Thank you for the birthday wishes. Patrice surprized me by inviting his cousin Marc and his family over for my birthday dinner. We just met them on our tour de France vacation and they live in Metz which is only 45 minutes away, right between us and Patrice's parents' house. His wife Jocelyne is super friendly and they have 6 GREAT children ranging from 17-3 years old. They are an AWESOME family and it is so nice to be around such easy-going, nice people with such well-behaved children. They are even religious so it's nice to share common Christian beliefs. I just rave about them but it's because I realize we don't have many people that we know that we consider it a real pleasure to be around. Usually it's considered 'fellowshipping', or we like the parents but the kids are way too wild. So to find them was so nice.
I say to find because the cousins we met on our vacation are from the Duffort side and Patrice hasn't seen them in about 30 years. Most remember him as a 2 year old. The other cousin that we really loved was Sophie who also has 6 kids. She's the one in the photos. They are also a great family with great kids, but not as Christian as Marc and Jocelyne.