So many things...

So many things have happened within a short amount of time.

First - Last Wednesday the 22nd, my Grandfather (actually, great-uncle) passed away. While I was home I took him to and from multiple doctor's appointments, we moved him into a nursing home, and we watched as dementia began to over-take his mind. He was 89 years old, and an Army veteran who served in WWII. He was buried yesterday. This is a picture of him from early 2002, shortly after he and his wife moved from New York down to Georgia to live with our family. I think that was the last time he saw snow in Georgia. His sister was my Mom's mother, and she was the one who had the red hair that I inherited.

Next - Tuesday evening, David and I went with a large group of Students from GTL, to play laser tag! It was a lot of fun. We broke up into teams of 10-11 people and then each team had the opportunity to play every other team. My team was team "E". We did really well, after the first game (it was just our warm up game). I went from a negative score of -450 and a rank of 21/23 to a positive score of 1600 (still not that high) and a rank of 10/23...and I was on a team of all guys...so that's pretty good, right?

There was only one problem...the vest we had to wear that had the sensors on it was a little big on me and I ended up getting bruises on my arms. They are actually really uncomfortable.

We also had our carte de sejour renewal meeting today (the reason we had to be back here in France by this week). Everything went smoothly and quickly believe it or not. The thing we find particularly interesting is that everytime we have to submit paperwork for something we had to include a copy of our marriage certificate. ...even for a renewal. Oh well, Josyane has about 50 copies so at least we won't run out!

Lastly - Today, official plans have been made to send Duncan. David and I will be going Germany to spend the weekend with Cori in hopes that on Monday the weather in Georgia will remain cool enough for Duncan to get on a plane. It can't be warmer than 85 degrees or Delta won't allow him to fly. The uncertainty makes me nervous, so I bet you can guess what I'll be praying about the entire weekend. :o)

That's all for today. I'll leave you with a picture of Duncan, from yesterday, pre-yawn...isn't he cute?

Full First Day

David and I had big plans for today...so here is how today went:

David set an alarm last night (and I was unaware of this) for 6am. His plan was to start waking up earlier so that he'd begin to get into the habit, in order to force himself to be productive earlier in the day. This also works for me because once Duncan is here he will want to go on early morning walks since he won't be able to go outside whenever he wants to anymore. ANYWAY, I woke up around 1:30pm and rolled over to wake up David. He then asked me "Did you hear the alarm this morning?" To which I answered "No." ...haha, he had heard the alarm and still didn't get up...even 7 hours later. Oops! So that set our day behind a few more hours than scheduled.

So instead of making a yummy quiche for breakfast, it was our lunch. Actually I was surprised by the quiche. It didn't taste like my quiche's used to. It tasted more like scrambled eggs. Granted, it is a lot like scrambled eggs, with onion and ham and cheese, but before it tasted more quichey. Oh well, it was good. I guess the 8 months in the US has affected my in-France cooking skills.

After quick showers we made our shopping lists and headed out! We each had bus passes that we never finished using back in December that still work - fwew! We headed over to the new shopping area near Cora to look in a store called "Saturn" (not a car dealership) it's an electronics store...like a Circuit City. The goal was to look at TVs that would be compatable (have the right inputs) for our Wii. Our initial thoughts were that somewhere people would be selling really old, big and bulky, somewhat large sized TVs that might have the right inputs, but that really isn't the case anymore. I never once saw a TV that wasn't a flat screen. So anyway, we looked at a few and narrowed it down to two, and before we knew it we had decided on one and jsut got it! I was surprised...David never makes a purchase that quickly qith so little research. He describes his mindset in this way "It's not like we're going to be keeping this TV for any length of time so I don't have to make sure it's the best out there at this size for this price." True, so true. So we have this TV...here's what it looks like:Oh, we rearranged our apartment again too...here is a preview:
Then we went to Cora to get a few essential things that we didn't get at our downtown ATAC (grocery store) last night...cereal (it's not that the ATAC doesn't have it, they just don't have a good variety - aka nothing we like), salsa for our tacos, milk, laundry detergent, and a big apple juice. After Cora we skipped going to GTL because it was too late and nobody would be there.

When we arrived home I made tacos for dinner. Did you know that our first meal here in our apartment was tacos? Now you do. Keep that in mind for future Swafford trivia. After dinner we went on a walk - David's idea (miracle!). The weather here has been great so far. The temperature is what I'm referring to really. Today was like a nice cool fall day. The sun was out a little, but clouds shaded the ground. It's funny, most of the people here are already wearing light scarves and jackets. I was walking around in a tank top. It was lovely.

Speaking of the weather, I had a brilliant idea today, and I really wish I had thought of this last year. But really, last year is the reason why I thought of this. Starting with yesterday, I am going to keep a record of whether it rains or not each day, everyday...and I'm going to make charts at the end of each month and at the end of the year to show the percentage of time that it rains here. But I really wish I had thought if this last year because then I would have proof that 98% of the days last year, it rained. I'm hoping this year the weather will put my idea to shame, but just in case I'll be ready! Just to keep you up to date, so far it is 50/50!

That's all for today!

8 months later

For the last 8 months, David and I have been living in Georgia so that David could work in one of Georgia Tech's clean rooms. He worked very hard, but also a lot longer than he though he would have to. That is why we are just now returning to France. So, to make up for the last 8 months I will do a quick bullet list of things that I probably would have written about in more detail.

• Return home mid-December
• Celebrate our 1-year anniversary
• Celebrate Christmas
• Happy New Year!
• Phillip and Eileen's wedding
• Buy a Wii
  
• Celebrate Rock Dunlap's life
• Move David's parents into their new house
• Mom has total hip replacement surgery
• Trip to the Mountains
  
• Nathan and Rebecca's wedding
• Renovate my old bedroom - paint walls, put in hardwood floors
  
• Rocky goes to Colorado for the summer
• Finish Scuba certification
  
• Grandpa Pete's cuts off part of his thumb
• Ashley and Nathan's wedding
  
• Nurses come to stay at the house to help Grandma around the clock
• David's Dad buys back his old lake house - we go skiing, a lot.
• Grandpa move's to a nursing home
• Learn to slalom ski - ski a lot more
• Luke and Danielle's wedding and Kathryn and Matt's wedding on the same day!!
• Go hang out in Alabama
• Get Duncan ready to be sent to live with us!
• Accumulate TONS of family tree information to add to family tree software
  
• David's parents get their home theater set up
• Go to Florida to scuba dive
  
• Watch Olympics
• pack, leave.

Yep, that covers most of it. Since we have been back we have reestablished ourselves in our apartment. I think we've figured out and remembered where everything is. We haven't seen anyone we know yet (except for Audric who we saw ride by on the bus). Lots of our friends have left Metz. It's almost going to be like starting over.

One of the first things that happened to us when we stepped off the bus at the train station was that we were approached by a man handing out brochures about his church. This is particularly interesting because we think we might have already heard the pastor of his church one time at the other church we were attending. After he visited we told each other that we wished we knew where his church was because #1 - his French was easy to understand and #2 - he taught with a lot more scripture than the pastor/other people that were teaching at the other church. So, we are going to try to find them this Sunday and see how we like it. It will even be closer to where we live - maybe we won't have to ride the bus 3o minutes anymore!

Tomorrow we will journey over to the Technopole to get our carte de sejour renewal paperwork ready. Then we're going to start looking for a tv that will work with our Wii! And all the while I will be checking the weather back in Georgia to see when Duncan can be sent to us :o)

More later.