Les Invitees

In France, guests are referred to as "les invitees" (i.e the invited).  I always found this interesting.  It resolves the dilemma often presented to Ann Landers or Dear Abby about what to do with uninvited guests.  In France, by definition, there is no such thing as uninvited guests.  Apparently here you will never have to worry about having visitors foisted upon you.

I invited my French family to visit us.  In 1989, I studied abroad in Perpignan, France, and lived with a French family headed by Jean and Mireille Guillebaud.  They are delightful.  Very active in the outdoors.  They have a mountain home about 1 hour outside Perpignan, and love to hike.  They are now in their mid-70's, and appear as active as ever, showing me pictures of their recent 3-day hike with a group of friends.  And, they relate so well to children.  It was like having another pair of grandparents here.  They do have grandchildren both here and in Canada the same ages as my kids.  We had extraordinarily warm and sunny weather last weekend.  We explored the town together:

We also enjoyed a nice time visiting, sharing pictures, eating, and preparing our giant pumpkin (grown by a neighbor) for soup-making:

It was wonderful to have the company of Jean and Mireille!

Earlier we also had our very first visitors.  Asha's FASPS classmate Rykley and his family the Brauns visited us in early September!  They had been celebrating family anniversaries with extended family at a Provencal home about an hour away, and stopped to see us before heading back up to Paris.  We were so happy they were able to fit us in!  Asha and Ford were especially eager to show them around Vaison as we had just gotten settled.  Here are some photos of that visit with Jen, Trevor, Rykley, Dax, and Eve:

Not to be outdone, Ivy has issued a standing invitation to her friend, known around here as "the cat."  Here they are enjoying the night air together.

Here Ivy has her paw on her buddy's back:

It's great to pal around with pals.