Merry Christmas!

It’s been a busy year but a great one for our family. Hard to believe that we’ve been living in France for almost two years now. We’re blessed to live in a beautiful, quiet area of Provence that has enabled us to get to know some wonderful locals and allowed us to feel like we’re getting into the culture. At the same time, this area affords us the opportunity to also have friends from all around the world because of a strong expat community. We continue to love to travel at every opportunity we get, though our list of “must sees” seems to grow more quickly than we’ll likely ever have time to visit. That said, we’ve very much enjoyed the visitors we’ve received so far and would love more anytime!

Matt: continues to work for the ITER Organization and enjoys the challenge of the project and collaborating with people from all over the world every day. Mesia: I still feel I’m living a dream and am eternally grateful to have the chance to be here to get to know more about my heritage, my family who lives here, and to learn the language and customs. Seneca: now 3 and has (already!) started at the international school here and attends 2 days of school in French and 2 days in English each week. She is a perfect mix of girly and rough as she loves to dress up and carry her purse around everywhere but is never afraid to play hard and get dirty. She is such a gift and we feel blessed every day to have her in our family!

 We appreciate your love and friendship and hope you have a wonderful Christmas. We are grateful for this season and the opportunity to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.

 Matt, Mesia, and Seneca Rae

Lots to catch up on...

It has been a very long time since our last post....I will try and up date you all!

In October my sister invited us to Jason's (my nephew) first birthday party. Since she lives relatively close (in Germany), we thought it would be a great opportunity to go and visit.

We decided to drive and checkout the sites on the way to and from her village.

This is Basel



Danielle had a pirate birthday party for Jason! It was so cute! Everyone dressed up as pirates. My dad flew in town to surprise us all! So cool!

Seneca snuggling with her Aunt Danielle

On our way home we make a few stops. Our first was Rheinfalls, Switzerland.

Stein am Rhein

Zurich

Mountains of the Chartreuse just North of Grenoble

Seni snuggling with Daddy!

Seni being silly

Silly again.

Fall Time...and Halloween!

I must say I love living in an area where I can experience seasons. I love Southern California, but you didn't really get a feel of seasons changing. I really love living here in Manosque, because we truly get a great feel of the seasons. It really makes you appreciate each of them. Right now, I just absolutely love the Fall/Autumn. The leaves are changing and finally the temperature is dropping and today we've a lot of rain. I also love squash and luckily we hit a small village that was having a festival of squash!...so fun! Anyway, we have done a few things over the past month or so....enjoy! (sorry they are not in order)

With our International friends, we organized a trick-or-treating activity where we had people handing out candy along a trail in the forest. It was a lot of fun! 

We had our Hungarian friends over for dinner again...they are great!

Seneca painting her pumpkin! She was so proud of this!

Fete de la Courge a Rians

C'est la meme chose

Seneca tying herself up with her panties...love that!

She did not want to have anything to do with this....Just wanted to watch.

Seneca's First Day of School

Here in France you start school at 3. It's a bit young, at least for what I am used to in the States, but felt it was good to have her go. We decided to put her in the International School; which consists of two days English and two days French. I really wanted to send her to a French to school learn the language quicker, but for some reason, it just didn't work out.

She enjoys school, especially the English days and still is having a bit of a hard time with the French ones. We hope she gets used to it soon.

Airplane

Pictures of various people in our family

Trip to the North

Matt had a week off from work and so we decided to explore a bit of the North West. Here is our route:

#1 Château de Chenonceau within the Chateau de la Loire valley.

#2 Blois, France. We stopped here on our way to our hotel. Cute little town.

#3 Fougeres, France. Very cool fortress town close to the Breton border.

#4 Mt. Saint Michel

#5 Normandy...very sobering...

List of soldiers they could not find bodies for.

Pointe du Hoc where US soldiers climbed the wall to attack the Germans

Huge holes from the bombing

"mommy, i look at a telescope"...so cute!

Seneca stopped and prayed at some of these head stones 

More pictures of the American Cemetery

#6 Disneyland Paris!! Yahoo! So much fun!

#7 Paris...so, this was funny. our camera died and we forgot to bring our charger. so we bought a disposable. so, stay tuned for these pictures later.

The first thing we did was take the Bateaux Mouches tour down the Seine river. This was the best! We were able to really see the highlights of the city this way.

Next we went to the Notre Dame, les Invalides, la Tour Eiffel, Palais de Chaillot, Champs-Elysees, and the Arc de Triomphe.

#8 Versailles. Unfortunately, by the time we got to this location is was Saturday. We were pooped and needed to drive 8.5 hours back home. So, we just looked around the exterior of the chateau and then made our way home.

We had a great trip but know we need to head back up to explore Paris and Versailles.