Jours de Mai

The days of our May were filled with sunny weather, thunderstorms, books, friends, a fever virus, Mother's Day, an anniversary, my first photography gig in Paris, finishing up school, our first French road trip...I guess May was more full than I originally thought!  What was your May filled with?

May 1 - beautiful yellow flowering tree

May 2 - Petit Garcon, Grand Palais

May 3 - Blossoms and Cobblestones

May 4 - A Basement of Books

May 5 - A Mystery Read for Book Club

May 6 - After-Church Picnic

May 7 - Ma Famille at Giverny

May 8 - Normandy Coast for V-E Day

May 9 - The American Cemetery looking over Paris

May 10 - Silly Selfies

May 11 - French Toast for Supper

May 12 - Iced Coffee All the Time

May 13 - Sick Baby James

May 14 - A Quote from The Secret Adversary

"She felt morally battered to the ground after her conflict with Julius's vigorous personality."

I've felt that way; have you?  But still, the world needs people with vigorous personalities, too!

May 15 - The French garden designers of old loved straight lines.

May 16 - A View from the Louvre

May 17 - An Evening Reading Picnic

May 18 - A Colorful French Village

May 19 - Book Exchange/Royal Wedding Party

May 20 - Most Impressive Monument

May 21 - Golden Light

May 22 - Anniversary Flowers

May 23 - Morning Lego Play

May 24 - Lovely Friends

May 25 - I don't want to post a picture of my feet, but let's just say I discovered the joys of reading in the sun on the balcony this day. 

May 27 - Memorial Day Fly-Over

May 28 - I ordered an angel food cake with cherry pie filling from an online American shop for K.J. for our anniversary.  It's his favorite.

May 29 - The American Library in Paris keeps us so well-supplied with reading material.

May 30 - A Beautiful Morning

May 31 - We've had so many blue-sky mornings followed by evening thunderstorms.  They've been delightful.

Friday Favorites, vol. vii

Yay, Friday!  We've had a really good week 'round these parts enjoying having Seth here with Lua and enjoying Paris together.  After lots of walking the kids and I are looking forward to a day at home.  I need to catch up on laundry and housework and prepare for the weekend ahead.  Our host here in Paris works for the American Battle Monuments Commission, the government agency that honors the sacrifices of American Armed Forces in part by caring for American Cemeteries in foreign countries.  There are a lot of big ceremonies taking place this Memorial Day weekend in France, and I'm helping by photographing at two of the ceremonies outside of Paris on Sunday.  It will be a full day, but I'm really looking forward to it.

On to my favorite things this week!

1.  watching the royal wedding with a newly-formed book club I'm part of

Weddings are just beautiful and special in all they represent, and I was glad I tuned in to watch.

2.  walking around Paris Sunday night with Seth and Lua

We typically try not to keep the kids out too late, but with the long summer nights kicking in and the nice weather and Seth having arrived, we made an exception to the rule.  It was such a gorgeous night and totally worth it.

Emily P. Freeman's The Next Right Thing podcast is always a weekly favorite for me, and last week's episode was about taking a hometown tour.  Paris is obviously not my hometown in the sense that I'm from here, but it is my hometown for this season, and I appreciated her gentle words:

"Whether you just moved to where you live now,

or if you were born in the hospital down the street--

the place where you live is part of who you are now.

This place holds your story, at least a piece of it.

This is the place where God wants to meet you,

for better or worse."

And her closing prayer was so good:

"Remind us that even as you are the God of Israel,

you are the God of our own hometown, too."

It reminded me of one of my favorite passages from the book of Acts.

"From one man he has made every 

nationality to live over the whole earth 

and has determined their appointed times 

and the boundaries of where they live.  

He did this so that they might seek God, 

and perhaps they might reach out and find him, 

though he is not far from each one of us."

- Acts 17:26-27 -

All the places you and I have lived, and where we live right now, are purposeful.

3.  meeting a couple from Denmark on Sunday

Speaking of all the nationalities and boundaries on earth, one of the joys I'm finding of being part of an international church in an international city is meeting people from all over the world as they are passing through Paris.  I'd never met anyone from Denmark before, and the immediate kinship you feel with other Christians is such a sweet thing, as is hearing about how God has used the places they've lived to cause them to seek him.

4.  anniversary date!

We abandoned the thought of a fancy Paris outing for Five Guys and a summer blockbuster.  I don't think we're fancy people.

5.  a long talk with my mom

This time difference thing makes it so difficult to connect with family back home, so I was grateful when K.J. took the kids out for the afternoon this week, and I had some quiet time to "phone home."  FaceTime makes you feel like you're sitting on the sofa for a nice long chat, and it was such a treat.  

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

14 Years

One of the best things I ever did was edit our wedding ceremony down to 12 minutes that I can watch every year.  It is such a delight.  

This year I felt really aware of those who took part in that special day who are now with Jesus:  my piano teacher, Mrs. June, K.J.'s Pop and my Papa.  

Wedding Highlights from KJ Pugh on Vimeo.

I'm so thankful to my parents who have "given of their sons to bear the message glorious."  I'm thankful for my mom who made all the wedding day decisions because choosing things stresses me out.  I'm thankful to my dad who loves surprises.  I still laughed with joy when the cannons blew out streamers and confetti.  

And most of all I need to be thankful to a loving God, a Father who chose K.J. Pugh for me because decisions stress me out, and I couldn't have chosen so well on my own.  It's a gift to be his wife.

