French Christmas Day

French Christmas morning, day, and night – did not disappoint!

Renata burst into my room first thing in the morning, which made my heart happy beyond measure. The others were up and enjoying Marinette’s homemade brioche and jams with coffee at the kitchen table downstairs, and we couldn’t wait to join them.

Children still in pajamas (as Christmas morning surely ought to be, in my opinion!), there was new puzzle activity with Auntie Elise and Renata, and lots of Barbie airplane buzz going on amongst all of the children.

More cousins and family arrived, and a very sweet, relatively understated gift exchange took place in Pierre’s very classy and cool music studio – so much fun! The Boy, the Mole ... books that I had offered were very well-received, and later Marinette asked me to sign hers which I did, in French! She was very impressed.

Christmas lunch began with amazing appetizers (in foto above), followed by an extraordinary fish main course, then cheese (thankfully this is a given, especially at Marinette’s table), and finally her famous Bouche Noel chocolate dessert.

The family went out for a walk through the countryside and I stayed back with Renata, who was supposed to be napping. Mm-hmm. Once they all left, she got up and I made her an egg and rice to eat because, she was hungry.

Later in the afternoon, Marinette offered fresh soup because, apparently we hadn’t eaten enough! We also had my cookies and passion fruit curd at the table. More visiting, children kept playing, now with a new Lego set. Lego tiles were everywhere!

After a long day of pure bliss, Renata and I tucked in for sleeping on Christmas night.

One by one, my Christmas wishes were all coming true.

And, 8am the next morning, Antoine advised that there was a change in the program ... a house for sale suddenly came available and he wanted it. Could we postpone returning to Paris for a couple of days? We could.