Part 2

Feb 19, 2019

Boston airport

Waiting to board; on our way to Iceland.

Yeah, I'm starting to write this blog thing again.

Let me do some catch up before we embark in this Iceland trip.

First let's summarize the end of last year.

Basically we kept traveling while keeping an eye on Jeremy and his new life as a working teen.

We hiked the Connecticut portion of the New England trail, see the blog here: New England Trail https://brasjorge-net.blogspot.com/2018/10/new-england-trail.html

We visited our good friend Gary at his barn in Ohio,

Then we had our Uncle and Aunt visit us from France.

Muriel our best City Guide!

Then we flew to Portugal to visit our family and help with the olive harvest.

Cutting veggies with our nephew Raphael

Joao loves the Portuguese good old tramways!

My mom and I visiting Castelo Branco with Muriel and holding huge lemons!

Harvesting olives in beautiful Portugal!

Well, let's get back to the Jeremy thing. He actually was fired from his job in Simsbury the day we arrived in Portugal. Too many no shows. Great.

Thankfully we had bought a plane ticket for him to join us for a couple of weeks in France. So he flew to France and we got together there.

How do you get a good picture of a teenager? Go to the photographer to make new ID pics. 😂😂

But no return to the the USA for Jeremy: we drastically change our plans and decide to move back to France to keep working on the barn and give him new opportunities in France. More about it later.

Meanwhile we get together with Muriel's family in the Pyrénées for Christmas.

We eat, we drink, we chat, we play, we hike and repeat the next day.

Great times.

Cherry on the cake we get together with Stéphane and Sophie with all their kids (and grand kid!). It has been too many years!

Then we head back to the barn and start working hard to make the first bedroom and bathroom.

Our neighbors are hunters and they spoil us with wild boar. We make stews every week (that go very well with wine and cheese by the way…)

But we also work hard. Muriel demonstrating here how to hold a drywall board with one's head while Joao takes a picture.

Drywall, new doors, electricity, a washer, the barn improves little by little.

We fight everyday to get Jeremy up and make him work on something.

He ends up by doing some but it's slow and painful.

Meanwhile we offer him new opportunities: as a camp counselor and / or as a baker. There are quite a few organizations to help kids out of the school system.

Let's see how it goes.

February 6 we fly back to Connecticut. The newly remodeled Bordeaux train station is gorgeous.

Fast trains are just a couple of hours from here to Paris!

Jeremy stays in France. Our cousins and my brother will host him. He also has an internship for youth camp counseling by the end of February; we feel this night be a good path for him.

We were hoping to rest a bit in Connecticut but no! Lola and her boyfriend found a project house that needs lots of work (a foreclosure…)

Guess what, not only did we buy it just 2 days after landing but I also felt compelled to help as much as possible to assess the work to be done. Super busy with construction again! The whole plumbing needs to be replaced!

And it's Muriel's 50th birthday.

Our basement gathers our good friend from CT for another great dancing party!

And we're putting our house for sale! And it needs work too according to the town building inspector!!! WHAT!!!???

The headroom of the stairs going to the basement needs to be raised! Not a small job, it requires demolition, new framing, etc. 😥

Long story short we end up working almost non stop to get things ready before we leave to our vacation in Iceland!!! In just 2 days! Gosh! Never been so busy since retirement!!!