France- week three

This should be my last installation of photographs of our trip. We left Steve's folks house and drove about seven hours south to a little town called St. Hippolyte du Fort (don't ask me how to pronounce that, you don't want to know). The closest big city is Nimes, where Steve was born. His dad was pastor in St. Hippo for years, and Steve spent the first few years of his life in the house where Fred and Monique now live. As you will see, it is also a very lovely place- lots of old villages and vineyards and much more mountainous. We also took a day trip to Aix-en-Provence where Steve and I met. We were supposed to stay with a friend for a few days, but the plans fell through, so we were obliged to see what we could in the evening and then drive back that night. We were dissappointed, but seeing Aix again was wonderful.
The rest of our stay was uneventful except for a trip to the hospital for exrays with James, who had inhaled some peanuts while visiting the doctor. We went to the doctor to ascertain what the rash was that was all over him (turned out to be mosquito bites), where he found a bag of airplane peanuts in my bag and ate them. The doctor didnt know it, and tried to look down his throat which caused James to freak out and inhale the peanut remnants in his mouth. he then choked and coughed for a very long time and the doctor was so worried that he had gotten some in his lungs that he made us go to the hospital to get ex rays. Turned out to be nothing, but it was quite the stressful adventure.
All of Steve's siblings and their children were there in the house for the last few days which was crowded but fun. Fred did most of the cooking which was great although a few times we didnt end up eating until about midnight because he grilled over an open fire every night and it sometimes took a while to get a nice bed of coals. We have great memories of sitting around the table for hours talking and laughing and eating great food. i felt for the first time like I was really part of the family and that the language barrier was not so great as it used to be. At least, it no longer takes every ounce of concentration that i have to follow the conversation.
We drove back up to Steve's folks for the last couple of days. Celine and JB joined us the last night, and we went out to eat in a wonderful restaurant. The trip home was long, but thankfully uneventful. It was kind of hard to readjust to life in the States, but the trip was worth it.

France Week Three