A non-birthday party

The kids cooked this up. Paul has a big birthday this year and has repeatedly said he doesn't want a big to-do. They organized a family lunch.
First most of the family from England arrived to spend the school holiday with us. That allowed the little cousins (Parisian and English) to get to know each other a bit, have a sleepover, watch movies, play on the trampoline, take a bateau mouche tour of Paris. Later in the week, the last two from England arrived and the ones from Tarn-et-Garonne drove up. So, we had all four of our kids on the weekend. Even if the Parisians went home to sleep, we still had a houseful. Fun and games. I had done most of the cooking the week before, so it was just a matter of defrosting....
One sad note during the week, though. A dear friend from the baseball crowd died. He was the one, the papa of the minimes team, who greeted L when he signed up, 11 years old. Later, I was one of the two moms that took over the team management and he went on to taking on more club responsabilities and scoring. He recruited me as a scorer and mentored me. Since I gave up scoring a few years ago, I hadn't seen him as much, but was also glad to see him when I could. Last June, he came to the European championships with his wife -- always happy to see them, but that's when he told me he was sick. I'll miss him. It was wonderful to see how much the baseball community loved him and turned out for the funeral -- all the "kids", now grown men, the scorers, the federation officials, the PUC (our club).
On Sunday, we went into Paris for lunch. And the surprise was finding P and G, who had come up from Six-Fours and their kids and grandkids.....
Sorry, no pictures of this on the blog -- family will get the link to the album, maybe not immediately as I have some sorting to do!