French language Q&A Forum

Lots of interesting idioms in this exercise like - "rien que d'y penser" and "sans que j'y puisse quoi que ce soit". 

I'm trying to break down "rien que d'y penser" into English.  Rien que = nothing that or nothing but.  De = I'm just starting to recognize that "de" often comes after "que" in certain phrases (Je dors plutot que de travailler).  Y penser = to think about it. 

I still don't see how sans que j'y puisse means I can't or I am not able.  What does "y" refer to?

The quiz says: ____ les gars! Thanks for coming guys!

The answer is Merci d'etre venus

This is clearly correct in the usual situation where the guys have come and are being thanked for it.

But suppose that the guys had promised to come and were being thanked in advance for it? The same English sentence would work for that situation, even if it would be more explicit if we said "Thanks for agreeing to come, guys". How would the French look in that case?