“History will be kind to me,” said Sir Winston Churchill, “for I intend to write it.” The real quote is actually longer than that, but you get the idea. That’s what I’ve…
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Tom in Paris in 2008
Tom left to go on vacation after Christmas in 2007, and ended up spending the whole year of 2008 in Paris. Then all of 2009. Etcetera. He was gone. When he left…
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La Grée
La Grée will be our vacation home forever, in my mind at least. The first version of this page was written in French with a lot of help from Marie-Hélène. During the…
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Cutting the Umbilical Cord!!
They all have to leave, the children that is. We knew that, just as every parent knows that. But being forewarned was not necessarily being forearmed. First, the children become teenagers. That…
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Alban and Tom Graduate High School!!
Daphné with her graduate. Way to go, little bro! Made it!!Needless to say, both of our 2007 Graduates put the parents through some hoops before they made it. Their theory must be something…
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Teenagers with a capital T . . .
Charlie and Alex spent the week before Christmas in 2010 with me and Tom, who was visiting from Paris. They were going to spend the week beginning the afternoon of Christmas Day…
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Nick and Daphné were our first two High School graduates . . .
Nick with his Grandma (“Yaya”) after receiving his diploma from Scotts Valley High School in June 2004 Daphné with Alban after receiving her diploma from Harbor High School in June 2005 On the left is…
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Alexander and Charles are Baptized
On August 12, 2004, l’abbé Texier, until his retirement a catholic priest in Bordeaux for over 20 years, baptized Alex and Charles in the Church of Sainte Anne de Tréal. L’abbé had retired to…
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Maman Fille
This is a relationship made in heaven, although it may have been forged a little in hell. That’s often the case if you think about it. The more that you go through…
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Courtney and Antony tie the knot!!
On November 15, 2003, Antony Nash and Courtney Bolin FINALLY got married! Our interest in this noteworthy event is simple: the groom before the wedding, and the bride after, are family! Antony is my…
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Through no fault of his own . . .
It’s a big number, 50, and in honor of Ian’s getting there pretty much intact (give or take a few brain cells!), Marie-Hélène decided to throw him a party. Thank you very much…
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Moving House
Sounds easy doesn’t it? But it took more than three years for our furniture to move from La Bellanderie to Santa Cruz. Why? First and most importantly, Tison S.A. the furniture moving company based in Coignières (78),…
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Nick and Tom back with us
For me, one of the absolute high spots of our collective lives together was the day that Nick and Tom came back to live with us in Santa Cruz during the summer…
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Fighting corruption in Santa Cruz
Our third big fight on arriving in the US was initiated by Sunshine, Nick and Tom’s mom. She is the daughter of a very successful litigator, and jumped on her opportunity to cause…
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Alex arrives in 1998
First things first: Alexander Marc Edward Stock was born in January 1998 at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz. His arrival was a bit of a shock for Charlie. One moment Alex wasn’t…
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Our first years in Santa Cruz . . .
Occasionally, magazines or web media like Yahoo will list sources of possible stress in a person’s lifetime, and attempt to compare them or rank them. There are terrible life-changing occurrences on these…
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Nick and Tom in Paris: the rest of us in Santa Cruz
It was Christmas 1997 before Nick and Tom paid their first visit to the rest of us in Santa Cruz, where we had moved in June 1997. The intervening six months had been a…
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Our Wedding: May 24, 1997, St. Hilarion, France
Here we are, at the reception in La Bellanderie, our lovely home in Saint Hilarion, southwest of Paris on the old road to Chartres. The French civil service had done its duty, and it…
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Blending or agitating or churning, depending on the day . . . .
When any couple moves in together, there is a lot for each to get to know in the other. In our case, we never had the time! No, that’s not what I mean! I…
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“Kiss the World Goodbye”
My mum died in July 1996 after a long series of illnesses. At the time, Marie-Helene’s and my family was busy blending, meaning going pretty much crazy, her two children, my two…
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Charles arrived in 1995
This is one of my favorite photographs ever. It is August 28, 1995, in the Clinique des Augustines in Malestroit, Brittany. No longer busy being born, we find Charles Allistair Tristan Stock, cleaned up…
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How I met your (step)mother!
I started work on March 2, 1987 at Kevorkian & Rawlings, the law firm which had hired me in New York to work as a lawyer in Paris. Jack Kevorkian had offered me the…