Presents

 Some of the presents the children received this Christmas this year include a guitar for Alexis.
A furby for MK that drives me crazy and the children too, they even played "operation Furby" on it, but didn't get round to dissecting it (just yet), just taking the batteries out covering him with cling film!

They have a new gamer PC that we keep downstairs so we can monitor how much time they play.
We have bought some programming books for children too, more to come later
Also a present for all the artists in the family is due to come this morning, so it's quite exciting.

Meanwhile, Alain has arrived in Walvis Bay this morning and will sail and while performing tests until the ship arrives of the coast of Nigeria for its operation.

Back...Catching up from Easter

I'm really trying to juggle family, work, the house and very occasionally a blog post, but it's not easy.  Alain came back from Congo weeks ago and was supposed to leave weeks ago to Angola.  He's still waiting though, as he has a visa issue, that should be resolved next week.  If he leaves too late, it would mean that we'd have to cancel our long weekend in Amsterdam, four night on a canal boat:(

For the first time, this Easter, only Gaby, Alexis and Marie-Kate hunted for Easter eggs, Oliver and Charlotte chose their comfortable beds and 15 euros each.

 The weather was good and the eggs were fairly easy to fine as our garden was still in mode "winter".

This year, Gaby remembered no to put her big Easter egg on top of her radiator, and got to devour this one in record time.

Catching up with Christmas 2012

For the first time ever, I worked on Christmas Eve.  I was the only one through at work and things were really quiet, so I finished early.  When I arrived home, the children had already written out  menus for everyone

All the cooking was done by Alain, Gaby, Alexis and MK.  Oliver stayed far away from any work, while Charlotte was with her boyfriend.  Alexis is really starting to like helping out in the kitchen.  Above he's preparing salmon canapés.

The girls made lots, including Devils on Horsebacks.

After many tasty aperitifs 

The table was laid

and this year we ate duck, a recipe inspired from a one of MK's cook books. Our  "Magret de Canard en Croûte de Noël" main course was yummy, served with parsnip and carrot chips.

To finish, we had a boulangerie bought Christmas Log.

To finish off, we were treated to a amazing harmonica concert by Alexis.

He's been learning harmonica since the beginning of this school year and he's really good, really, and it was a perfect ending, listening to our nearly 11 year old son, on Christmas Eve.

Marie-Kate doesn't mash her words nor do these other 8 year olds

 As mentioned in an earlier post, it was MK's turn to bring the school newspaper home 
  for us to read.

 In class, the children had to write a couple of sentences about someone close to them. 
MK chose me.  Here's what she wrote(above) or here:
It's my mum.  She has brown hair (this is true), brown eyes (true). She's tall (quite true for 
 my age). She is quick tempered (whoops, I wouldn't want to admit this usually, but ok, I 
can be), maniac (depends for what...sometimes), polite (I try always to be) and 
straightforward (yes, I think so).
To be honest I was a little bothered with what she wrote, stupid really, but I knew lots of other people had read or were to read the newspaper, and I felt like I'd be judged by 
people who didn't know me at all.  Still MK was honest, she told the truth as she sees it
and she's right.  I'll try to be less quick-tempered....


Under MK's text is one by Alexandre, he wrote: It was my father. He was a joker. 
He had short hair and glasses.  He was always happy. 

 Louis wrote this (I wonder if his grandpa was happy when he read it?) My grandpa has short hair and mouth closed.  He's grumpy.

I wouldn't be happy if I were Tom's mum. He wrote: It's my mum. She has brown eyes and straight hair. She does her nails.  She is nasty (or bad, or horrid...)

And Maurice, this one is curious to read

It's my mum.  She has long hair (she doesn't) and she's nice.   She wears clean clothes..

I said it was curious.

 Baudry also wrote that his mum was nasty, but this time, always.

Julia summed her mum up to a tee. 

It's my mum. She wears glasses to read. She's beautiful, laughs a lot, kind(nice) and smiles. She has medium length hair. She's almost never mean (nasty...) She's calm.

Teenager's who can't tidy even on Friday's...Allowance day on Saturday

I have been warning Oliver and Charlotte for days ( like every week) that on Friday their beds need to be made BEFORE going to school and their rooms need to be reasonably tidy too, i.e clothes hung or folded and no major mess.  Normally I end up docking a euro or two from their allowance, but this Friday, just after they left for school, I went and checked and I nearly died, holy cow, they obviously have some form of slovenly bedroom syndrome sickness. Their rooms were awful. Be warned, there are a lot of scary "before" and much better after photos.

