Our French Friends X

Sylvain, Marie-Madeleine*, and their children:  Grégoire (11),  Flavien, and Clotilde (twins age 9). They live outside Paris, and we get together once or twice each winter. Here are previous visits:  last year,  in 2016, in 2014, and in 2011 (the first).  As usual, they came for lunch, which included a superb lentil soup with sausage slices and a delicious apple crumble. Lots of lively interplay among the kids; otherwise they read the books they're holding.

*Reiterating previous comments: Marylee met Marie-Madeleine's French mother Anne when they were at Oxford in the late 1960s. Then when Marylee spent 19 months in Paris in 1990-91, Marie-Madeleine, in her teens, stayed with Marylee when she came to Paris for weekly classical guitar lessons. Contact lapsed after that, but we reconnected in 2010 when we saw an announcement for a concert by Marie-Madeleine in Paris. Both she and Sylvain are professional musicians  with jobs teaching guitar and accordion (respectively) in the local school system.