Pictures of the Garden Party

Sorry it's been a LOOONG time since we've posted - here are a few pics from the Garden Party.

The Griffiths and the Molliards organized the second cooking day at the Château (after the success of the last one in January). The "Garden Party" was another success, with again about 30 participants, some of the same faces from last time, and some new ones. The cooking & table decorating workshops started at 3pm, and the buffet was ready to eat around 6:30, providing lots of time in between for people to talk and interract as they prepared the food. Thanks to the great weather, we were able to enjoy the meal outside, with Jessica Griffith acting as our host (dressed up as Mrs. Helene Schweitzer - who's family owned the Château at one time) and giving a little history of the Château.

Home film

If the post below doesn't work, try this link - http://www.home-2009.com/us/index.html

Jay Hocking
www.jaborah.com

HOME - worth watching

Prayer room in use for worship service

May stuff

We've got a Laotian couples' group here this weekend by the Evangelical Laotian Church (most of the people from the group have been here before, but this is the first time they've done one of these couple's weekends - with a special speaker and all), and tonight we had a special banquet for them. They seem to be having a great time, and we've been having great weather for them as well.

Debbie and I have been working out doors quite a bit - making new flowerbeds, working on building my first wall (it's a retaining wall for an expanded terrace we're building between the new kitchen and the old kitchen).

Debbie, working on her newely designed flower beds

I've removed the sod cut out from Debbie's new flowerbeds, and I'm planting it over in our parking lot, where we've attempted to re-organize it a little, to make better use of the space... we'll see if it actually works.

My first stone wall (Hopefully Marlin doesn't see this post, I'm afraid it's not the nicest looking wall around here). Hopefully, it stays standing when I'm finished. This is the one that will be the retaining wall for an expanded terrace near the kitchen.

We all went down to the Foire aux puces yesterday - the flea market that our town holds each year. Picked up some old outdoor chairs to fix up for the Château lawn, and a few other odds and ends. I helped out for an hour serving food in their little food shop - we served drinks, hot dogs, and fries, and were VERY busy. I got a free crêpe from the crêpe stand as payment :)

Today Debbie helped the "friends of nature" association with their annual flower sale (and bought a bunch of flowers for the Château too!) so it's been fun getting involved with the different things in the community.

Somewhat lengthy video of our vacation

Southern France Trip from Jay Hocking on Vimeo.

To go along with the photos, I thought I'd post the compilation of our video clips from the trip. Somewhat boring (didn't do much editing), but our parents should enjoy it :)

Wow - we've been busy

I haven't posted for over a month - sorry about that. We've been really busy, and then took a 5 day break to catch up on our rest - here are some pictures from our trip down south.

Southern France trip

New Record!

Can you find all 4 mistakes in our address? Honestly, I think if you mailed something to:

Hcoknig
71260 FRANCE,

I'm pretty sure it would get to me, but still - 4 mistakes on one letter is impressive.

Meeting neighbors via xbox360

This is Correntin Guichard - he lives down the street from me here in Saint Albain - and when he's home from school on the weekends, often stops by for a few games of Halo3 with me. Debbie and I have really enjoyed getting to know their family, and Correntin has enjoyed having someone who enjoys video games with him. We even met two other French guys from Senozan (just a couple miles down the road from us) when playing online one day - kinda crazy that with the hundreds of thousands of people playing online, we ended up being matched up with some guys a few miles away .

Cherry Trees

Thought I'd add a few pics of Debbie and Pam actually planting our cherry trees! We're having great weather this spring, and have been able to get a lot of outdoor work done! I even got the whole orchard pruned (I wont post pics of that, in case someone who actually knows how to prune trees is horrified by my work - but I think they turned out pretty well). We took out one dead tree that was by the orchard - there's another one, but I don't think I'll be able to drop it on our property (and I'm not sure what the neighbors would think of it laying in their yard), so for now we'll just leave it. I'm going to attempt to make some log benches out of the trunk - we'll see how that goes - I'm not terribly optimistic at this point.

Water

sheep herding video

I Cannot Tell a Lie

We lost two of the big cherry trees at the Chateau this winter. I think it'll take a while before we'll be making many cherry pies or clafoutis from these new trees!

Speaking of clafoutis...here's a recipe for this delicious and quite simple French dessert. It reminds me somewhat of the"Dutch Baby Pancakes" that my mom makes, and I've heard it described as somewhere between a flan and a cake.

Basic Clafoutis Recipe

4 eggs
1 cup milk
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 Tablespoon melted butter
pinch of salt

Mix eggs, sugar, cinnamon, salt, flour. Add milk, butter, vanilla.

Thickly butter a baking dish or quiche pan.

Arrange fruit of your choice in pan (cherries are the traditional favorite; Suzie Hobert makes a super yummy pear-pine nut variation).

Pour batter over fruit.

Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes.



And since I have cherry trees on the brain... a bit of trivia thanks to About.com

Question: Did George Washington chop down a cherry tree and tell his father the truth?

Answer: As far as we know, no. In fact, Washington's biographer, Mason Weems, wrote a book called "The Life of Washington" shortly after his death where he created this myth as a way to show Washington's honesty.

Tribute to Nick Deck

ski camp video

We had a great (and very tiring) week at ski camp. 26 youth were there. Debbie and I really enjoyed getting to know the youth, and building some good relationships there. The camp itself, and the skiing, felt like sheer chaos - trying to teach a beginner to ski in a language you're not fluent in is trickier than it sounds. And keeping track of 7 middle schoolers all sliding in various directions isn't easy either. Overall though, it went well though, and the youth seemed to enjoy not only the skiing, but the meals together, the evening Bible study, the games together, and just talking in the cabins. It's so cool to watch them together, being with other Christian youth is something they don't get every day. Enjoy the video from the slopes!



CAMP de SKI 2009 from Jay Hocking on Vimeo.

Jay at ski camp

Debbie at ski camp

Our cat - acting like a grub

Cooking workshop (and the 8 course meal that followed)

We just had the first cooking workshop at the Château, hosted by Michel Molliard. The idea was to provide an event where French believers could feel comfortable inviting their friends, and to have a chance to just enjoy spending time together. Of course, at the end of the afternoon, we had a wonderful meal (that lasted from 8pm until past midnight)

It went really well (albeit a bit long) and people really seemed to enjoy the time they had together. Hopefully, it will be something we'll do again. It's great to see some new faces at Château events like this one.

Click here to view the entire web album, with captions, and see pictures of all 8 courses.

Michael and Bobby - helping out for a few weeks

We've got two guys here for a few weeks from Ohio, who are just helping out with projects at the Château during our annual winter lull in the busy schedule. This is practically the only time we don't have groups, so it's nice to have some help tackling all the little projects that build up. They've helped clean out the gatehouse attic (unfortunately, we didn't take any "before" pictures). There was a lot of stuff left up there from when Editions Cle used the building as an office (maybe a decade ago??). They've built some shelves in the Château attic to organize a bunch of files we store up there, are helping dig the trench for the foundation of an extended patio, fixed the trap door on the tower, and lot of other miscelaneous small projects.

The Trapdoor going up to the top of the tower - finally finished (Rob Saunders started it in 2005, Owen Heisey worked on it some summer 2008, and Michael Gibson finished in January 2009 - never knew it was such a big project :)

The Gatehouse attic - all cleaned out (except for a few buckets to catch the major drips. It actually only took one full van-load to get rid of most of the old stuff.


Fixing a sharp edge on the swingset, that was a little dangerous for kids


Putting together shelves for the files in the attic

Ice Fog