Mom, Is France Inside or Outside?: April 2008

Friday, April 18, 2008

Printemps- Spring

April 16, 2008

Oh what do you do on a beautiful Spring day? We finally had a day of sunshine and no rain. The best thing was that it happened to be a Wednesday and no school, so the kids got to enjoy it all day long.

The girls went to Grez and played in the willow trees.

The boys went on a big hike to the forest and played in the dirt.

Annie and Emily played in the backyard and had a grand time, as you can see.

Hillary Coates

April 18, 2008

Hillary just knows how to make everyone happy. The kids love her and she is so much fun to have around. She will be leaving in May and heading back home -we are going to miss her!

You never know the things that Hillary might know, like how to properly wrap a turban.

Thanks for the fun Hillary, we love you!!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Neigé- Snow

April 4, 2008

It does snow here! We were feeling a bit lucky and unlucky to have escaped all the snow in Utah this year but, when we woke up this morning we were very surprised to see the white blanket covering the ground.

It didn't last long but it made us think of home.

Signes de Bourron Marlotte

March 4, 2008

These are the signs in my life right now. These are what I see everyday as I make the many trips back and forth to take the kids to school and activities. I love all of them and how much character they seem to have; if only they could talk, the stories they could tell.

Hippodrome de la Solle

March 5, 2008

A sad day for all of us, Grandma had to go home. What a terrific month we had with her in our home. All the reading, jump roping, cooking, sight seeing, sewing, bike riding and playing will never be forgotten! We love you Grandma, goobye!

After Grandma left, we decided to go check out the horse races at the Hippodrome de la Solle.

The races were pretty exciting becuase they involved jumping. The kids were taken by the swiftness and grace of the horses and riders.

They must have said 50 times how much fun they thought it was.

What luck for us, there were free pony rides for kids today and we made up about half of the kids there, so each of the them got several turns to ride the cute little horses.

I would say we had a successful day at the races!

Something better than the races was waitng at home in the mailbox. Grandpa had sent us the movie Enchanted while Grandma was here and with much anticipation the kids checked the box each day. Today was the day, it finally came. As Logan put it, "This is like the perfect day, we got to go to the races, ride horses and the movie came!" What could be better?

After baths and dinner we all snuggled in and watched the movie. Thanks Grandma & Grandpa.

Le Carrousel- The carousel

March 3, 2008

It looks like it's straight out of Mary Poppins, the carousels are like a little bit of magic and can be found in many of the villages. I figured since we would probably never live in a town with a carousel again that we should ride it at least once.

Anyone feel like a little Barbe á papa? (Cotton Candy)

How Did We End Up In Bourron Marlotte, France?

Almost 10 years in the making, this is one of the questions we get quite regularly so we thought we would give a brief history of how we got here. It all started back in 1998 when we made our first trip to London and Paris. We had such a good time that whenever we reminisced about our trip our discussions quickly turned to living in Europe when our kids were old enough.

Tifiny came back to Paris a couple of other times on her own to buy kids clothes and then we made another trip to Paris in the spring of 2001 together. After these trips, we would always discuss ways that we could end up here with our family.

In 2003, when we moved back to Salt Lake City we started our plan of saving up money to live in Europe. (This was done by fixing up houses which is an entirely different story.) We didn't know how we were going to get to Europe, where we would stay or exactly when we would do it, but we made up our minds it would happen in the not too distant future. We met some friends in our neighborhood who wanted to live in Spain, so thinking maybe Spanish language skills would be a greater asset than French skills, we went on a fact finding mission to Spain in March 2006.

We loved Spain and especially Barcelona, but we still couldn't get France out of our minds. Maybe it was a desire for good pastries, but when we got back from Spain we decided that we were going to France and we would do it in the fall of 2007 if possible. Sophie would be four by that time and Annie would still not be in high school. We actively began looking for places to rent in France and looked in various parts of the country visiting numerous different web sites to try and find something that would work. We looked at houses in Normandy, Nice, Provence, etc., but as we spent time looking we decided we should probably stay near Paris.

In November 2006, Tifiny booked flights using SkyMiles for her and the five kids to Paris leaving on August 26. We still didn't have a place to stay, but we knew we had to book the flights in order to be able to use SkyMiles. We were looking actively at living up near Versailles and had spoken to quite a few people about the area.

About this same time, we found out that our friend Taylor Randall had been offered a job at INSEAD University in Fontainebleau. He suggested that it might be easier for him to convince his family to go to France if they knew we would be nearby. Since we hadn't decided on a place yet, we began to look specifically around Fontainebleau. It soon became apparent that housing in Bourron Marlotte, where Taylor planned on living, was more expensive than the surrounding areas. The INSEAD housing web sites had the best information and we looked at houses in Grez, Recloses, Barbizon, Montigny, etc. You name a town near Fontainebleau and I am sure we looked at a house there online.

Fortunately for us, in April 2007, Taylor got an email from a professor at INSEAD who was going to Barcelona for the school year that was renting his house in Bourron Marlotte. He sent the email to us and we emailed back and forth with Chris Zott getting all the details and photos of the house. By the end of May we had worked out the details and signed a lease to stay in this wonderful home. We discovered we were only half a mile from the Randalls and a block from the school where Jesse, Dallas and Logan attend. It has been great living nearby the Randalls. I think the kids really enjoy being able to occasionally play with someone who is feeling and experiencing the same things. Mark likes being able to go running with Taylor at the drop of a hat and Tifiny likes being able to do things with Janet.

As for our landlords, the Zotts -- you couldn’t find nicer people if you tried. The house is great, everything works, it has a fabulous sunroom/dining room and it can really accommodate a lot of people. Well, so there you have it, that is the answer of how we ended up in Bourron Marlotte. Hope you can come see us before we leave in July. Au revoir.

Mom, Is France Inside or Outside?