A Letter to my nephews

Hey boys,

I have a story about your Daddy that I think you might enjoy.

When we were kids, our parents frequently bought "Neapolitan" ice cream for us to have for desserts.

That's the one with the 'stripe' of chocolate ice cream, a stripe of vanilla in the middle, and then a stripe of strawberry ice cream on the other side. I guess the idea is that you can enjoy three different flavours at once, but personally, I didn't care for it, because you really ended up with vanilla ice cream that tasted like either chocolate or strawberry ice cream (or worse, both at once!), or strawberry ice cream that tasted like chocolate (how that happened, I was never sure, the two colours/flavours never even touched- weird, hey?).

Anyhow. Just like they are chez vous, food packages here are bilingual- generally having French on one side, English on the other.

On the French side of the carton, "Neapolitan" was "Napolitaine".

One evening your Daddy was looking at the carton (it was the French side, but he likely hadn't noticed that), and asked if we could have some "Napoleon ice cream" for dessert ...

Needless to say, we all giggled, especially your Granddad. But your Daddy was never one to admit he'd made a mistake for something like that, so he persisted in calling it "Napoleon ice cream", even pointing out the words to a song we'd learned in school (at least, as he'd heard them ...)

"Napolitaine avec cinq cents soldats ..."  (I'm fairly certain it would have actually been "Napoleon avec cinq cents soldats", but there was no arguing details like that with your Daddy!).

I guess you could say your Daddy's persistence paid off, as "Napoleon Ice Cream" became the family name for that particular flavour- in fact, I still want to say it whenever I see a carton of it in the grocery store!

So, next time Mummy's going shopping, ask her to pick up some Napoleon Ice Cream for you guys to try, 'k? And let me know if you concur about the blending of the flavours, too (concur is another way to say "agree", btw).

Love you both,
Your Auntie