help me Lauren!

Lauren and I ended our delightful afternoon with some bitter lemon beverages and cartoons!  Then there was a cookout at GTL for all the undergrad students as a sort of Independence/Bastille day joint celebration.  The food was fantastic, but those undergrads are certainly unruly and rude.  It's a bad batch-o-kids.  I didn't socialize again until Friday.  Rocky invited us to a super secret surprise birthday party for his wife, Maria!  A big group of us were scheduled to meet at la Winstub (a Hamilton favorite).  It's an Alsacian restaurant, and the food is marvelous~I had scalloped veal in a muenster and mushroom cream sauce and a huge side of roasted (hashbrown-like) potatoes.  There was also some Kir & Riesling involved.  We had a lovely time with a huge group of friends.  

Kyle, me, Rocky, and the birthday girl!

You may say to yourself, "Self, this does not a whole week make."  You'd be correct in assuming that I didn't simply do chores, read, and hang out all week long.  I have found a new weakness.  Cartoons, cartoons, cartoons!  I spend a good amount of time on Cartoon Network's website watching episodes of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and clips of Adventure Time.  On top of that, Making Fiends on Nicktoons is a hit~I remember watching it when it was just an online thing.  Lauren also indulged my new obsession; she and Michael have Netflix.  In the online library is a whole host of old Nicktoons~we watched Aaahhh! Real Monsters and Ren & Stimpy last week.  I'll leave you with a clip from Adventure Time~it makes me so so happy.

A flower update

As you may remember a few months back, we had a little outdoor beautification project.  Since then, I have to admit that Kyle is the nurturer to our garden.  I only babysit (i.e. water and fertilize) when he's engaged elsewhere.  Our herbs and flowers are growing tremendously.  We are bad at incorporating rosemary and thyme into our cooking, but we use the chives, parsley, and basil all the time.  Let's take a look at them...

Here we have our parsley and basil.  The parsley is taking over~if you live in Metz and would like some fresh herbs, do not hesitate to ask us for some.  We're happy to share!

Chives, rosemary, and thyme are all shooting up and out.  I love the way rosemary looks like Christmas tree branches.

My pink and white geraniums.  See all those buds waiting to bloom?  I'm pumped about that.  We get a lot of bang for our buck with these guys.

Thank you Kyle for buying my flowers that are always in bloom~they make me so very happy!

June and Yet Not Summer

I have been a busy bee, but I don't have many fun stories to share.  Last week Kyle and I had a picnic in a cute park by the river with Nyanza and some of her Strasbourg friends.  We bid farewell to our friend Emma with a dinner; she's off to Columbia next year to fulfill her dream of being the French Blair Waldorf.  Last night we went to see Lauren sing with her choir along with Michael (her husband) and Sarah (a PhD friend at GTL).  Those are the highlights with no corresponding photographs.

During the week, school is getting harder and harder to focus on.  The children are antsy and would rather be outside playing; what dope decided that French students were better off indoors for the whole month of June?  Or should I say, why would they do this to the teachers?  It's funny~I think summer and work have been synonymous since I was in high school.  Why can I not muster the strength to be on top of lesson plans for the next three weeks.  Because it's unnatural~that's why.  The last day of school is July 2nd, and you can bet those children will all be learning about American Independence day.

My class at GTL has also started to take over my life.  Rather than just being one of those creepy old people who audits a class and doesn't participate, my professor has mistaken me for one of the undergrads who has to lose sleep over assignments.  Each week we read at least 30 pages of text in French~which isn't so bad and usually very interesting.  Then we must write a summary and a little something something about what we liked.  We've already had to prepare presentations, and I just missed a deadline on an outline for our first essay.  I forgot the summer pace of classes was a bit nuts... I really love getting the extra french practice and being challenged~ in a normal day what I say in French is limited to phrases like "take out your English notebooks" or "stop hitting Alexis with a ruler" or "no, we are not playing 'Telephone' or 'Simon Says...' today...sorry kid".  I wouldn't be worried about these university assignments so much especially since I'm not being graded, but the professor has the right to kick me out if I get unruly.  Come on July!  Prof Ippolito~your class will be my top priority in just a few weeks...

...or maybe I spoke too soon.  Week 1 of July~I am jet setting to London with Audrey and her mom Sheri.  Since Audrey is such a Shakespeare & Harry Potter buff, we'll likely spend the majority of our time in search for literary lieux.  I have only one place I'd really like to see is the Benjamin Franklin house.  Hopefully I can convince the Lewis' that it's a worthy destination~word on the street is that he used to open the huge windows facing the streets and recline in the nude to take an air bath.  I'm sure it was less refreshing to his neighbors and likely a nasty habit he picked up while in Paris.  Any other recommendations?

