At the end of September 2016, our village organized a medieval festival as a get together. This small (about 2000 inhabitants) mountain village is divided into hamlets (neighborhoods). Ours is called "Le Bourg", my parents’ is "La Bourgeat". There’s also "Le Sauzet", "Les Contamines", "Le Galapant", "Les Cornets", "Les Molettes", "Les Geymonds", "La Tour" etc.
Every two to four years a local association called "Cneuf" organizes an event where all these hamlets come together and compete for a trophy. The theme changes every time. Each hamlet is supposed to organize a parade with costumes, dances and music and we compete in several games. This year the theme was "medieval festival".
Our hamlet picked the title "Les troubadours du Bourg" because of all the musicians we have among us. A neighbor and I spent many hours sewing tunics for our participants. Some of our neighbors wrote a song. We had a customized banner and a shield, we decorated our base/fort and chose a knight and a princess for our group. It took a lot of planning but it helped us all get better acquainted.
The "Troubadours du Bourg" in front of their fort. Joshua the proud banner carrier.
Our parade: we fancified it with a horse. It was fun, festive and low-key as one would expect from troubadours.
Joshua, best archer in the kingdom of Revel
Other hamlets had incredible costumes and choreographies. This one was my favorite:
Getting creative with the theme: elves, Gandalf, Gollum, and an army of dark knights doing the haka!
There was a lot of dancing: the hamlet "Les Contamines" also got creative and picked the title "Les contaminés (the contaminated)". They dressed as lepers and danced to Mickael Jackson’s Thriller song. When the Lord of the Rings hamlet started playing the same song after their parade, the contaminated joined them, and eventually the entire village joined the fun.
The climax of the event was this gigantic dragon built by one of the hamlets:
It had motorized wings that could flap, a neck that could bend up and down, a mouth that could open and close and it breathed smoke!
After each hamlet paraded in front of the king, the competition started.
A joust battle between our knight and another hamlets’
Josh is sentenced to the pillory (voluntarily)
Josh helped us win a lot of points with his aiming skills !
All in all I think half the population of the village attended that event. It was very popular and every one had a ton of fun. As a first-time participant I was seriously impressed. I didn’t know our village housed such talented people. A local news channel covered the event. How exciting seeing our little village on the news a few days later !
Wonder what the sign of a mom’s true love is ? I’ll tell you: it’s registering her kids to soccer practice. Eventhough I dragged my feet and suggested every alternative I could think of, I eventually had to give in, they absolutely wanted to play soccer.
Fortunately two other friends from Josh’s class were also interested in doing soccer this year, so I teamed up with their moms so I wouldn’t have to do all the driving to and fro.
The small town of Saint-Martin-d’Uriage, near our village has a small family-oriented club. That’s where we chose to sign up. They go every wednesday for an hour and a half of practice and we meet with other teams in the neighboring towns on Saturdays.
With their soccer friends (Arthur and Mathys) at their practice field in Saint-Martin-d’Uriage
Practicing in the garden (or playing basket ball with cleats in Grand-papa and Grand-maman’s garden)
With all these summer activities, Em and I hadn’t had a chance to see each other in too many months so we decided to spend a short week-end together. She drove to our place one or two weeks after the beginning of school. It felt like we were extending our summer break a little longer. After discovering the Lac du Monteynard with my siblings earlier in the summer I was excited to share it with Em and Sam.
This time we added a ferry ride to the adventure.
The ferry dropped us off on the other side of the lake and we had to return to our car hiking along a trail with a beautiful view on the lake and then accross the himalayan bridge.
Sam, Josh and William always have so much fun together.
Water fight and silliness
We finished our adventure skipping rocks on the lake and then we headed home tired but fully satisfied with our day.
After a long fun-packed summer, going back to real life is a bit hard but the boys are always excited to get back together with their friends.
This year William is in CP !! (1st grade) and Joshua in CE2 (3rd).
For their first day of class pictures these two sillies decided to pose facing away from me... How rebellious.
With Arthur, Sacha, Nolan, Ulysses, Severin and Mathys (sitting on the steps)
This year Joshua is in a class with 7 third graders and 17 or so fourth graders. It is tough being separated from the other third graders, but he is excited to be in a class with older kids. His teacher is the school director, Mme Zampa.
with Noa and Nathan
William’s grade level is also combined with a few kids from the next grade level (there’s only 12 kids in his age group in the school). His teacher is Audrey.
On my phone, I have about 50 pictures of Josh, William and me blowing bubbles on a hot sunday afternoon after church. Josh took most of the pictures, along with a few videos where we can hear a very obnoxious William whining in the background. The videos are so brutally realistic I kept them as a reminder of how cute and insufferable my kids can be at the same time.
Here the boys are taking a bow after performing stunts for us on the swing set. They can spend hours rehearsing a performance. Then they call the entire family for their show (Here was act n°1).
Coraline and Nicki always bring fun things for the kids when they come to visit. These giant inflatable animals were a huge hit.
Spoiled nephew
Bowling with Coco, Nicki, Grand-parents and cousins.
Stunt show act II :
The public:
The rest of the public (putting on their own silly/ugly face show coincidently)
The traditional annual hike to the lac du Crozet with Coco and Nicki:
A few days later, Nicki came up with the idea of rappelling down the house.What would be do without this girl ?
Josh and William went to the Rec Center in Gieres at the end of August. This is what Josh looked like when I picked him up the last day :D !
Also, Nicki introduced us to the masterpiece movie "That thing you do". I pretty much died laughing. Here’s William reenacting Lenny’s card game scene.
"I play a lot of cards. Obviously. Wanna see my deck?
See you gotta be quick!"
Another annual tradition : this hike around Revel.
