Parc George Brassens

Today we went to Parc George Brassens in south-central Paris. We were off of my map that I use to navigate here, luckily a nice French girl that I stopped to ask was walking that way and had us walk along with her. The park had all sorts of walking paths and unique features, like this cute donkey and cart statue. When they were all in, Abigail, said, "Mom--we're riding on Jacque the Little French Pony!" and of course, made up some cute, extemporaneous song for the event. (When I brush Abigail's hair, I make up stories about my 3 kids and Jacque, the little French pony.)

Avery is so cute and starting to outgrow being the baby. She is saying a lot of words now and singing. As we strolled through the park later, Avery started up her "la-la-la" from the front of the stroller and sang for quite a while. I love it!

There were several children's playgrounds throughout the park, and one of them was just underneath this large rock hill for the kids to climb up. Getting down, of course, is always an afterthought. Here, Warren is "helping" Abigail down since she couldn't figure out how to get down the larger rocks she went up. Warren was later running on this hill and skinned up his elbow really nicely, with the crying to match. I cleaned his elbow, got him a cloth to hold on it and tried comforting him, but he just kept crying--very loudly--right in my ear. So I asked him, "Warren, is there anything I can do for you?" He said, "No," so I walked away to save my hearing. It probably looked really heartless to the one other parent there, but oh well. After about 15 total minutes of crying, Warren called me back over, much quieter now, and asked if I had a snack. I told him I had Nutella and crepes to spread it on, but that they were only for people who were calm enough to not choke on them. He sniffled a bit, but made the walk with me to the grassy hill where Nat and the girls were waiting and we ate our crepes.

There is a vineyard and bee-keeping area within the park. It was fun just to watch all the bees continously coming and going--I understood the saying, "busy as a beehive"--but then a class on a field trip showed up and so we got to see the bee-keeper smoke the bees to calm them down and then remove the frames from the hive with the bees climbing all over them. We watched the demonstrations for several minutes. It was fascinating. I think it would be fun to learn more with the kids about bees and all the good they do.
Good news! We have places to stay for our 2.5 week vacation starting next weekend! It is strange that we are leaving Paris in 9 days. It didn't even occur to me until last night that we were leaving next week! Time is a strange thing. Anyway, brief summary: from Sat 28-Sat 5 we are staying in the Loire Valley to see castles and stuff; from Sat 5-Sat 12 we will be in the Dordogne seeing "the cave paintings" and the countryside and then from Sat 12-Tues 15 we will be in Alsace, with it's cool German-influenced way of life. That's really brief, I know. But you'll hear more as we travel of course, because I made sure all 3 places had internet access available! I was really stressed earlier this week about where and when to stay--there were so many options, but then I prayed that I would have help in making goood decisions and plans that would make for a happy trip with our 3 kids. And when I did that, what I wanted to do started becoming clear, like a river that has been muddied by someone stepping in it and then clears again. Isn't it nice to know that Heavenly Father cares about everything we care about, and then some more too, I'm sure :)