Summer Vacation - Monday Musings, vol. iii

This week is an exciting one for us because it's our first week of summer vacation.  My 14th wedding anniversary is tomorrow, which warranted a day off from teaching school, and our friend and Lua's husband Seth is here this week.  Both of these things together made deciding to end school a week earlier than I planned seem like a good idea.  So we are!

But here's the truth about a home-school summer, you still kind of do a lot of the same things, but with the freedom to not do them.  We'll still read books and do some creative writing.  And I'll make the kids do a page of math now and then, and maybe we'll even do the occasional science experiment?  Who knows?!  But we'll be free to enjoy the most beautiful time of the year.  It will also give us time to really take advantage of living in Paris proper for the next month.  If all goes well, we expect to be moving into a place of our own in a suburb of Paris in the next month or two.  All the moving logistics that will need to be taken care of are another good reason to be done with school in the month of June.  I just realized I'm giving all kinds of reasons for ending school at the end of May because when K.J. let that drop to a French man we were speaking with, I felt like he thought we were irresponsible parents since French kids go to school into July.  I promise we haven't been taking all these holidays French kids have had the past couple of months!  I kind of felt like I needed to say.  

I can't believe it's our last week with Lua.  She feels like part of our family, and she's been such a blessing to so many in our community here.  We thought she would be here longer, but hallelujah, her green card interview has been scheduled for early June so she'll hopefully be joining her husband soon, which is where she belongs.  We'll let her go right after she babysits for us so we can go out for our anniversary.  😊

"If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man, 

Compare with me, ye women, if you can."

- Anne Bradstreet -

Friday Favorites, vol. vi

This week seemed to go by really quickly!  Here are some of my favorite things from the past seven swiftly-passing days.

1.  reading The King in the Window to the kids

K.J.'s mom found this book about a 12-year-old American boy in Paris that she gave us for Christmas, and since it is filled with locations around Paris and Versailles that we'll get to see, and has humor aimed at middle-grade kids, it's been such a fun read this week.  We're about halfway through it.

2.  looking through old family photos

Thank you for all your kind words on my Mother's Day post.  It was pure nostalgia!

3.  attending a small group at a lovely home outside the city

We relished the company, the quiet, and the smell of roses.  Paris has a lot of beautiful things, but it also has millions of people, cigarette smoke, honking horns, and the roar of a dozen motorcycles in your ears.  Walking down quiet streets was nice.

4.  visiting the Louvre with Lua

It was so fun to go after dinner when it was less crowded and without the kids this time.  The Louvre is so big, and we walked thousands of steps before finding what we were looking for, which is not the most fun thing to do with kids.  The Egyptian things are just so, so cool.

5.  being creative

I thought I would make a little something bookish for our ladies book exchange tomorrow to remember the day.  I thought and thought about what quote might encapsulate marriage and books, but then realized it was obviously the opening lines of Pride and Prejudice.

If you click on the picture you can print some royal wedding bookmarks of your own.  It's designed to print on A4 paper, but hopefully it will also work just fine on American letter sized.  Happy weekend!

Mother's Day

On this Mother's Day, I'm staying home from church with a boy and his fever virus.  I don't think this is the first time I've spent Mother's Day home with him.  It's not a bad way to spend the day, snuggled up in bed watching movies.  It also gave me time to pull out a pile of external hard drives and look through the past nearly twelve years of motherhood.

September 2006

This baby girl made me a mother, and I'm so glad it was her.  She was the sweetest baby.

September 2007

One was a golden age of Ella.  She started sleeping.  She was perfectly pleasant all the time.  She was the best of companions.

September 2008

As Ella turned two, I began to think it was time for another little one.

October 2009

Becoming a big sister suited her.

October 2010

We were pretty low-key trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood.  No costume for James, a dress-up gown for Ella.  This was part of the long age that James needed a bib at all times.  It's soaked as you can see.

September 2011

We packed a picnic supper one golden night and went to Capitol Park.  I chopped my hair off shortly after this.  I can never make it past that part of growing out hair that just feels like I have hair everywhere all the time.

October 2012

I took the kids on a road trip to North Carolina when one of my nieces was born.  We stopped in Tennessee, and I took them to Cades Cove, destination of all my childhood vacations.  There's particular joy in sharing your childhood with your kids.

September 2013

I had to search through K.J.'s old phone pictures to start finding pictures of me with both kids.  It reminds me I need to be better about getting in photos with them!  I've spent a goodly portion of the past five years reading aloud to those kiddoes.  

September 2014

I remember this day.  We were counting down the hot and sweaty days before we left on our biggest adventure thus far.  They've handled the past three and a half years with so much grace.

September 2015

The amount of change in our lives we experienced from September 2014 to September 2015 is incredible.  How could it all have happened in one year?  This photo was taken after the first day of school for the autumn term.  We'd moved to a new house the day before, and K.J. had to take the car early the next morning to travel to work, so that left us with piles of boxes and our own two feet to get us to school.  Needless to say we were late.  

August 2016

We're waving at K.J. up on the boardwalk above, wheelchair bound because he'd broken his ankle on our first full day back in America in nearly two years.  Can you believe that?  We still can't believe that happened.  Here we are after his surgery on a weekend away with my family.

October 2017

There were a host of things happening in this picture.  I'm sitting down because my foot is giving me so much pain.  We would find out later this week I had a "foreign object" in it.  But this was a beautiful autumn day despite the pain.  

And just like that, eleven years of mothering goes by.  Mothering rubs off a lot of rough edges, and I couldn't ask for two better little people to do the rubbing.

"Mothering is at once the hardest and the holiest and the happiest."

- Ann Voskamp -