Bobo and Lindsey's 7th

Lindsey and BoBo le cloon

Today was Lindsey's 7th birthday. We'll always remember when she was born because, like this year, it was the day before Thanksgiving and she popped out like a Butterball turkey (easy for me to say). That was in Londonderry, Vermont - which, in a lot of ways, has a similar rustic, woodsy feel to where we are today in France, especially around this time of year.

Anyway, Toni bravely invited Lindsey's whole class to our house for an after-school fete (school gets out at noon on Wednesdays). All the parents were more than pleased to let their kids walk through the woods to our house instead of having to battle traffic and parking at CIPEC for a day. So, I think every one of the snot-noses showed up, about 20 in total of all backgrounds. Luckily, our friend Candie is here and she helped lay down the law as only Candie can. And Lindsey's best friend's Mom helped out tremendously, too (Audrey - who is very helpfully bi-lingual).
Savannah had decided that her younger sister's party would be a carnival theme and even recruited one of her friends to run the games.

All things considered, it was a reasonably well-run affair. Toni put out a good spread, catering to the various kid tastes - American kids: chips, pizza, soda. French kids: salad, jambon sandwiches, and l'eau avec gaz (funny scene: Eddy the french kid trying to figure out how a juice box works).

The highlight was Bobo, some clown we found on the Internet. His You Tube video looked good and he was the cheapest of the three we contacted. Satisified that he wasn't the French version of Shakes the Clown, we sent him a 50 Euro deposit and hoped for the best.

Although he claimed he works all over the south of France, from Monaco to Nimes, he proved to be a tad directionally-challenged and it took 3 phone calls and a meeting at the MacDonald's to guide him into our house. Once settled in, he delivered the goods with an entertaining (on a 7 year old level) range of magic and balloon tricks. The kids dug it (if their chants of "cloon, cloon" were any indication) and his perfomance occupied about 2 of the 3 hours we needed to fill with activities. Presents and cake and Savannah's games filled the rest.

In the end, we didn't lose any of them, no one lost an eye, and barely anything got broken.

Chico was temporarily traumatized by all the activity, and we can add men in clown suits to the list of things he is not particularly thrilled about. But the bag of French fries he found lying around in a misplaced Happy Meal soothed his pain considerably.

Best of all, Lindsey had a day to remember. She especially enjoyed getting a re-stock of toys, since she left most of hers behind when we came here (mental note: add one more suitcase for the return trip). She was momentarily bummed that Bobo couldn't produce a purple balloon figure for her. But that soon passed as she was deluged with an avalanche of pink and purple shiny plastic-y stuff - even the French kids are into Polly Pockets, thankfully.

Here's the link to the ever-present SmileBox highlights.