Good flying weather in Philly yesterday or What ever happened to Max's birthday blog?

Just look at that sky! From what Mom told us, there were pink clouds and a wide, blue horizon (not to mention a kind of ghostly ladder to heaven) over gate F5 at Philadelphia International Airport at 4pm Eastern time yesterday.

That was the 16th of November, just a run-of-the-mill, fall Monday. While Malcolm, Max and I - Henry that is - were working hard at school, Mom and Stella were taking off for the States by plane!

Stella's looking pretty cocky in this picture, ain't she?
I mean, can you believe it! She gets kicked out of school for her horrendous behaviour and the best way Mom and Papa can think to punish her is to send her to Detroit for Thanksgiving...
Ummm, we're wondering if we shouldn't get kicked out of school too...
Max was pretty shocked by the whole thing, I can tell you. Turned his hair prematurely gray and...

...the frustration of it (not to mention the fact that he did turn 17 five days ago) gave him worry lines.

I, for one, can understand that. I mean, Max, who, between two cleaning jobs, has been working really hard trying to catch up on all the homework he missed while in Helsinki... didn't even get an honorable mention on the blog for his birthday back on the 12th... Is that fair?

And even if he was very happy that Sunshine Cleaners did win an exceptionally well paid bid to nettoyer (that's the cool French word for to clean by the way) and reorganize our bedroom (he'd been counting on the contract to be able to finance properly the fancy, private shindig he was planning to throw for his pals on his 17th birthday)...

...the injustice of it all just ate at him until Max did seem to go a bit crazy when he became fully aware of the enormity of the task in front of him.

Then Mom and Malcolm realized he was actually just following the dwarves example and whistling while he worked!

Malcolm thought that looked way more fun than separating Legos from Playmobiles so he decided to get in on the whistling action too.

And where was I, you're wondering, while they were whistling? Let me think, let me think...

Ah, yes. That was the day my friend Tom came over. We didn't quite know what we were going to do that day - definitely not clean, though, that's for sure - so we put on our Siamese twin thinking cap to see if we couldn't come up with any bright ideas...

Anyone for a game of Apartment Ping Pong?



How 'bout Fun in a Bag?

Later, Tom discovered that, although usually two heads are better than one...

...the thinking cap seemed to work better when it was placed on just one head. That must have been when he conceived of his diabolical plan to take all Le Fish's toys out of his playtank and replace them with a zen garden...

...Poor Le Fish! All alone! No scuba diver, no golf ball, no plastic staircase!

Poor Max! More Playmobiles to sort out in our bedroom! He was pretty cool about it though...

...especially in black and white...

...especially when we finally agreed to help him!


So Max made enough money to have his birthday bash but, I remind you, it was a private party, invitation only, means no parents, means no brothers or sister, means no photos for the blog, right? Right! None of us was around for the festivities. I went to spend the night at Cledo's across the street (and although I did keep an eye on the living room windows across the way, I didn't get to see any of the party action, except Ulysse pretending to knock the ash from his cigarette into Le Fish's tank...); Malcolm went to Nil's, Stella to Julie's - bien sur - and Mom and Papa went to sleep over at Isabelle's like 16 years ago when they made Max! When we got back the next morning there were hardly any signs that fun had been had there ALL night long...

...there were some plastic cups in the kitchen...

...Ulysse had left his backpack and his mini sound system in the living room...

...Well, now, this looks pretty bad, doesn't it? Oh, on, that's a mistake. That's just Stella's room on an ordinary day...

...there was some evidence that Sunshine Cleaners had been in early to whip the place back into shape before Mom and Papa got home!
Apparently, a very good time was had by all 25 guets! Max even got some nice presents : Ulysse and his brother made a tastey chocolate cake... Daoud gave Max a bottle of organic mint syrup for making mint juleps (with no julep in them, thank you)...and there were a few other presents but we'll leave it at that. Suffice it to say that this...

...was not one of Max's presents. That's just a sea trout I fished out of our kitchen sink Sunday morning. I was just as surprised to find it there as it was to be there.

Luckily, Papa knew what to do with it...

...although Max was a bit dubitative.

Sea trout?!! Ummmm, that's not quite his dream breakfast. Nor Le Fish's...

...It was more like a nightmare for him! He rather paled at the sight!
So anyway, before taking off on US Airways flight 755, Stella did have a good breakfast...

...under the vigilant eye of the White Fairy...

...the Black and White Goddess...

