Remix | macarons & paperbacks

Well, I recently wrote about why I didn’t enjoy April here, because of the cold, windy, and rainy weather. It turns out that May was exactly the same, only weirder, because we also had snow and hail. In May.

Fresh snow on May 25th, and this isn’t even that high!

More snow…

But now it is June and, even though it has been raining nearly every evening, we officially have warm weather! And our back yard was finished last week: the dirt was leveled, they put in some stairs as well as dividing fences between each apartment, and now the grass is starting to spring up, so soon Solo will be able to play around out there. And it won’t matter how early he wants to go pee in the morning, I’ll just have to open the door. Last week we even had our first cook-out of the year!

Instagram picture of our homemade burgers and sweet potato fries!

Last month we also went on a camping trip with Remix to celebrate one of the many holidays/long weekends they have here in France. I have been wanting to go camping for months now, and the weather actually stayed decent, even if it there was a light shower.

At this camping trip Matt happened to be the only French person there! Most of Remix is made up of internationals, like Stephie (intern from Germany), Dora (student from Hungary), and Bethany (XA pastor visiting from Ohio).

Solo loves camping too!

On the camping trip we had a Croquet tournament. Yes, I get excited about things like that, and especially since I came from behind (twice) and got 2nd overall! And also, I’m proud of things like that. I haven’t played croquet in over ten years, and even back then I was horrible. But it’s a fun yard game to play and Matt and I are looking to buy a croquet set of our own to play at the park or at his parents’ house this summer.

This was the first wicket and this is where everyone passed me while I failed miserably to make it through. But I had my comeback eventually.

More croquet…

Artsy shot…

Matt played, too, when he wasn’t keeping Solo from chasing after the balls.

Besides our exciting croquet tournament, we also went on a hike which was lovely. We made it to this local museum where I swear The Sound of Music could have been filmed.

I just feel like running towards the camera…

And again… Also, this was next to a museum for a monastery, how fitting.

: )

Cave “exploring”

And this was priceless:

This must be Darth Vader’s summer mountain house.

So now it’s June and our summer is full with lots of fun activities, the biggest one being that we’re spending 10 days in Germany for an SFC (Students for Christ) conference! More on that next month.

Matt and I are blessed to be apart of a student ministry here in Grenoble called Remix. It’s similar to Chi Alpha (the student group we were apart of in the U.S.), but quite different at the same time because it’s in France. This past weekend we went on a leadership retreat about an hour away in Bourg d’Oisans where we began planning and discussing upcoming events. The most significant thing for me, however, was the time we took at the end of the retreat to encourage and pray for each other. It was moving and interesting because not everyone knows one another very well, but that didn’t keep us from lifting each other up.

During one of the women’s retreats I went to while I was in Chi Alpha we had a night of encouragement too, but there were around 25 of us total, so you can imagine the tear-fest we had!

While we were in Bourg d’Oisans we also got to PLAY IN THE SNOW! And there was tons of it. I’ve been skiing before but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much snow in my life. We’ve been so excited for Solo to be able to play in the snow, because we were absolutely certain that he would love it. And we were right! He played for hours and hours outside by himself, and the best part was that since he couldn’t dig or play in the bushes, he didn’t get dirty. The snow would stick to him in little balls, though, but he would lick them off of himself!

I was all excited about taking pictures but after the first 60 or so I realized that I had somehow set my picture size to SMALL. Like 640×360 pixels small. I was really upset because I had taken some nice photos, but I took a lot more later to make up for it :)

Here are some of the best pictures from this weekend, both small and large (I only took pictures outside):

This is what it looked like before we played in the snow.

His bright blue eyes make this picture perfect!

Solo leading, like always. He actually wasn’t too fond of people riding the sled. When Matt and I went together he ran behind us and barked the whole way.