The Briere bunch

 Since everyone (well almost everyone) was here for Annick's funeral, of course we took some pictures. 

This is a shot of Seb's cousin Noah with his girlfriend when they were here in April.

 

 Noah and Frederick 

Julianna, Marie and Megan

                                                                           The cousins

And these two characters need no introduction.

The shot of the three of us didn't make the cut. The photo editor (that's me) decided that I had other better looking family shots and that the one taken this evening was not up to snuff for the blog.           Go photo editor, you rock.

Nantes

A few months ago, Stephane and I drove to visit his cousin 

in Nantes. It's a 3 1/2 hour drive from Caen. Except of course if you are a Briere and you stop 45 min after your departure for lunch. A very good lunch, on a sweltering hot day, indeed the right way to start a long 3 day weekend. 

There was lots of eye candy and lots of catching up to do.

 Walking, and talking and walking and talking.

We took this "navibus" basically like a pedestrian ferry, to get to the other side of the Loire river. We wanted to explore a certain part of town. It's own town really called "Trentemoult". It was a village of fisherman, now it seems just full of tourists. The fishermen would use their leftover paint from their boats and paint their homes with it. Hence, to this day, Trentemoult is know for it's colorful houses and shutters. 

Great tile work on this old Butcher shop.

Great font on this Bakery turned private residence.

A great fence.

The shot above is from Trentemoult while we waited for the little water boat to get back to Nantes. There was this crazy octopus on the outside of a bar.

These shots are of a recently completed park, complete with cliff climbing, gardens, wading pools and lots and lots of stairs. It was great. 

2nd day class trip Day 1

 With my three 2nd grade classes we went on a school trip at the end of April. The theme was "Pirates" and boating so we went to the west coast of France, a nice 1.5 hour drive from Caen. 

Our lodgings were at a town called Saint Pair sur Mer.

Upon arrival, the kids ran down to the sand to investigate a person who had been "washed ashore" from a shipwreck. In reality, it was one of our tour guides who had been lying on the wet sand for like 30 minutes in 50 degree windy weather. 

Here's where we stayed for the week. It had direct access to the beach.

The building with the caged staircase was the cafeteria. The dormitory part was off the shot to the left. 

Here's the little "playground" part behind our rooms. 

Here's my room which also had a sink.

Here's a kid, showing off his towel. It looks WAY bigger thank it was. He was suppose to use this washcloth size towel for one week. 

Cafeteria, before and after.

The menu: Mon lunch: beets, hamurger, fried potatoes,green beans, yogurt. Mon. dinner:fish sticks, rice, carrots, chocolate pudding. Tuesday dinner: Pizza, green salad, pana cotta for dessert. Wed dinner: turkey filet, pasta, brocoli, ice cream. Thursday lunch: deviled eggs, spaghetti and meat sauce, pudding. Dinner: oysters, chicken leg, fries and veggies. Fruit for dessert. Friday lunch before heading home: cheese in puff pastry, fish, rice, zuchinni, chocolate eclair for dessert.

View from the cafeteria.

After lunch, we headed out for a walk on the beach. 

Back from the walk, the kids had showered and were ready for dinner. They were in their P.J.'s for dinner at 7PM.

Another afternoon, we went out "fishing" in the tide pools. Just our hands and some buckets to hold our treasures before we released them. 

I'm hard at work, looking for sea creatures.

 

Here's my little shrimp! See him, to the right of the mussle? Transparent little guy, I caught him with my bare hands. 

                                   Below is Thomas explaining and showing what everyone caught.

                                       

One of the proud souls eating oyters on one of the last nights there. Perhaps 15 kids in all out of 75 ate the oysters. 

My thank you cards from the kids as well as my little colored fish. On April Fool's Day in France, the kids color fish and try to tape them discretly onto some unsuspecting victim's back. I have no idea where this comes from, but I find the custom charming.