Bye Gramie

We drove Gramie back to the airport today. She spent 2 weeks with us in Calidornia. her winter vacation matched Etienne's, that was lucky !
Gramie took tons of pictures of Etienne and Elodie, and before she left she sorted them out and wrote her comments on this wonderful album:


Reviens vite nous voir!

Summer with Constance

Click on the picture to see what Etienne and Elodie did with Constance during the past 6 weeks:


As an added bonus, Elodie dramatically improved her French...




and Etienne learned some great French songs...

Can you dream of a better vacation?

Late June we finally flew to France and spent three amazing weeks of vacation:

with our French Family,	with our friends,
and just the two of us.

On top of that we attend the weddings of two of Alain's closest cousins

Pauline and Olivier

Marc and Nathalie

Man, it's going to be difficult to top that next time!

Questions pour un... Champion!

Apres Nagui, Pierre-Louis rencontre Julien Lepers!



PL had theoretically won 500 euros after the first show, but he decided to go for $1000 the following night...



He reached the finals once again but lost but to a history and geography teacher... Maybe Gramie should apply to be a contestant now!!!

Semi-Famous Ancestor

Elodie's great-great-great-great grandfather has its own page and portrait on Wikipedia.


He was a famous geologist in the 19th century and he also directed Ecole des Mines de Paris, the school I graduated from...

His daughter Pauline (1846-1931) married Paul de Raynal (1837-1902), they had a son called Louis (1883-1967), who had a son called Paul (1913-1985), who had a son called Philippe (1949-), who had a son called Alain (1976-), who had a daughter called Elodie (2005-).

YSL Dress

Gramie went back to France last Saturday. Among all the gifts she had brought was a pretty dress that was given to Constance 14 years ago.

Elodie in 2007 @ 21 month old

Constance in 1993 @ 26 month old

Huntington Lake

Nous avons emmené Gramie faire du camping le weekend dernier. Ca se passait a Huntington Lake, dans les sierras entre Yosemite et Kings Canyon. C'est un lac de haute montagne (2100 mètres d'altitude) peu connu et parfait pour la baignade: plage de sable (presque) fin , température de l'eau très correcte, pas de moustique...

US Airways sucks !

Gramie's trip last week was not a pleasant one.

To: US Airways
Customer Relations Department

Subject: Customer Service Complaint and Refund Request


Dear Sir or Madam,

On Thursday, August 16th, 2007, my mother traveled on US Airways from Paris, France to San Francisco with a connection in Philadelphia. Her flight from France (US755) arrived on time in Philadelphia but she missed her second flight (UA189) to San Francisco because of a two-hour long wait in the Immigration line.

Since there were no other direct flights to SFO that evening, she was offered a seat on an alternate route through Las Vegas. She was to arrive at SFO at 1:34am on flight US179, instead of 9:24pm as initially expected.

Flight US 788 landed in Las Vegas 40 minutes late, but she still arrived at the departing gate 25 minutes before departure and expected to board flight US179 at 11:59pm. At that time, she was told that she was not confirmed on that flight, that it was overbooked, and that she would not be allowed to board.
Her suitcase, however, did make the connection and arrived in San Francisco as planned.

After a two-hour long wait at the US Airways desk, she was finally able to call me so I could talk to a US Airways employee and find a solution for her. Much to our dismay, the US Airways supervisor-in-charge in Las Vegas at 3:00am that day claimed that the flight from Las Vegas to SFO was not overbooked and that it was my mother’s fault that she missed the connection to San Francisco. This is absolutely false. In fact, four other people were turned away at the gate in Las Vegas.

The supervisor refused to provide my mother a hotel room. The only request that he accepted was to switch her from the 11:45am direct flight to SFO, to a 6:50am flight to SJC with a connection in Phoenix (flights US3 and US280). So, my mother slept 3 hours in the Las Vegas Airport without her suitcase, and then traveled another 4 hours to her destination early Friday morning.

The whole trip was a nightmare for my mother.

