Three day Easter weekend

Alexis arrived back safely Friday evening, he was tired and feeling nostalgic (still was not quite himself this morning).  He bought back some yummy Saint Nectaire cheese, lots of stones, and presents for everyone apart from Oliver.
Saturday we shopped for Easter eggs and Oliver sat an English exam for the university in Nanterre (fingers crossed  that he gets a place..I think there are only 30 places).

 Sunday morning the younger children were up at the crack of dawn to search the garden for Easter eggs, at the last minute, Charlotte managed to join them too.

 To stop world war three beginning, we divide the garden up into zones and give each children a zone in which they have to find their big Easter egg, once found, they can search anywhere for smaller eggs that they "should" share out a bit, if someone doesn't manage to find many.  Marie-Kate was looking for her chocolate rabbit* on this photo, in the middle garden.

 Alexis found his egg quickly in the top garden.  It was quite cold, only 3°c, but at least it didn't rain.

 Charlotte huffed and puffed because her egg was too well hidden. All she had to do is look up.  Alain had placed it on a beam in our old (still falling down) garage.

Here are all the children, minus Oliver (lazy boy) with all the eggs they found.


*as of this morning, Marie-Kate's rabbit is still entire, she wants to keep it that way for a while because it's "beau"


Poor Gaby, put her egg on the radiator before falling to sleep Sunday night, so you can guess what happened....  

Easter Monday at la mairie

We walked down to a local village hall on Monday to take part in the annual Easter egg hunt.

For a French event, it was surprising organized, children from toddler sized to MK size had the fore-gardens of the mairie in which to hunt for eggs (mk found lots)

Whereas the over 7's had the woods behind to search

I managed to get a shot of Alexis with his best friend Jeremy. Alexis wasn't as lucky as MK when it came to finding eggs, but she shared hers with him and Gaby too.

This is our local town (village) hall, where drinks were offered. Can you believe the weather, once again, hot, and that's at 10am.

Night Night, tomorrow, sword-fencing for Alexis and another shopping expedition with the girls..scary prospect

7 the 22nd Part one

I am a little late but with Alain leaving unexpectedly and still away, I've been busy with the family, which has been a good thing really, I'm even enjoying read a J. Wilson book with Gaby (she's got them all), this one's a little sad though, it's called Whale Song (I think).

Anyway, as Alain had to leave just after lunch on MK's birthday and we knew he wouldn't be back for Easter Monday either, the children, big and small, had their first Easter egg hunt here in the garden before he left.

Of course there's always someone who doesn't find many eggs and goes off in a bad mood, and this year it was Gaby. But in the end, they all say down and I shared the smaller eggs out between them to stop world war three starting (especially as I was the one who'd have to deal with it later).

Since living in France, we've never experienced such hot weather over Easter, and before we lived in the sunny south.