Monday July 17, Milhas, France

Weather was warm and sunny.  

Jessica’s birthday…she turned  18.

Today was a laid-back day.  We did laundry at Emmanuella’s.  Line dried the clothes.  Josh got eggs from the hen house and picked lettuce from the garden.  

Josh had a lot of fun playing with their son Baptiste.  And Jessica even held their baby, Louis, for a while.  

Josh and Paul went down to the stream to fish.  Traipsed through the field where the sheep grazed – had to step carefully.  And there was no place to sit when they got there, and lots of ants.  However, the pool was a good place for fish.  But they did not catch any.  Only afterwards did Emmanuella mention  the snakes.  

Emmanuella, Jessica, and Mary walked through town and into the country.  The town is small and quite quaint with lots of flowers.  The hydrangeas were particularly pretty.  

Emmanuella showed Mary where the women used to gather to do laundry.  

And, an old factory where they extracted ore from local rock to make the black paint for the Eiffel Tower.  Emmanuella got a rock for Josh like they used to use for the black paint.  

Emmanuella made a nice birthday dinner for Jessica – spaghetti and a cake with candles. 

 

After dinner, they gave Jessica a bow for her birthday, and Josh a stick propeller.  We gave them presents too:  peanut butter (requested before we left home – apparently hard to get in France), 49er hats, a bath toy for Lois, and several activity books for Baptiste.