le Bon Marché

I took Mom and Jess to le Bon Marché to do a little shopping.

Not le Bon Marché. The building across the street.

Jessie and I went to the toy department so she could find painfully cute gifts for her girls.

Check out this darling modern dollhouse!

I thought it was fun to see familiar games with French names.

Seriously pleasing rainbow of cups.

I love the displays of accessories in giant confectionery boxes!

Strange and very expensive necklaces.

The interior is not as glamorous as Galeries Lafayette, but it has its charms.

We found these gold glitter condiments at La Grande Epicerie!

And, of course, some beautiful pastries.

Marché aux Puces

The flea market at Vanves was on my mom's list of must-dos.

She is a serious shopper. I bought a couple of gifts for friends of Eva's, Jessie got one or two things, and my mom had several heavy shopping bags.

Seriously. What in the world?!

The button man's stall is always fun to peruse.

Okay. What is it about doll heads? Creepy, disembodied doll heads? Because we saw quite a few.

I thought this was a pleasing display.

We saw some people who looked like they were seriously considering the creepy dolls.

Jessie and I agreed that these mini dice were very pleasing. Then when she posted about them on Instagram, she found out that her husband was hoping she had purchased the whole lot! Oops.

My mom bought some of these gigantic chant sheets for monasteries.

This was Lucas's reaction to the flea market. He said he will not be joining us on any future visits. Too weird. And if Lucas says that, wow! You know it's weird (but I think it's weird in a good way).

Versailles

Jessie wanted to see Versailles, so we all went for an excursion one day when Marc was teaching.

The gardens are just immense. I could have easily spent another couple of hours wandering outside.

Mom and Jess

Eva was right in front of a French school group! Quite a field trip.

We found a snail in the path and Jessie picked it up to move it to safety, but not before Eva took a photo.

I love these bushes trimmed into urn shapes!

Quelle drame!

We had my mom stand next to one of these urns to show the scale.

The thing about Versailles is that it is so over the top. So much gilding everywhere that you just kind of burn out. At least I do. But it is still interesting to imagine thousands of people living there, milling around the grounds, the king holding court, the secret trysts, the servants, the parties...

the chapel

the Hall of Mirrors

This ceiling was in a far more sedate area of the château as we were exiting. I would rather see carved stone any day over all the crazy gilded excess.

The grounds were more to my liking.

As well as these cool graphics in the ticketing office!

Sunday thoughts for Mother's Day

I was blessed with both a mother and a grandmother who are women of faith. They love the Lord, they love each other, and they love me, and I consider all of those things to be gifts.

 

Grandma taught me about how the Spirit spoke to her frequently. She once told me that she didn't need an alarm - the Holy Ghost would wake her up whenever she needed to awake. I was a bit skeptical then, but I have experienced the same thing enough times now to know she was right. From her, I learned that our Heavenly Father cares about us and our lives, and that the Spirit can help and comfort us in endless ways.

My mom also taught me about promptings from the Spirit. She would return home from the grocery store and start putting things away, only to exclaim, "Oh! The Spirit told me to buy butter! I knew I should have gotten some!" Again, I doubted that the Holy Ghost would be concerned about her grocery list, but now I know from her example and from my own experience that the Lord cares about everything that matters to us. She taught me not to doubt, and to follow promptings.

Recently, I was reading the comments for the daily reading of @bofm365 (on Instagram, I highly recommend it). There was some discussion of Mosiah 3:19, one of my favorite scriptures. A commenter said something that really struck me: she said that she has learned to say "yes" whenever she receives a prompting from the Spirit. If she doesn't understand, or doesn't see how it is possible for her to act on it, she quickly prays, "Yes. How?" or "Show me." Almost immediately, the way is shown to her.

This pretty much rocked my world. I feel like a whole new perspective has opened up to me. I just need to internalize this, to shift to an instant willingness to be shown the way. It's not really my nature to be positive, optimistic. But I am absolutely going to work to adopt this "yes" attitude.

miscellaneous Monday

1. Thank you to all of you who have prayed and wondered about my mom. All of her tests proved inconclusive, and she checked herself out of the hospital on Friday. She has a referral for a specialist, and we are hoping and praying that she doesn't end up back in the E.R. She is thrilled to be out of the hospital, and is back at work with a (hopefully) limited schedule.

2. Here is a picture of Marc painting over the last of our old gold color! His painting job is finished, but mine has a loooong way to go.

It's been sheer chaos here for quite some time.

3. While the bookcase was emptied and pulled away from the wall, we decided to fix the outlet behind it so that we can finally have a functioning lamp there again!

I googled how to replace an outlet. It looked like a piece of cake. It wasn't exactly a piece of cake, but Marc did it! (I had to document him being handy.)

4. I am struggling with motherhood right now. I am questioning whether I am really the right mother for these three children of mine. I just can't seem to figure out what to do, what to say. I definitely do not have the answers. Jill reminded me that I am in Parenting 505, but right now I fear I am failing the course.