La Cote d'Arbroz

In order to stay distracted, after dropping Erin off at the airport in the morning, we drove into the French Alps in the evening to Pierre-Paul's grandparents home.  We arrived with enough light to play several rounds of badminton--we could beat those Chinese players, for sure :)

We enjoyed lots of french chatter and discussions.  Dan read to Nate in french and then translated what he didn't follow.  Ryan was reading french on his own :)

 While we waited for kids to get moving, Dan, Yves and I went out mushroom hunting.  We walked up a path a ways then went off into the woods in a very steep creek then started scouring the hill.  It took us awhile to figure out what to look for (even after Yves showed us the pictures at home) and to know what was edible and what was poisonous.  We actually returned with enough mushrooms to fill 3 frying pans that we ate with our raclette that night.

Nate

The parents of Paul who live in Lyon, who Erik did an exchange with while we were in Morocco and then Paul came to Oregon to practice his English for 2 weeks, 2 years ago, and who are the uncle and aunt of Pierre-Paul, (end of clause), came up Saturday so we (the parents) could finally meet.  After a fabulous lunch we headed out for a hike in the alps.

Laurence (mother of Paul), Pierre-Paul, Kent, Dan and Lucette (grandma) in the back.

Nice little cabin along our path.

One more hour until milking--check out those udders!

Mont Blanc in the middle, just barely cresting above the clouds.

Pierre, Kent, Dan, Pierre-Paul, Lori
We are not all on even ground :)

These look like some Dr. Suess drawing.

Paul, Lori, Kent, Yves, Pierre-Paul

On our way back down we stopped just in time for the dog to round up the cows for milking.  The cows lined up in front of the green milking barn.  As soon as one milking was finished, the door in front would open for the cow to leave and another cow would walk right in, ready for her milking.

Such a lovely setting for a milk farm.  This is the summer option.  Nice, open air.  The green thing is a trailer so they just hook it up to a truck and move it down lower during the winter months.

Pierre-Paul chatting it up with the cows while they wait--they all understood french very well.