Welcome to Oliver's world, the first thing I saw upon entering, looks promising

Turn to the right and what a sight to behold. Lucky for Oliver that he wasn't there, especially after seeing the wrappers from those aperitif cheesy cubes (see evidence below)

I found spoons, forks, one plate and several empty compote pots, but that's nothing new.

One thing that really shocked me though, yes more than this awful mess, was the fact that he had stolen Alexis' brand new fountain pen that Gaby had bought for his homecoming today!!! Now there I blew a fuse, péter les plombs (I like this expression in French) and I texted him and told him how upset and angry I was.  He knew it was for Alexis too.

His desk, no comment. Oh hum, better not dwell on that for the moment, now lets look at the "after" photos.

 Wardrobe tidy. I have to note here, that Oliver only wears  fancy labelled clothes like Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Finch et cetera... You'd think he'd take more care of his clothes, really!

Bookcase tidy minus the cheese wrappers

Desk tidy

Bed changed and MADE, windows open (and they'll be staying open all day)

Last look.  I started to tidy this room at 8:30 and finshed it in one hour and ten minutes, I didn't stop, not for a minute and the room is  only about 11m2
Ready for Charlotte's room?

Welcome to "chez Charlotte", nice isn't it?

 This is supposed to be a desk, you know a place to study, but Charlotte uses it for her make-up et cetera.
Now I took Charlotte's before photos before those of Oliver's, so there are just these two above, this is where the majority of the mess and disorder was.  Now for the after photos?

 I swapped the computer a round onto the other end of the desk and put her school workbooks  onto the other end, maybe she feel inspired to work more!

Other end of her desk, near to the window. 

Tidy wardrobe. I put at lease one bag of clothes into storage, stuff she doesn't wear.

Bed made, the room looks more welcoming now, for now!!!

This room took five minutes longer than Oliver's to tidy, but she has more clothes and I had to move all of her make-up over from her desk to her vanity table and boy she has so much make-up it's scary ( I have none)

The last bedroom on this floor is ours, I didn't think it was worth taking before photos because I like to keep our bedroom as uncluttered as possible

The view from where I'm sitting while typing this blog entry.

The view looking towards my Eames chair (where I'm sitting now). I took maxi fifteen minutes to pick up some clothes, clean the floor then hoover and dust, easy peasy.

I am publishing these before and after photos to hopefully shame our messy teenagers  and also, so my mum can see how messy they really are, because I think she feels I exaggerate a lot.

I have got some before photos of Gaby's , MK's and Alexis' room to add later, but they weren't anything as bad as Oliver's and Charlotte's bedrooms and I haven't tidied them yet, nor have I eaten and it's one o'clock already. I have to eat, finish upstairs, pick up Gaby at 3 and grab a little shopping (another fountain pen for Alexis before Gaby knows), the Mk will be back at 16:30 and then hopefully Alexis should be back after about 5, so I have to be ready to pick him up from the bottom of our village.   Oliver and Charlotte will be back at 18h15, hopefully feeling bad about the mess they left and Alain comes back from Monaco late this evening.
I'm ready for a relaxing Easter weekend, and I'm twenty euros richer because there's no allowance for those messy teenagers this week.

La dame de Pique and Musée international d'art naïf

Our thermometer's reading this morning was -9°c and with the wind it was more like -15°c...apart from taking Marie Kate to school I haven't set foot outside, even now with the sun shining it's a freezing cold -7°c.  Marie Kate went to school well wrapped up ready for here school outing to Vicq and the International museum of Naïve Art. She's been so excited about it, they are going to do lots of workshops and eat a picnic.....just hope that they ate somewhere warm inside in weather like this.
 

We booked to go to the opera is Paris tomorrow, reserved ages ago, so we are just going to put on our winter woollies and brave the cold. This will be our view point from where we will be seated (I like the national Opera website), can't wait.

Belated Merry Christmas

Wow, things have been crazy around here and I've got a couple of minutes before I have to dash out.

 We were lucky enough to spend a couple of days in London before Christmas.

 This tree was built using Lego bricks, it was awesome. You'll have to get yourself off to St Pancras if you want to see it, before it's dismantled...I wonder how they do that?

 First mince pie, photo isn't great, but the mince pie was yummy...New favourite place for cakes " Peyton & Byrne...

MK preparing for two more crazy days in London.  The Ridgemount Hotel just gets better and better and really reasonably priced too.