AllanThinks

By The Chimney With Care

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It's the eve of Christmas Eve. The kids are in bed. They crashed early tonight thanks to jet lag. Alison is wrapping their gifts in the dining room.

Our Christmas here will take place a day early this year. The kids will find their gifts beneath the tree when they awake in the morning, we will have a nice meal of roast chicken and all the extras. Maybe we will watch some movies together.

On Christmas day, we will load up the car, and head off to do it all again.

Having multiple celebrations of the holiday seems like a pretty sweet deal. And in any other year, I would think so. But this one is a hard one for me. It's really hard.

Be Careful This Holiday Season

Home, Sweet Home

Alison, her kids, and I made it home late yesterday afternoon after an exhausting journey involving more airports than I ever wish to see in the course of a day again.

After a simple dinner of sandwiches, I sorted through the accumulated mail, and Ali and the kids watched a movie. We were all in bed, asleep, by ten. Of course, that means we were up earlier than we would have liked. Ali and I were awake and making a pot of coffee at 5. The kids stayed in bed a bit longer.

But, at least, we got a good night's sleep, and a head start on getting over the jet lag. And we will be able to get out and about to do some last minute shopping before the crowds hit the local retail areas.

After we are done with the shopping, I'm thinking it might be a good day to build a fire in the fireplace and watch movies.

I hope your Saturday will be filled with family, fun, and love.

"Lord I was born a ramblin' man."

Alison and I are getting ready to vacate the gîte, and begin our trek back to Lexington.

It is customary to leave a rental such as this as spotless as you found it when you moved in. This one was immaculate. Alison wrote the other day about how nervous it made her. But I think we will be leaving it in very good shape.

The floors are vacuumed and mopped, and we are going to go have lunch somewhere. We will finish packing when we return.

We will pick up the kids when they get out of school this afternoon, and drive to Bordeaux, where we will spend the night in a hotel. We have to get up early in the morning to return the rental car and board our flight to Paris.

We will then board another very long flight back to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, followed by an hour drive back to Lexington. We should be home early Friday evening.

As usual, it has been an adventure. Full of fun, meeting old and new friends, and the consumption of wonderful food.

And the traveling isn't over. In a few short days we heading off again to spend time with Ali's family for the holidays.

See you all soon.

Got Jetlag?

Alison and I made it to France, and have settled into the house we are renting for the week.

We realized that we had gone for more than 24 hours without sleep. It was impossible to sleep on the flight over. The plane was packed, and we were surrounded by some of the most annoying fellow passengers you could ever imagine.

Ugh.

I wish I could afford for us to fly first class on international flights.

In any case, as I said, we are settled in. The kids are spending the weekend with us. Ali cooked a wonderful meal last night, and afterward, we sat down to watch Shrek the Third. Well, Ali and the kids watched it. I fell asleep on the sofa and missed the entire thing. I went into our bedroom to check the internet (yeah, we have tenuous internet access, thanks to a neighbor with an open router), and crashed on the bed.

I awoke sometime during the night in a dark room, fully clothed, and covered with a quilt. I went right back to sleep, and woke again at about 6 a.m. local time. I had slept for 10 hours.

Ali had slept in the kids room, and had awoken a little bit before me.

I guess that puts us back on a relatively normal schedule.

It is very cold here, but the skies are clear, and it promises to be a beautiful day. I don't know what we will end up doing, but I don't think we will spend it inside.

Time to put some kilometers on this unlimited mileage car we rented.

Up, up, and away!

Alison and I are out of here for a few days.

We might, or might not, have internet access where we are going.

If not, we will see you when we return.

Alas

Another Photo Without A Title

Clicking the image will take you to its Flickr page. You can see a larger version there.

Exposure:  0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/40
Focal Length: 105 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: -2/3 EV
Light Source: Flash