Show & Tell?  Yes indeed!

 The first contribution by Hugo A.~I love it when the boys make me a homemade handy craft.  It's now adorning my pencil case.

Kyle gave me this last photo to share with yall.  Despite feeling unusually busy, I still happily make time for naps.  Since we have no blankets in our household, Kyle graciously bestows upon me his large Carhartt.

It's really quite cozy.

Hope some of yall are able to enjoy a vacation or trip this summer.  I'll have an adventure to report later this week~should be good.  A bientot!

No more chocolate!

Wow, I've had my fill of chocolate exposure for a long time.  No, I didn't eat a lot of it, I just baked a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.  I had leftover batter, so I baked some cupcakes.  Then I ran out of frosting, and made an improvised topping for my cupcakes.  I started around 8 this morning and it is now noon.  I still have a load of dishes to do but can't bring myself to do it until I shower and remove all the egg, butter, cocoa powder, and all other misplaced ingredients from my head to my toes.  It's times like this that I wish I had packed my apron...

Thanks Ashley~I'll never get over how cute this is!

Here's how it went down in picture form.  I didn't take any photos of mixing the dry & wet ingredients individually...  That would be a waste of your and my time.  Perhaps all of this is a waste, but I never want to forget what I learned in the process.

Batter is always a bit trickier without a hand mixer.  We're making this into a bundt cake.

Off to a good start in our dependable little toaster...

...until the room is full of the smell of burning chocolate.  Somebody overfilled the bundt pan.

That same somebody was left with a nasty mess of chocolate nightmare scorching into carbon disaster inside her toaster.  Yarg!

I thought my arm was sore after I mixed the batter, but it was nothing compared to scrubbing this charred trey.

Back to baking~ once the cake had cooled, I tried to do the smooth flip and lift method of cake removal.  Can you tell the whole cake wasn't on board with my game plan?

Bundt pan, you are depriving Nyanza and her guests the privilege of enjoying every ounce of goodness I prepared? Hadn't we lost enough when your contents which gushed over your lip under the influence of a hot 350 degree oven?

Ah, copious amounts of homemade frosting will remedy the scarred surface of my cake.

I can still redeem myself with some cupcakes (notice I used some restraint in filling each cup only 2/3 of the way full).

Sweet sigh of relief.  Thank you Lord for perfect chocolate cupcakes.

It's been a long morning, cakes.  Let's just take 5 to cool off.

Not all were meant to be cake frosters.  I now know that was not my God given gift.  I'm grateful the cake fit on a plate we owned.

Yesterday I was telling you that cake baking would be a real challenge.  It sunk in somewhere during the process this morning is that the real challenge was something completely unperceived.  Our dear friend Nyanza is hosting her birthday bash in Strasbourg.  Strasbourg!  How in the world are we going to transport this?  We are taking a train tomorrow evening.  We'll probably end up using a box, but where was my forsight?  I should have left this joker in the bundt pan and packed my frosting to go so I could have assembled it all in STRASBOURG!  I'm such a fool.  *sigh*  Hopefully, I can count on Kyle's engineering skills to pull us through this mess.  

In other news, I am very happy that I didn't have school today.  It's Ascension day.  I spotted on facebook that our friend Peter explained to a Chinese student why all the stores were closed today.  This student's response was, "Whatever happens to Jesus, that's a holiday and that's the rule!"  We live in a special place.  Hope you have a happy Thursday.  A plus!

Homemaker Training

My days in the French public schools are numbered.  As summer is quickly approaching, I need to spend my free time honing my wife skills.  As it is now, sometimes I feel rushed and terribly unmotivated to do simple things (like laundry more than twice a month).  But truth be told, I love laundry.  I love folding and putting away clean things.  It only brings me down when at the end of folding a load or two I find a lone sock with no companion.  It happens nearly once a month that we sacrifice our knit footwear to the monster machines in the basement.  Oh, to own my own washer and dryer...