...and Thierry still avidly practicing Krogstadt, his role in A Doll's House, the Ibsen play he's working on at the moment>

But Mom says, Stella's arrival in Detroit and the things she found there...


...the beauty and the loving kindness, will have to be told another day.

Halloween in Haguenau (Part II) (Halloween à Haguenau - suite et fin)

Halloween in Haguenau was a pretty grizzly, black and white affair as you can see.

Halloween à Haguenau nous réservait quelques frissons en noir et blanc comme vous pouvez le constater.

But before we scare any sensitive souls away entirely, we'll first give you a few of the more peaceful moments we spent with Papy, Mamy and our cousins.

Mais avant de faire fuire toutes les âmes sensibles, voici quelques images plus paisibles de notre séjour Haguenauvien. Tout d'abord, comme tous les ans nous avons levé nos verres à la santé de Mamy! Verres pleins de jus de pomme artisanal, pressé annuellement par Papy a partir des fruits de ses pommiers d'Etueffont.

First off, a toast to Mamy! We're drinking homemade apple juice pressed by Papy. He makes it every year from the apples he gathers in his small orchard in Etueffont. (In the foreground here, you see Simon, Alban's older brother who is just a few months older than Stella.) And in this next picture you see us cousins in concert. Henry on the violin and Alban on the glockenspiel - that's the cool German word for xylophone, right? In Alsace people sometimes use cool German words!

Cousins en concert!

Henry au violon et Alban sur le glockenspiel - c'est comme ça qu'on dit xylophone en Allemand quand on est des djeunes cools, n'est-ce pas?

And, as we said in the last post, Papy took us to the forest to commune with nature...

Papy, qui est un grand amoureux de la nature, nous a emené en forêt où il a tenté de partager avec nous sa passion pour les arbres...

Bon. Nous aimons les arbres mais il faut admettre que nous préférons jouer à Tarzan...

OK, OK! We love trees too, but we prefered the action figure version of our walk in the woods...Here we are doing Tarzan!

Here we are at boot camp!

Parfois, il nous fallait des béquilles pour avancer...

But they let Malcolm keep his greenish-blue sneakers...

Even Papy managed some of the easier exercises as long as one of us stayed alongside to reassure him!

Même Papy s'y est mis! Et avec notre assistance vigilente...

...il y est arrivé! Bravo, Papy!

But, at heart, Papy is basically just a mild mannered nature lover. And I - Malcolm that is - can relate to that.

Mais au fond, malgré ses exploits sportifs, Papy reste un promeneur solitaire plein de rêveries... même quand il n'est pas seul...et moi - c'est à dire Malcolm - je veux bien le suivre dans cette voie.

Alright, already! Let's get back to Halloween! Bon, bon, et Halloween, alors?

Henry went as Scary Movie V... Henry était déguisé en Scary de Scary Movie!

Stella was disguised as... Stella s'est déguisée en...

...well no one's really sure what Stella went as but, unlike us, she was far more frightening in color!

...Eh bien, personne savait exactement en quoi Stella s'était déguisée mais, à l'encontre de Henry et moi, elle était bien plus effrayante en couleur qu'en noir et blanc! Bien que, en couleurs, Alban avait un petit côté Benny's Video qui faisait assez froid dans le dos...

Although, Alban, even in color, reminds Mom and Papa of Straw Dogs and that's bad enough! But, basically, in color or black and white, we loved our masks!

En gros, couleur ou noir et blanc, on était super contents de nos masques!

Henry looks a little like Micheal Jackson, no? Henry ressemble un peu à Micheal Jackson à la fin, non?

Unlike last year when we got almost as much candy as horse chestnuts...

Au contraire de l'an passé, quand nous avons récolté quasiment autant de bonbons que de marrons d'Inde...

...this year's haul was fairly meager. ...cette année, le butin fut maigrelet.

But, but... oh no! Did Atlas get into the candy! Bad Dog!!!

Mais, ah, là,là! Atlas a fait sur les bonbons! Ce n'est pas bien! Non! Non! Non!

I admit, Alban and Henry were a bit angry with Atlas for pooping on the treats...

Bon, faut admettre que c'est assez rageant quand un chien fait ses besoins sur les bonbons, mais quand même les gars...

...but still, Halloween or not, that was no reason to do away with him entirely!

...vous aurez pu avoir un peu pitié....ce n'est qu'un chien après tout, il ne comprend pas toujours tout...

Too late! Chalk another one up for All Saint's Day, boys.

C'est trop tard, les gars! Il est mort et enterré! Encore une âme à fèter pour La Toussaint 2010!