We really like rafting

Or just floating.

Of course, we never plan to flip our boat in the biggest rapid on the river...

 At least the water cooled us off on a hot day!

Another graduation

Just a quick update after this weekend: my sister made it across the stage and accepted her high school degree with dignity, and she sang the national anthem beautifully in front of thousands of people!

And of course I had plenty of fun with Andrew's parents. We cooked, we shopped, we sewed, we watched movies... good stuff. And I slept so well with air conditioning that I'm a little bit sad to be back. But not sad to see Andrew again!

Rafting

I wish I had more pictures, but as you can imagine I'm not 100% comfortable bringing a camera on a raft that was bound to get very wet as we went through the rapids. But it was awesome. We got the raft in the mail yesterday during the day, and of course Andrew had to come home for lunch to check it out and inflate it :)

I had to find something to wear that was water-appropriate, and we found the perfect fit at our local Walmart. (Actually, we have two in Casper, that's how fancy we are)

Yes, they're Hello Kitty... from the children's section (it's a miracle I could even fit in them, although they are pretty stretchy). Hey, they were just perfect for my needs! And no worries, we have life vests too.

When Andrew got home from work at 5 we set out for an hour-long ride down the North Platte. It was still very hot outside, and the scenery was beautiful. We felt like real adventurers! The rapids part was pretty fun (it also filled the boat -- and my face -- with water... I need to improve my rowing skills). The dismount was less than graceful. Let's just say we kind of overshot the landing zone and had to get out in lots of weeds and up a hill. But we have learned from our mistakes :) We're just regular Huck Finns

And then today we tried to construct a mini-dock out of some leftover wood and a pallet that were sitting around, but we kind of failed. I won't even post pictures it's so ghetto. When our contractor roommate returns from his weekend he's going to have a heart attack!

But the raft? Safe and sound. Anybody wanna come play on our river?

Christmas

This Christmas was really wonderful. My entire family hasn't been together in one place since the Christmas after I left for BYU, so as you can imagine it was pretty special. My mom and sisters got in a day before my dad, and through an (un)fortunate set of circumstances we ended up with a rental van with enough seating for the whole clan, so we all drove up to pick him up at the airport on Christmas Eve.

He was our best Christmas present :) But that doesn't mean we weren't concerned when his suitcase full of my aunts' gifts didn't show up at first...

No worries though, it had arrived on an earlier flight and was waiting for us safe and sound. We packed into the van and headed to Temple Square. It was beautiful, and very cold. Probably the coldest day of the whole visit actually - it's crazy how warm it was!

Everybody loved it, my dad especially. Although I think he was mostly just thrilled to have his whole family together again.

These Las Vegasites/Bordeauxans aren't used to the cold...

Marina got tired/cold feet or something so Andrew became a horse and carried her around.

Once we were thoroughly chilled we piled back in and drove home, munching on Christmas-colored pistachios (those silly Americans...). So at this point you're probably thinking "wait a second... don't you guys live in a one-bedroom apartment?" How perspicacious. We are lucky enough to have some awesome neighbors that left for the break and agreed to let us use their apartment as base #2. They live just below us so we had everybody in the same building. It made coordination quite nice, although getting that many girls out the door quickly is always difficult no matter what...  anyway. We listened to a Christmas story and then Andrew got so tired he had to be carried into bed. How many Defranchi girls does it take to drag a full-grown man a few feet? 

 

Then we woke up the next morning to a delicious (if I do say so myself) Christmas morning breakfast. Gourmet hot chocolates made with syrups and whipped cream served in personalized cups (I was most excited about that part to be honest) with warm croissants, french bread, Nutella, jam, cheeses and more. Hey, we know how to do breakfast in France!

Then off to church. The meeting lasted a little long for my taste, but hey when you have presents waiting under the tree anything is too long! Although I did appreciate the meeting. We had a stake sacrament meeting and the Stake President asked the wives of high council members to speak - without their husbands gasp! It was a really neat idea. 

I even snapped a stealthy shot. He he. Sylvia can sniff out a camera from a hundred miles, so of course she managed to pose.

And back home for the opening of the presents! With stockings made by yours truly...

You know you've made a good choice when you hear squeals of joy... Success!

My dad labeled his gifts with picture puzzles... this one spells out Lydia ("lead" + "dix" (ten) + A)

After that, we did all kinds of fun stuff. Good food and lots of cooking...

I tried my hand at my first Pulla and I think it came out pretty beautifully!

Andrew built a fort for the girls

And we took plenty of family photos. I got individual shots with each of the girls and of course we did group photos too. That's where a tripod comes in handy.

Webcam sessions with the rest of the family back home...

More cooking:

We're French, it's what we do. We also played outside, hiked the Y, saw bridal veil falls...

Of course, Andrew brought his pellet gun and hid in the bushes/rocks to get at us...

And finally it was time to take everyone back to the airport :(

We came back to our suddenly-empty apartment and felt kind of... lonely. But the semester started up so fast after that we didn't have time to be lonely for too long. We're so glad to have had such a wonderful family vacation though. What a perfect Christmas!