Thankfully a few elements have come into play to jump start the progress.  Since Kyle has transitioned from students to full-time employee, his time is occupied at work.  Thus I am no longer the busier spouse and get to do fun things like make him sandwiches for work.  I used to do it every night before bedtime when we lived in the U.S., and I loved to make him something super tasty.  He always made himself the most meager and unappealing sandwiches~ I may not no my way around a stove or how to properly separate the white of an egg from its yolk, but I make a mean sandwich.  I'm glad to employ those skills once again.  Additionally, Kyle is keen on inviting friends over for meals more now that he is free of homework.  This renders nearly all of our plates, utensils, pots, cups, and so on completely filthy at the end of a night.  Thus there has been a tremendous demand for me to be industrious scrubbing and soaking.  It's also a chore I thoroughly enjoy and I love having company over~ I need to get used to visiting my place in front of the sink more frequently.

The things I loathe doing include grocery shopping and sweeping.  I usually opt out of both and we get by.  Kyle loves food and cooking so much that I rarely am coaxed into darkening the doorstep of our local grocer.  Meanwhile the floor becomes more and more coated with infinite amounts of crumbs, hair, and dirt.  I'm what the french call "les incompetents".  I'm going to change my ways, though.  Sweeping just hurts my back, but I'll get over it to have nice floors when I'm spending whole days alone chez moi.

The grocery store is a whole other kind of beast.  It gives me terrible anxiety to go to the store for one major reason.  It's always busy, and our fellow shoppers are aggressive.  Never before have I seen "every man for himself" at play in such a grand spectacle.  Whereas in every other setting, the French of our town are delightful and kind and are easy to warm up to, I believe I'll never make one friend at the grocery store.  This is just contrary to everything in my upbringing.  We didn't go to Kroger without my mom making one friend.  To this day, I know that Miss Annie who works the cash register is one of my mom's dear friends.  Here I am walked into, my toes are rolled over, and everybody seems so angry.  The grocery store doesn't bring Kyle down, but I'm afraid when he takes me with him he feels bad that the people drive me so crazy.

On a brief side story, I just try to keep a low profile at the store.  Especially when I'm agitated, I just try to find a product in the aisle that no one is likely to buy so that I don't have any ugly encounters~ my standards are hot dogs, canned beans, and rotisserie chicken (plus it's warm by that rotation thing).  One day, by the chicken, I was not overlooked.  I had survived the produce section but just barely when I was approached by a smiling woman.  An American woman had spotted me, I suppose, looking out of it.  So she offered her assistance; she has lived in Metz for 17 years and knew her way around the grocery store.  As shopping for victuals brings out the worst in me, I told her that I had lived here for (at the time) 7 months and thus had a general understanding of our grocer's layout.  I immediately felt full of shame for rejecting the help of a perfect stranger just because I was grumpy.  Kyle thankfully intervened and began to talk with the woman; we introduced ourselves and she asked what we were up to in this northeastern French city.  I think the damage was already done as she concisely finished the conversation and walked away without having given us her name.  In all likelihood we'll never see her again; we don't run into too many Americans that aren't part of the students or teaching assistants groups we already know.  However, I still feel grief when I think about what meanness came out of me towards a totally unsuspecting victim.

I have a secret weapon for grocery trips.  Since I'm an organization freak, Kyle lets me order our goods in the cart and then after check out, I get to meticulously arrange our purchases in our bags.  The best is blowing off some steam walking home loaded down with milk, sugar, and potatoes.  It's good for me, and I'm going to try to focus on the things that keep me calm when I'll be venturing to the store solo this summer while Kyle is bringing home the bacon.  Confessing all this makes me feel sort of nuts, but I am sure I never had such an aversion to grocery stores in the U.S.~it's got to just be a French thing.

To put the icing on my homemaking cake, I have been commissioned to bake a birthday cake for our friend Nyanza.  It's her birthday this weekend, and we are going to celebrate with her and all her friends in Strasbourg for a couple of days.  As Kyle read me an email Nyanza wrote, I burst out laughing when she asked if I could make the cake.  Then in disbelief, I asked Kyle at least 5 times if he was serious.  I'm no chef, and everyone knows Kyle's the one that keeps us alive.  Left to my own devices, I'd live off canned peaches, yogurt, and instant oatmeal for a week before I gave into whole bags of chips and 2 liter Coke bottles for major meals.  I shorn't fret baking a cake though, but rather view it as a good challenge.  I can learn how to do this; I'm sure cake baking is an intrinsic part of motherhood and thus a necessary life skill, so I might as well practice while there's plenty of time.  Thank goodness too that my friend Lauren is a pastry chef and only lives a staircase away.  I breathed a sweet sigh of relief when she said I could turn to her knowledge and experience in my potential time of need.  She also recommended the recipe for Hershey's chocolate cake.  Never had it, but those who know me ought not be surprised.  I think I'm going to attempt it~I'll document the process and share with you soon.

