By the fall of 2003, we had five out of our six children playing soccer every week. That is all of the boys! For the parents, that meant at least one match per…
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Home in 2003
Marie-Hélène chose May 2003 to put together a library of photos of our home. My guess is that her doing so indicates that she was satisfied with where it was by then…
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“Everybody’s going surfin’, Surfin’ USA ..”
And if you don’t recognize that Beach Boys tune, you clicked here by mistake! Everybody went surfing except the parents, that is, and except Alex who was only a year old. Charlie,…
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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…
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Young Tom (1989-94)
Tom was born in Paris in the same week in 1989 that the Loma Prieta earthquake shook the Bay Area. The World Series was in progress, with the players on the ball…
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Young Nick (1986-1994)
Nick is a Leo with Leo rising. There you have it! Although he was born in Manhattan, he was moved to Paris when only six months old in February 1987. This was his…
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Young Daphné (1987-97)
Daphné was born in August 1987 in Malestroit, Brittany, during Marie-Hélène’s summer vacation at La Grée. Maman loved to get away from the hustle and bustle of Paris. La Grée is located near where…
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Young Alban (1989-1996)
Several of the photos on this page were taken before our family blended, when Alban and Daphné lived in Paris with Maman and Pierre Brun, their dad. I found them in Marie-Hélène’s own collection…
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Young Charles (1995-9)
Charles was born in August 1995 in Malestroit (the nearest town to La Grée) at the end of our summer vacation that year in Brittany near Brocéliande. Our little world gelled around Charlie from his…
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Young Alexander
Né en janvier 1998 à Santa Cruz, Californie (toujours le bébé!) Toujours le coquin aussi ! On dit “toujours le bébé” parce que maman a annoncé la fermeture de l’usine, un fait déploré mais…
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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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Protected: Fighting corruption in Santa Cruz
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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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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La Bellanderie (1996-7)
“Le bonheur grande nature. Une seule année aura suffi pour nous faire regretter cette maison à deux pas du Paris-Brest dans les Yvelines. Au rez-de-chaussée, les pièces communes, petit salon, grand salon, bibliothèque et…
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L’école d’Hermeray
Nick and Tom started at l’école d’Hermeray in January 1994, when Sunshine and I moved to Le Tahu in the village of Hermeray, about 75km southwest of Paris in the Forêt de…
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Making it official: 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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Grandma Stock
My mother left us all on July 24, 1996, but not before giving our entire new family a rousing welcome and wonderful support. Grandma took my new blended family to heart, all of…
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St. Malo, cité des corsaires . . .
St Malo was our first family holiday town. It’s an extraordinary walled city on the Northern Brittany coast, less than two hours by car from La Grée, and on the way by…
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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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Our first home: Le Tahu (1994-6)
Le Tahu was the modest brick house that I had been living in since January 1994 in Hermeray, a village in the Forest of Rambouillet southwest of Paris. Initially, Sunshine, Nick and…
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The Stocks, Burrells, Smiths and Duggans
Before the Stocks and Nashes, were the Stocks, Burrells, Smiths and Duggans. The Stocks and Burrells were Ian’s paternal grandparents, and the Smiths and Duggans were his maternal grandparents. (There were other names before…
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The Stocks and Nashes
Let’s start at the beginning, my beginning. That means Mum and Dad Stock, Cath (née Smith) and Jim. I was their first born, and then two years later along came Sue. There we…