Alex is refereeing a 2002 wrestling match between Alban and Charlie, on the one hand, and Nick on the other. Note the step in the carpet that they are all lying on. After this photo was taken, Charlie says that Nick did a backflip and squished him and Alban. Their shoes and clothes are discarded behind the wrestlers, and games also litter the living room floor.
The children fooled around effortlessly, like puppies, making adventures out of nothing and drama out of less.
For many years, roughhousing was key, a simple joy to be shared. But they had fun in a lot of other ways too, and this is a collection of pictures of our children having fun. That is what they did.
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- Not exactly sure what was happening here – I was at the office – but it was taken during Nick and Tom’s Christmas 1998 visit to us in Santa Cruz. Tom and Alban are under dish towels, and Marie-Hélène wrote “inhalations” on the back.
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- Bath time was fun time! Here is Charlie, 20 months, splashing around in the tub at La Bellanderie in April 1997.
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- Goofy (called Dingo in France) appears to be tickling Tom, judging from the latter’s laughter, during an early 1995 visit to Disneyland Paris.
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- Girls get to have fun too! Daphne letting us know how she feels on a trampoline in Devon with Alban in August 1984.
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- At the Hanlons for Brendan’s third birthday party, we got to play with his new toys! He is nowhere to be seen here, but was certainly nearby. Check out the smile on Alex’s face! September 2001.
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- Two types of fooling around here: first, Charlie is on or around the trampoline (it was placed beneath a high wall, which encouraged all sorts of leaps),; and second, someone used Charlie’s own camera to take this pic.
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- This one never ceases to make me laugh! Alex at two and a half, in August 2000, with an orange slice in his mouth.
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- Alban and Nick fighting for the fridge in September 2000, But but not for the usual reason: in this case, each wants to affirm that the words “I’m the BEST”, spelled in magnets on the fridge, apply to him.
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- Daphne too was known to roughhouse enthusiastically. Here she is on Alban’s back with Charlie looking on. December 2002.
Water is involved in lots of fooling around. There’s something mystical about how much water does for the children, and for the rest of us. Here is a small sample from our tribe.
There are a lot more water photos on the pools page, the second pools page, and dotted all over the site.
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- Disney leaves these spray bottles lying around for the benefit of their overheated guests. When we all arrived in Orlando in July 2000, it was very hot, which furnished the perfect justification for taking advantage of our hosts’ hospitality!!
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- At Tom’s birthday party in 2000, he modeled his thankfully temporary tattoos with those of Charles and Alban, equally thankfully equally temporary. Not sure where the water here came from, but I bet it was fun!
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- Charlie jumping onto a floater in our London hotel during our summer 2001 summer vacation. We like swimming pools!
Car wash in 2005! Didn’t happen every week, or even every month, but it was a very fun project!
As we all grew older, the tone of fooling around changed, and the older children were less likely to share their fooling around moments. Perfectly natural, but a bit sad when you’re a parent.
On the left is one of those rare moments when an older child fooling around was photographed at home! This was Alban, who was helping the little guys with their chore, when he could not resist the twin temptations offered by the garden hose he was using to rinse down his maman’s Volvo, the first to also rinse down Alex, and the second, well, we’ll let you interpret that yourself!
Back to the gallery, starting with a few rare moments where we have a record of teenage and twenty-something fooling around! To be honest, what we have is more than enough!
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- I had NOTHING to do with this photo! Tom’s friend Daniel, a budding photographer, took it while exploring the area with Tom and Maureen.
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- As less and less of their fooling around occurs in front of the parents, it is not surprising that this glazed-eyed group was found on Facebook. It looks as if Alban, Tom, his girlfriend Maureen and her friend were on a bridge over the Seine. Bottles all around!
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- Twenty-something fooling around. Ms Pink here is Daphne with her friends on Pacific Avenue, Halloween 2009.
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- During our summer 1999 vacation to Marlow, Nick and Tom got these swings moving in Higginson Park. Check Tom out here: he’s really working at it.
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- During an October 1999 visit to San Francisco Zoo, Daphne established a relationship with a chimp. We are all aware that one of the sadder parts of growing up to be a woman is that you have to hug a lot of chimps to find a real hairy gorilla!!
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- Alex being impish, hiding behind Charlie’s indoor soccer team in 2003.
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- We’re strolling along Carnaby Street, a street of fashion boutiques in London, during our summer 2001 vacation, when we stumble across this store, an On’Neill’s Surf Shop. O’Neill’s was founded in Santa Cruz in 1952! Nick, Charles (upside down) and Tom duly celebrated the discovery.
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- Alban’s friend Justin brought his motorcycle to the house in July 2004, and Alex tried it out. A bit of a stretch: he was only six and a half!
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- Tom had just turned 14 when his cousin Antony married his high school sweetheart, Courtney. Here is the blushing bride giving Tom a kiss at the wedding.
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- Alex in a typically Gallic costume, of Obelix, the menhir sculptor and Asterix’s best friend in the cartoons about Roman invaders in Gaul. Not sure what triggered this display – it wasn’t Halloween!
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- Charlie during his last year in Happy Valley School. I don’t know what was happening here, but am pretty sure that he doesn’t look naughty!
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- We were not entirely comfortable with this one. Alban and Tom made their way up the ladder and then up onto the top roof in early 2000. Maman and Charlie look on.
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- Daphne and her then boyfriend share a Christmas kiss in front of our tree in 2008.
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- Video games remained the principal pastime, of course, but Nick’s enthusiasm for poker was communicated to his siblings in 2008. Tom was in Paris, as ever.
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- Tom messing about in Paris with friends, from Facebook in 2008.
Tom keeping it all in the family!
Tom here brings his own genealogy into question. You will notice that he did not miss this opportunity during our 1999 visit to San Francisco Zoo to cross his eyes and otherwise confirm his close kinship with the family members around him in the picture! Nobody else allowed us to photograph him or her doing this.
Here’s more fooling around, this time on a beach in Brittany. And more teenage fooling around.