the french connection pt. 2

our next stop? TROYES (kinda pronounced twa)!!!


here we are in our TWINGO (yes, we drove a Twingo four hours from Paris). i officially love really small european cars. they are so fun. our friends from Vannes gave it to us for our trip (more on them later). klayton fell asleep at the wheel, so avery, in a death-defying move, unbuckled herself from her carseat, hopped up front, and grabbed the wheel.
either that or we were in a parking lot when i took this picture. i can't remember.
doesn't she look cute/evil???

troyes is where klayton spent the last SIX MONTHS of his mission. it was his favorite area and we stayed with his favorite family. there was a ward activity on the Friday night that we were there (quel chance!!) and we had lots of fun. the simoes family have two sons, thomas and quentin (pronounced To-MA and Con-TAN en francais). the ward activity was playing games (about 25 people were there). here are thomas and quentin ping-pong-ball-on-a-spoon racing.

and here's klayton. he raced paul simoes (thomas and quentin's dad).

here are a couple from the troyes ward (didn't catch their names... oops).

avery's pants fell down a lot one morning, so sandrine (mrs. simoes :)) grabbed av some suspenders. it was so cute!!

quentin was so sweet- he adored avery and played with her all of the time. he even let her play with his toys! very cool kid.

here we are in front of a cathedral in troyes. france has SO MANY cathedrals. what gives?? just kidding, they are all gorgeous.

it's hard to tell, but above klayton and the simoes crew, those are two-by-fours and they are HOLDING THOSE BUILDINGS APART!! the buildings in the older parts of france are SO old that they lean. who needs italy's leaning tower? seriously. and they are ALL occupied. people's apartments are up there!! higher up that this picture goes, the buildings are literally touching. craziness.

as stated in pt.1, the food in france is better than anything you could possibly imagine. well, imagine my surprise when i found out that sandrine's brother, bertrand (sp?) works at a boulangerie (bakery)!!! klayton told sandrine about my love of baking and french food, so she called her bro and he came over and gave us a lesson!!! we made brioche! he was so cool to do that and it was seriously my favorite thing ever. he's a total artist, too. check out what he did with the bread (below). yep, thats a heart and a little brioche rose!!!

we got to spend a sunday in troyes and i met more of klayton's friends. here's vanessa, a girl he taught and helped baptize.

and monica, a really cool girl who served a mission state-side and speaks great english.

sunday night they wanted us to show them what a real halloween party is like, so sandrine bought a pumpkin and a few halloween-y candles and we had tons of fun. we bobbed for apples...

well, avery didn't, but she sure loved eating them.

here's thomas feeding avery. he was so sweet, too. seriously, amazing family.

klayton gutted and carved a pumpkin and we roasted the seeds.

i named him edward...

we left on monday for vannes, but we sure were sad to go. troyes was so beautiful, but more than anything, it was the time we spent with the simoes family that made this leg of our trip special. they are amazing people. the best and most unexpected part for me was getting so close to sandrine. her english is really good and we have so much in common! i know that klayton loves her and her family so much, and it was great to finally meet them.

oh, one last thing about troyes. on our last day there, i gave sandrine a present that i found in the wal-mart-esque store near their apartment - a copy of Twilight in French!! haha. it's called fascination there. anyway, she emailed us before we had even come home to say that she finished it in three days and she's totally obsessed!! haha. i'm converting Twilight fans world-wide!!! hahaha