Giverny, France

Alan and I took the train up to Vernon and then rented bikes to tour Giverny and Monet's house and gardens. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of Eloise here, she stayed home with Grandma. We had a great day sans bébé.

Alan on the Japanese bridge. He had to fight off the herds of septuagenarians to be in the photo by himself.

I was very impressed with these GIGANTIC leaves. I have no clue what type of plant it is....tina any thoughts?

This is Monet's waterlily pond with a view of the Japanese bridge. Unfortunately, we were too early in the season to see any blooms on the waterlilies. It was an incredibly gorgeous property nonetheless!

I'm particularly proud of this one. I've been trying to teach myself how to use our new 'fancy' camera. A friend taught me how to play with the manual focus.

Claude Monet's pink house with his enormous garden out front. I loved every inch of it!

Fun with Grandma!

This is the morning that Grandma left, so sad....boo hoo

we hit plenty of cafes while she was here

blowing bubbles at places des vosges

does this girl like her food, or what?

Eating corned beef and pastromi sandwiches in the Jewish quarter of Paris. DELICIOUS! Alan and I agreed that we definitely need to make it back there one more time before we leave.

Cute, but it didn't stay on for long

She loves her bath...but not the pool!

We tried to take Eloise to the pool and she was a bit overwhelmed and generally not a fan of the water. Too bad, I had such high hopes. We'll keep trying.

Playing catch up

My mom was here for a month and we have had a blast! Eloise was thrilled to get to know her Grandma, we were thrilled to have someone else besides us get to know Eloise and of course, loved all the free babysitting!! So, sorry for the few posts lately, I'll work on giving you a brief summery of events....

Alan turned in his thesis (titled: Does the International Community Have a Responsibility to Protect in Africa?) at the end of April and Eloise and I joined him for the trip to school.

Picnic and Baseball

With the spring weather upon us and his thesis behind him, Alan has been chomping at the bit to get out and throw a baseball!

Our little french fry has taken a liking to the end of a baguette. I'm pretty sure her first words are going to be "du pain s'il te plait!"

Alan taught Harry how to play catch, he had never even put on a baseball glove before.

sleeping girl

Even though Eloise has the whole crib, she always turns sideways and sleeps all crunched up at the top.

Holland part deux

Here are some more pictures from our Holland trip. The first two are of FloraHolland, an enormous flower/plant auction facility (1 of 6 similar facilities) that goes through over 48 million plants and flowers through a year. It was very cool to see the process of how the flowers get from the grower to our hands.

We had lunch and went shopping in Haarlem, the town where Corrie Ten Boom's house was. It was adorable, as were all the other tiny towns that are in between Amsterdam and the coast. We never actually made it into Amsterdam because we were enjoying the quaint little towns more. The following day we saw the big flower parade where cars were decorated with incredibly elaborate bouquets and also gigantic floats that were completely covered by flowers to make the design. It was very impressive. There was even a float honoring Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.