All in all I'm looking forward to being a housewife if even for only a few months.  I may change my LinkedIn status to being employed by God to spoil Kyle.  It'll certainly give me time to read my new stash of books and maybe dabble more with my watercolors.  Until then, you can trust there will still be stories here about my students and (hopefully) plenty of artwork to display.  For today, I leave you with this delightful sight Kyle captured in digital form for me.  Our swans on Lake Symphony have been expecting for what seems like forever.  We finally got to see the whole family out for a swim yesterday evening.

Hopefully you can spot all 4 little ones with their big parents.

The weather was fine, and the ocean was great, and I can't wait to see you again

Last night was the first night I've spent alone since Kyle and I got married last spring.  It seems a bit odd that it hasn't happened sooner, but I couldn't think of any opportunity where we would have been forced to be apart.  Perhaps many wives daydream about the freedom of dominating the home for a bit; I'll admit that I had thought it'd be a nice opportunity to turn on my weird-o music up really loud.  That's definitely something Kyle isn't likely to tolerate.  I can imagine him walking into the living room and very sweetly asking, "What's that you got playin'?"  When I take a moment to stop singing and say it's the Mars Volta, Hot Hot Heat, Fruit Bats, The Decemberists, ELO, or whatever I'm jamming out to, I would ask Kyle if he'd prefer I put on my headphones and whether or not singing would be too disruptive.  The answer is nearly always affirmative.  On a brief side story, it has become a neat way to experiment.  I sing all the time while doing dishes and listening to tunes on my iPod.  After I sing something enough, perhaps I'll play the song while Kyle and I are working on homework/lesson plans (respectively).  Then I watch and wait to see if Kyle recognizes it.  He has successfully identified two songs~one by Lady Gaga and one by Band of Horses.  It's a fun game.

How's a girl to be happy without her cute husband?  He's probably rocking out to something bluegrassy...

Anywho, this is all to say that I was not looking forward to being in our dorm all by myself.  Yesterday I worked in the morning.  I was pumped that as soon as I headed back to town Kyle would be arriving in town to take me out to lunch before he caught a train for Germany.  He had an assessment day with Siemens in Erlangen today.  It'll hopefully lead to the next round of interviews for a dream job for him back in the U.S. this fall.  We went to one of our favorite little sandwich shops and had a stellar french lunch~quiche, croque, salade, and french fries.  Then we shared the ever dramatic farewell moment in a European train station.  Even though it's a night and day apart, it was hard to let him leave.  I took the bus home and tried to determine what to do...

What did I do?  I skyped my family like crazy!  I talked to Miss Foo, my mom, KHud, and BHud.  I even talked to Jan (my step-dad) who just so happened to be in my timezone.  He, too, was in Germany yesterday and was actually located closer to me than Kyle.  Crazy times.  When I wasn't on the phone like a high school girl, I indulged in a chick tv marathon.  Yesterday I consumed Cycle 12 of America's Next Top Model.  It reminds me that I'm happier living with a boy than any number of girls (excluding my lovely sisters).  Yikes, those models are mean to each other.

Goodbye Jan!  Hope you drive safely back to America.

You may be thinking, what a waste to live in France and have the opportunity to explore and enjoy spring and sunshine with just your thoughts and God.  Well now, I didn't dispense all my alone time vegged out in front of my computer.  Yesterday and today I took a couple of walks~ il faut en profiter, as the French say.  Today I graded tons of tests, washed the dishes, tended to our little garden, ran errands, planned for school, and filed bills and miscellaneous paperwork.  My reward for all my hard work on my day off~ a tiny pizza for one which Kyle bought for me!  I think he was afraid I would starve without him here to make dinner, and I might just have... Not to dwell on college boy food, but I love how french my pizza toppings were~ I had a tasty lardon (real bacon bits) and chevre (goat cheese) pie.  My favorite part of the day was doing my Bible study lesson.  Usually I do it on during my 2 hour lunch break on Thursdays, but it was so much more enjoyable to do in my home on my cozy sofa.  I was happy to find a purple pen I didn't know we had to take my notes.  Happy day!

Kyle will be back later tonight.  I can't wait to see him again and give him a big hug.  These short separations don't necessarily make me appreciate him more.  On the contrary, they make me want to skip out on our responsibilities and spend more time together.  I just can't get enough quality time with Kyle.  Good thing there is no Starbucks in Metz~ otherwise, the temptation to skip school would be too great.  God knew what he was doing, and I believe what is written:  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  That applies to international coffeehouse chains, too.