While we understand that US Airways has no control over the length of time waiting for US Immigration clearance, US Airways most certainly does have control over the customer service they extend to their patrons.

Your company made two inexcusable mistakes that day. One, the employee in Philadelphia should never have sent her to Las Vegas without making sure that she would have a seat on the Las Vegas-SFO flight.
Two, the supervisor in Las Vegas should have recognized the mistake that US Airways made and provided her with a hotel room.

My mother was absolutely exhausted when she arrived and we are incensed by the way she was treated by your company.

We expect some kind of compensation for this awful experience. A full refund of the ticket fare (938.04 euros or $1263.54) would be an appropriate way for you to restore the trust we had in your company and to re-assure our loyalty as customers in the future.

We do have a choice when choosing our air travel arrangements and we certainly would not choose US Airways if we are not satisfied with the compensation and apology offered by your company.

I have enclosed copies of her invoice and her e-ticket. My mother will be returning to France soon, but you can contact me directly if you would like to discuss what US Airways can do to rectify the situation.

Sincerely,

Au Revoir Constance...

Constance left this morning but she left us some great pictures...

No School Today !

Constance arrived on Tuesday, and today is the first day when she's taking care of Etienne and Elodie. We're very happy to have such a great "jeune fille au pair" for the next 7 weeks, plus she came with lots of presents ;-)

PL on TV !!!

Pierre-Louis is a big star, he appeared on French TV today!
He was a contestant on a quiz show on France 2: Tout le monde veut prendre sa place, hosted by Nagui.

He did very well ! he defeated all the other challengers by knowing that Igor Stravinsky was the composer of "Le Sacre du Printemps"

In the final, Pierre-Louis answered all 5 questions correctly and scored an amazing 28 points (out of 30).

Unfortunately the defending champion also scored 28 points, and kept his title. Pierre-Louis was inches away from winning the 2800 euros jackpot, oh no !

Bien joué, Pilou !

Bye bye Gramie :-(

Monday marks the end of the winter vacation in Paris, so Gramie left yesterday. We're all very sad. Have a look at all the fun we've had together over the past 2 weeks

Welcome Gramie!

Gramie arrived from France yesterday and she's going to stay 2 full weeks with us! Etienne pretended not to recognize her after almost 7 months apart, but within 45 minutes, all he wanted to do was to play with her...
Elodie always tries to imitate her brother so they're competing for "Gramie time".
Stephanie and I enjoyed having a babysitter ready to take care of Etienne at 7:30 am on Saturday morning ;-)

A message from Gramie

We have a family tradition in Neulette. Every time a baby is born, we plant a tree ! So last week Gramie and Constance planted a Red Jewel Crabapple in honor of Elodie...


Coucou, je suis un petit arbre, pas plus haut que toi, mais on ne dira pas "haut comme 3 pommes" car j'en ai déjà une douzaine, pas plus grosses que des billes, et red red

Pour l'instant j'attends dans mon pot que les vaches rentrent définitivement à l'étable, et d'ici 15 jours monsieur lombard m'installera entre le tennis et la petite maison, pour qu'on puisse me voir de la terrasse quand j'aurai grandi ( l'année prochaine, il y aura un rang de barbelés qui isolera totalement le bas de la pâture harley, pour agrandir le jardin de granny )

Au printemps ,j'ai des fleurs superbes, et c'est constance qui m'a choisi pour mes fleurs ROSES, au lieu de mes voisins à fleurs blanches, car je crois que ta maman aime beaucoup le rose et probablement que tu hériteras de ses goûts

J'ai donc une origine américaine comme l'érable de ton frère


UPDATE on January 5th, 2007:
Constance emailed me a picture of the actual tree:



It seems like it's as tall as Elodie... let's see who grows faster...

Marraine/Godmother

Elle, c'est Constance et elle a accepté d'être ma marraine !
C'est la babysitter (et l'amie) préférée d'Etienne et je suis sure qu'elle sera également parfaite pour s'occuper d'une petite fille comme moi !