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....  

Stories from Auvergne, Alexis' chosen to write about L'histoire du Curé

I just checked my emails and good old Mr B sent us some last minute photos plus Alexis' text on one of the stories the cute storyteller read to the children.  It is in French.   Oh yes, last night went to his first ever boum (party) photo below

Maybe Alexis is somewhere on this photo, but I can't see him.  


The two classes are on there way home, but only left after lunch, so Alexis won't be back till at least 8 tonight.

Pre teenagers room and seven (nearly eight) bedrooms before and after

Who's the tidiest chez nous? Oliver, nearly 18 years of age? NO chance on earth. Charlotte aged 16? No way

Well it must be one of the pre-teenagers ...pre pre pre teenagers,  Gabrielle, Alexis or Marie-Kate.

Alexis' room before 8 this morning

Alexis' room is tidy because he hasn't been here for twelve days so his room is tidy, nothing to do here.  But to be fair to Oliver and Charlotte I did take a before tidy up photo and just now some after photos.  Guess what the girl's bedrooms plus bathroom and a check on Alexis' room took only thirty minutes, can you believe it.

 Alexis' room this afternoon

 Marie-Kate, she's always has the tidiest room out of the five children, in my opinion anyway.

Marie-Kate can often be found at her desk before school, this is her room in an untidy state, I love it.

She nearly always makes her bed too, this is still a before photo

 I took a couple of minutes to tidy and then clean the furniture and floor, it's good enough for me.
Finally Gabrielle, aged twelve, she can be messy but she has been making an effort, however  still needs to organize her clothes

 Messy but heavenly tidy  when you think about Oliver's and Charlotte's rooms

 Gabrielle's desk before tidying, notice that it only has work related stuff on it.

Gaby's bed before, yes she made it, yippee

``

 Bedroom after a quick tidy

Finally, desk area and book case, she has a large collection of mangas, you only can see a part of the collection here.

Gabrielle is now home and Marie-Kate will soon be back, so I need to finish off the kitchen. Can't wait to see Alexis and for the weekend to begin.

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.

Alexis in Auvergne...back on Friday

 Day out learning about the region's volcanos 

We are all missing Alexis here and can't wait to have him back home on Friday after twelve days away (longest time away ever). 
Luckily we've been kept up to date via dear Mr B's emails and photos, which have helped a lot.  They've done so many things and visited so many places, I think the children will need this up coming long Easter weekend to recuperate before going back to school next Tuesday.
One of the activities Alexis was really looking forward to do was climbing.

I can't remember if Mr B told us that this wall was seven meters high on ten.  Alexis(in orange) is holding the rope and I think it's Jeremy (best friend) who's climbing.


Monday night, Nicolas, a storyteller came and presented three tales from the region
Peti - Peta, L'histoire du curé and le champ du diable....can't wait to hear about them from Alexis

Here's Nicolas, kind of cute for a storyteller

And of course, they been leaning a lot about volcanos, visiting them (don't worry mum, they are extinct)

What an amazing school camp, lucky children, great guides and amazing teachers, I think Alexis is going to come back with such wonderful memories and an  obsession for volcanoes which he was already keen on before he left.




Roll on Friday.... and getting ready mentally to say goodbye to Charlotte who's leaving for ten days to Spain and then Gabrielle at the end of April, who's off to Germany with her class for four days, now that's more reasonable.
I bet that the girls will never get round to sending any postcards, unlike Alexis who has send four letters/postcards so far, making Mamie and Papy, Grannie and and Alain and I very happy (guess who will be getting a very big Easter egg this Sunday?) 

Le Canard Enchainé...What Marie Kate always reads

I was lucky to have my camera at hand to get this shot of MK reading the  *Canard Enchaîné the other day
Her favourite column  that she always reads, is Le Journal de Carla B (Carla Bruni). You know when she's reading it because of her constant giggling.
She also loves to watch Le Petit Journal presented by Yann Bathès and as we are in the midst of the French presidential elections here, she has been watching Yann interview the different candidates. Last night it was François Hollande's turn to be grilled, tortured and teased by Yann and by gosh he's excellent and what he does (Yann I mean).  Anyhow, Marie-Kate asked last night if by the time she's grown up, would it be possible for Nicolas Sarkozy to still run for president, because if it was, she'd vote "tout sauf Sarkozy". 
This morning while eating breakfast and listening to the radio, she moaned on about the presidential campaign being useless because she hadn't heard any ideas just  polemics, her final words were "c'est nul".


She certainly is forming her own political ideas early, it's a shame that Mr Mélenchon (left front) refuses to go on the Petit Journal, because I think Marie-Kate would really have liked to see this candidate....  by the way she wasn't in least enamoured by Mr Hollande's  performance last night. 




*French weekly satirical newspaper that features investigative journalism  and leaks from sources in the French government and French politics and business a long with some jokes and cartoons

21 km trail still in the Vexin

Sunday morning, Alain and I ran for 21 kilometers for the first time ever and it was amazing.

We left in the quite early, and boy it was colder than the week before (3°c), Alain laughed because I chose to wear shorts, but after the first couple of kilometers I was glad I did.

Oh and those socks, Alain has some too, really helped me during the effort.

 We ran through some lovely countryside and some pretty villages in the Vexin, first La Chartre a small hamlet, then after a little hard uphill running, we got  to go down the GR2 (I love descends) which takes us through a forest.  Still on the GR2, we cut across Oinville (really pretty village) and then up again, but worth the effort, as we had amazing views of The Seine Valley, then onto Seraincourt, another typical Vexin village, oh so pretty. After Seraincourt we had a couple of kilometers that was tough on my legs (even with my socks!) but overcame that mentally and reached the highest plateau realizing I'd left Alain behind. I waited and admired the view and noticed we'd almost reached Gaillon sur Montcient, because of the golf course below, there were hoards of golfers. Alain told me later that a lot of them come from Paris to play here, and I can understand why.  

The last leg of the run was fantastic, because we knew we'd done it, yes us, who three or four months ago couldn't run more than three or four kilometers without nearly dying.  

We even managed a sprint at the end.  

Our goal was to finish between 2h18 and by the latest 2h30 but we managed it in 2h10.

One day later, I feel it a little still in my legs, but can't wait to go for a run tomorrow, and as for Alain, he cycled to the train station this morning, it's all down hill, but tonight he's going to suffer coming back up I think