Show & Tell~ It's back!  I have two things to share today and the theme is two-sided.  The first is a lovely art project created by the one and only Auriana.  She's on a role these days.  I'm am terribly sad that she didn't pass the standardized English exam.  She did better than some of the students who did pass, but they automatically fail the ones who don't nail the listening comprehension section.  I dislike this test tremendously.  Anywho, let's enjoy her creation.

Don't give up, my little pupil

This may wear off, too, when she discovers her test results.  *sigh*

What I'm about to show you is the great mystery of the day.  As I was walking today, I reached my hand into my pocket and discovered a large coin.  You see, we've been having lovely weather and I put on some shorts I haven't worn since I lived in Atlanta last August.  Thinking to myself, I determined it must be a quarter.  Upon looking at it I was stunned to see what was actually hidden away in my summer attire for who knows how long.  It's an Australian dollar coin!  Where on earth did this come from?  I've never been to Australia, and I cannot think of an occasion where someone decided to give me a dollar from down under.  It came as quite a shock to find foreign currency tucked neatly away in my pocket. 

Long live the queen

Even after some internet investigation, I cannot tell you who this fella with the shadow is.  Mystery.

Project Pretty Porch

Our devotion this morning had a poem that ended with "God has plans for you", but Kyle astutely said that God also has plants for you.  That's because today we planned to go to Jardiland and buy some things to make our porch a happier place.  Hopefully all the coldness of winter is gone and our sweet little sprouts will be safe.

So we set out for the garden store on foot with lots of bags in hand.  It was like being transported to America when we entered our french version of Pikes nursery.  They had not limited to themselves to indoor/outdoor plants and lawn ornaments.  No, they had lawnmowers, patio furniture, bouquets for sale, garden gear for children, and chic home decor.  The didn't even limit themselves to a home/yard store.  Jardiland is also a pet store!!!  They sell bunnies, rodents, and fish to your hearts content.  I was ecstatic; I think we'll return just to look at the bunnies and such.

Look, Miss Foo! A corner loaded with tiny robo-dwarfs!  If we weren't returning back to the states in September....

We happily selected herbs to achieve Kyle's culinary dream of tasty herbs on hand that aren't overpriced at the grocery store.  We selected some thyme, rosemary, chives, basil, and Italian flat leaf parsley.  It smelled like Mario Batali and Giada di Laurentiis had jumped into our shopping cart while we then perused the flower section.  We had a lovely employee help us find everything we were looking for to complete our window boxes, and he was gracious enough to point out where the 1euro flowers were.  He gave us the whole "there's a sale, but we're not supposed to be promoting it" deal.  Bless you, Jardiland employee.  Hamiltons can never turn down a deal.  I picked out some cute white and pink geraniums.  Our last items we required were dirt and a hand shovel to make the work easy.

We bagged our items and then ventured back to our home for what seemed to be one of the longest walks we had taken in a while... here's why:

What a dirt bag!

Grocery bags and a back pack full of plants and planters

Police blocked our passage home to allow these mysteriously large vehicles pass.

Getting all our goods home was just the beginning of the fun.  We had glorious sunshine and breezes to soak in while we arranged our plants.  We discovered that we really enjoy gardening today.  Hopefully our plants will thrive as we tend them.  Here are some pictures from the process:

All the elements

Getting dirty

Still blooming!

Easy does it~ our basil is so little.

Et voila!  A perfectly beautiful tiny garden for our newly reclaimed bonus room (the porch).

Yum!

Chives just look like grass

Mes fleurs!  Cute, huh?

Pink!

White!  I really struggled not to get white and yellow flowers.  I've got it bad for Tech...

The finished project!

Now that we have dirt left over, Kyle is dying to pick out a few more things.  Who knew his black thumb would turn green?  I hate when days like these end.  In just a few short days, I'll be back to standardized testing and mastering the art of teaching baby English.  Kyle, too, is about to have a big change in schedule.  I'm happy to report that he has two weeks left at GTL.  Then (we pray) he'll be done with school for a long time.  After that, he'll start his internship at a lab full of equally smart French dudes.  It's focused on nano-structures.  I'm not sure what that is...  to me, Kyle is an international man of mystery.  Also in wonderful news about Kyle, he has an assessment day at a Siemens office in Germany.  We hoping that it leads to an excellent employment opportunity in October.  We're pretty excited about this.  Hope you are happy and well wherever you are.  Bon weekend.