Why France?

After the initial (insert surprise emoji here) response from telling our friends and family that we had decided to go to France for the year the first question is why?  Let’s start by saying that my husband, Marc, is French and his entire family still lives there.  Although we’ve gone to visit many times it has never been longer than 2 or 3 weeks.  I have always been lucky to be close to my family and have grown up believing in the importance of family.  Once we had kids it occurred to me that a 2 week holiday every other year with Marc’s family was never going to be enough for the kids to feel really connected to their French family.  Once we had kids it also occurred to Marc that he wasn’t going to be able to teach them French.  The back and forth between French and English was too much.  As much as he tried to only speak French in the beginning it quickly defaulted to English until eventually it was English all the time.  The final piece was a bit of a mid-life crisis I suppose for Marc.  After being at the same job for over 20 years he finally decided that he needed a break.  He was burnt out and his heart was no longer in it.  So with those 3 ingredients it became clearer and clearer that France was our solution.  It would allow a break for Marc, an opportunity for the girls to connect with their French family, and an opportunity for me and the girls to finally learn French.  The decision was made and now the gears were set in motion to actually make it happen.