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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1999: Nick and Tom back
HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!!!! Here in Santa Cruz, 1999 has been a very good year. Here’s hoping that your year has gone half as well! First things first. On April 15, 1999 the Versailles…
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1998: Alex cruises in
This is the letter that we sent to friends and family around Christmas of 1998. We’ve edited a little, in particular to add a few more photos, but the below is very…
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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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1997: Marrying and emigrating
For the first time this year, we are sending our Christmas wishes with a recap of the year. We feel that, with all our moves and changes, we’re losing touch with too many people…
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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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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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Fabi, Jean et les quatre filles !
The Fabi-Jean family, four children and from Paris, is very partial to the USA. And not just because Fabienne and Jean’s wedding took place in Las Vegas about nine months before ours. Regretfully, we did…
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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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1996: a crappy year
Grandma began 1996 by spending New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day too for that matter, in Wycombe Hospital, four miles from her home in Marlow. Her ailments were increasing and diversifying into cancer. What upset…
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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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Nothing matches Disney decor
It’s a Small World, at night. When Disneyland Paris, then called Eurodisney, opened its doors, there was a real possibility that it would flop, that Europeans, and in particular the French, would…
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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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1995: Along came Charlie!
1995 was already more than half over when Charlie arrived, but the whole year was softened and warmed by his arrival. From the moment Marie-Hélène deduced that she was “enceinte,” something special…
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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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1994: Like a Hurricane!
We moved in together in August 1994, and all hell broke loose! But maybe it would be more accurate to say that all hell was breaking lose when we moved in together.…
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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…
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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…