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.

13

Gaby turned thirteen on Friday.  

Friday, I had to supervise our office move and her papa was and still is in Congo, so this year wasn't quite like the others before. However Gaby, mature as ever has taken it all in her stride and we have had an excellent weekend.  Friday we ate her favorite food, Chinese.

Saturday we spent a lot of time in the garden as the weather was quite exceptional (unlike today).

 She never had a cake till today, so it had to be good, and as she's crazy for Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, we made a Baked Alaska

 Alexis and Marie-Kate decorated it and it looked and tasted great.

Gaby hasn't had all of her birthday presents yet, we are waiting for her papa to return (sometime) but she did get to open her beautiful charm bracelet...that incidentally now to scared to wear just in-case she were to lose it.

Alexis' 11th birthday

Eleven.  Easy-going, intelligent, sensitive, loyal, shy, competitive, business boy, and owner of many odd socks, as well as being a Harry Potter specialist.  

He is now in his last year of primary school, next year he will join Gabrielle who will then be in 3eme (last year of college).  Time really does fly and my children are growing up so fast.
Alexis had three different cakes for his birthday, this one was his favourite, A no bake Rocky Road cake (Hairy Biker's recipe)  and it was so good.

 Here are a couple of the presents Alexis received this year from us.  Above a water colour bought in Brittany, painted by an Irish painter who lived in Brittany.  Gaby had another of his works for her birthday...If I can make my way through her mess, I'll take a photo.

We found, probably the best present ever, for Alexis' 11th birthday, an ice hockey table, the problem is that Alexis has perfected his game since he received it and no-one is able to beat him...  His friends all want one for their birthdays now...Looks like we've started a new trend.

 Things have been busy around here recently...whats new!   A couple of weeks ago we had quite a lot of snow which made the children happy. Alain managed to leave on a business trip to Kuala Lumpur just before , leaving us to have fun snow ball fighting and making some snow people/animals.   

Marie-Kate opted for a snow pony,  it looked great when she had finished (no photo).

The children are really social at the moment (unlike their parents), even Marie-Kate has invited three friends over today, which is amazing...I forgot how noisy eight year olds could be!  
We have been busy working on the children's bathroom which is still unfinished... A couple of weeks ago we went over to Pantin after successfully bidding on a new super comfy chair with footstool.  Alain loves it, the problem is, finding time to just sit down and relax with all the children around.
If I see him sitting down on it, I take a photo.

A cloud inside the house

With the thousands of photos we have, plus 15 wifi users and more... we have being looking for a solution to back up our data for a while. Finally, after much wavering, we bought our own little cloud, a Synology DS213+. Since November it's been sitting in its box waiting for me to stop procrastinating and install it.  I was a little hesitant, as some work colleagues said I wouldn't find it easy, even just the installation!

Like most NAS's, this one came without any hard disks, so we bought two Western Digital NAS 1To red.

Eight screws later, and two trays slotted into place and I was ready to go. 

The rest was just child's play, after linking it to our Livebox, and typing some like //find Synology, our NAS was located. Formatting the disks took a little bit longer then10 minutes, and then the welcome page popped up.  

Above, there's the DSM (Disk Station Manager 4.1), which has a user-friendly interface and seems really intuitive to use (so far). I have created some shared folders and now my next task is to transfer all of our photos which are currently on my MB pro onto the NAS.  Also we have to give this little cloud a name.

So far, so good, why did I listen to those guys in the first place...

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.

Charlotte's 17th Birthday

Charlotte turned 17 on the 26th December.  This year has had many ups and even more downs when it comes to Charlotte, but things are settling. 
She requested a cheese cake for her birthday, she's crazy for cheese, even for breakfast. The smeller the cheese the better, however, this cake called for soft cream cheese and it really was delicious.  

After much waiting, we got to meet Charlotte's boyfriend, he's on the photo, well a part of him.  His name is Julien and he's really nice and so very tall too!  We immediately liked him and hope he'll stay around a long time, because as I said at the beginning of this post, things are settling and boy it's about time.