Month: November 2016

Mom to Mum

As we’ll be spending some time in the U.K. in the next month, the kids have been practicing calling me “mum” and “mummy” instead of “mom” and “mommy.” 🙂 And speaking of mum — but the floral version not the parental one — Annecy is covered with them right now.  

The traditional flowers to leave at the cemetery on All Saint’s Day are chrysanthemums. They’re hearty and resistant to light frost, so in addition to decorating the cemeteries, they (along with some other fall foliage) brighten the sidewalks, canals, and roads of Annecy, even on cloudy, rainy days.

 

Picture Day

5th Grade

 

3rd Grade

 

Together having fun…

     And done… 

 

Saving money with style

After shopping for haircuts for Mike and L (on Halloween, actually), we finally decided to purchase a clipper instead and let me try it out. YIKES!  Mike was a willing first victim…I mean client.  G was the receptionist and took her role very seriously, checking in the client, having him fill out paperwork, and getting the “tools” situated on the balcony table.

Having never used a clipper before and my only training being a 2-minute YouTube video, I was a bit nervous about the end result.  Luckily, Mike was of the “it’s just hair; it’ll grow back” attitude.  He just kept saying to cut it as I used the longest settings and slowly made them shorter and shorter.  In the end, we decided it turned out pretty well for a first-time try!  

Before:

During:

After:

L was next and after hearing Mike talking about “just cut it” and “it’ll grow back,” he opted to have me cut his as well.  He wasn’t quite ready to have Mike just take a #2 and go round his head.  The kid has a little style, and didn’t want to shave it all off. 🙂  Having practiced on Mike, I was a little more comfortable, but I was still quite slow about it, which cost me some points with my client.  As a result, Mike stepped in and helped out a bit to move things along. Again, we decided it was a pretty nice cut considering the lack of experience of the stylist!

Before:

During:

After:

It was a dark and stormy night…

Actually, it was a dark and quiet Halloween night in Annecy.  Daylight savings ended here on Saturday evening, so it’s already dark by 6 pm now.  As for trick or treating, one of the girls that G met in her sewing class said they go trick or treating in her neighborhood…but we didn’t know exactly where that was.  We saw people buying bags of candy (nothing like the ginormous Costco bags) at the supermarket, and G overheard a mom and son talking about what they should get to hand out to the kids, so they must trick or treat in that neighborhood, too.  

We decided to take a walk around 7 pm to see what we could see (and pick up a pizza!).  We saw 2 white flashlights and a green flashlight pass by on the other side of some bushes, so we weren’t sure if there were costumes involved or not.  A moment later, we saw a guy running down the next street with a pumpkin bag, most likely used for candy and dropped by a child somewhere.  Walking up the sidewalk to the pizza place, we saw two very small children — one in a Darth Vader costume and one in a simple Frankenstein mask.  

I guess we would have been okay to go out with just our masks, too, except for the part about not knowing where to go.  As many of the neighborhoods are made up of more apartment building than houses, you can’t just go door to door.  

Finally, on the way back home, at the corner of our street, we saw a whole group of kids in costumes and their parents, much like you’d see in our neighborhood in St. Paul.  We couldn’t tell where they’d come from or where they were going, but I did hear them as they knocked on a house that happens to sit at the end of our street.  The kids said, “Bonjour,” to which the man responded, “Voulez-vous des bonbon?”  As that was our only interaction with trick or treaters, I’m not sure if this is the typical conversation or if there is a French version of trick or treat…a mystery yet to be solved…

Knowing that we weren’t going to be doing our usual Halloween routine — pumpkin-shaped pizza, costume prep/wearing, neighborhood trick or treating, bonfire, visiting with friends, candy sorting, etc. — we told the kids we’d still have a fun evening with pizza, candy, soda and movies (“The Goonies” and “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”).

  

Leading up to Halloween, we had fun making our masks and a bunch of Halloween finger puppets that G and L used to put on a play for us.  While it wasn’t our usual Halloween routine, we still had a fun evening (and have less candy to have to deal with!) 🙂