Moustiers Sainte Marie et Gorges du Verdon

This past weekend we explored a beautiful hilltop village, Moustiers Sainte Marie; which happens to be near Les Gorges du Verdon. Unfortunately, the pictures do not show a bit of the actual beauty...but hopefully it will give you a little glimpse of what we saw.

Moustiers

We took a ride around the rim of les gorges du verdon.

These are random pics from the week...

Seneca came into the kitchen and started to get into the cabinets. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "mommy I drum".  I said okay...let me help you. We got the pots out and two sticks and she had the largest smile I have ever seen! This is her true smile! She was in Heaven!

Beautiful sunrise from our deck.

Have a great day!

The day to day....

Well, we've been here for about 4 months now and still feel like we are getting acclimated. We're all trying to get help with our french so we can get better adjusted. Other than that, we've made some wonderful friends here. The weather is also great! It's starting to cool down...which I love!

I went to a expatriate function the other night and came home to Seneca's bedroom door open. I went inside and did not see her...So, I asked Matt if he had seen her and he said she was in bed. I told him she wasn't. We were a little worried as we didn't know where she went until we looked in our room. (Initially, we thought she was hiding from us.) This is what we found:

So loves our bed and insists it's better than hers. She was out! So cute!

Last weekend we headed to Nice for stake conference. What a beautiful city! We need to go back and spend more time.

Seneca watching a movie on dad's i-pod...love the head phones.

Pretty cathedral in Rians.

Première journée d'école

Matt and I decided to put Seneca in school (more like daycare) two days a week for three hours a day to help her learn french and give her the opportunity to play with other french children. When I dropped her off she seemed fine. When I came to pick her up they said "elle s'est mis en colère". I didn't quite catch the entire sentence but I knew the word "colere" well enough....She was very angry with me when I left and cried for a bit. However, when I picked her up, she didn't want to leave. So, we will try again tomorrow and see how it goes. 


While Seneca is in school Matt and I are both taking private French lessons to help us with the language here. We really want to learn it and have found we need help. We've done a lot of independent study, but feel we both need more direction. So, hopefully we will all be fluent by the time we hit our year mark here. 

She was not interested in taking pictures so I asked her to put her hands up...make it fun...

Again, not interested. She was sucking her thumb. So I asked her to stick her tongue out....:)

This is the gate that goes to her school (small house). 

So camera shy....

Papie visite avec nous

My dad came to visit us this past week! It was so good to see him. It had been about four months since we'd seen each other.

My dad flew into Nice and then headed to Le Lavandou where my grandmother lives. So, Seneca and I met him in Le Lavandou. We spent the night and then returned to Manosque the next day. On our way to Manosque we made a few stops. The first was St. Tropez.

Our next stop was Brignoles. This is where my dad was born and raised until he moved to Utah at the age of 16.

View of Brignoles.

This is the house he lived in.

This is the room my dad, JJ and mamie slept.

I think aunt danielle slept in this room.

This was the landing between the two rooms (they didn't have in-door restrooms at the time) so they would have their port-au-potty here.

The elder lady in the background is the current owner. It was her parents who rented the place to my grandma.

Dining room

Kitchen

Tree my dad would play in.

Side view of the house.

The yard is very large. They have olive trees....

This is the school my dad went to.

Where he exercised.

This church on the top of the hill is right next door to where he used to live.

Matt, Seneca and I went to Rian. They have a beautiful cathedral here.