Spray Painting by Alexis and MK

It's really too hot here to do much in the afternoon besides taking a dip in the pool or sheltering from the heat inside. So we try to do things before lunch.

As we are in the midst of clearing out the clutter from the garage to allow the children to have half of it as a hobby room, we needed a room divider.

I found and old sheet and the children found our old "Busy Book" that I bought for the children years ago and they decided to use an old spray bottle and some paint to brighten it up a little.

They had heaps of fun and still haven't managed to get all the paint off themselves.

Finshed Sheet, drying in the sun.

Gingerbread afternoon

Trying to keep the children busy and happy is really hard, especially when the school vacation lasts 8 weeks. The first two weeks flew by, we when to the UK camping ( yes, it rained everyday) and one week in Brittany, in all we drove 3868kms.






The children (even the teenagers) made some gingerbread human(ish) shaped biscuits.

Now we're off to clean out the garage, we're going to make it into a hobby room (too much stuff to get a car in there!)

Wind Chimes

We've been pretty busy, no time for blogging. We managed to get a whole load of shells and decided to make some wind chimes. Charlotte really loved making them.

You need some shells, some string, a bit of wood, some old rope and a drill

I''ll post a couple of photos of the wind chimes in-situ when I have time.

Two male gerbils and their 5 babies

I always thought that Romain was a girl and my suspisions were corfirmed a little less than 3 weeks ago when Gaby shouted to come and see Romain because he had done some unusual caca's (her words), infact the pink things she saw, were 5 little babies. Daughter Charlotte who procured both Luca( the father) and Romain( now mother) and who had assured us that they were both males, tried her best to be surprised, but I'm not so sure.

Photos to come soon

School's out

Yippee, tomorrow is the last day of school before the long summer break. Our two terrible teenagers are flying "alone" to Brittany tomorrow to stay with the grand-parents for a couple of weeks, while we drive up to Calais and the Euro Tunnel to spend one week camping " à la ferme" on the Surrey/Sussex border. Camping without electricity was just too difficult of O and C to comtemplate, hence their trip to Brittany.

Gaby, Alexis and Marie Kate will be able to enjoy a real (organic) working farm, fetching fresh eggs each morning, reading, dreaming and playing, what bliss.

We don't even have to shop, the farm has a "honesty shop" where we can stock up on organic sausages, eggs, milk, juice....et cetera, the list is long.

On the way back, we'll go to Brittany and pick up Oliver and Charlotte and spend perhaps another week there.


Marie-Kate on the local beach (2007) just 50 metres from home in Brittany.

Morning sailing and afternoon on the ile du Gaou

Marie-Kate and her kite.

As I said in an earlier post, I have been busy of late, after a morning of sailing with Gaby's class of CM1, I had to juggle lunch and hand over the children to French hubby, who was charged to take them back to school, leaving me time to go to a nearby Island where Marie-Kate was spending the afternoon with her class (moyenne section) all aged 4 or 5.
Christophe who helped the children with their project.

Her class have been learning about the wind, and they'd all made their own kites to fly on the Island

I think it's a butterfly

La Voile/ Sailing (Gaby's class)

Our little town by the sea

I have been busy lately with helping out at school with different activities, one of which is the sailing class, an easy job which consists of walking the 400 metres from the school to the sailing club, taking photos for the class blog and hurrying the children up at the end, to get changed so they get back to school for lunch or home-time (this isn't so easy, these kids talk a lot).

These guys are lucky to sail in spring and not the autumn

Just next to the sailing school I found this. Apparently this boat has been in this position for a year after a big storm caused it to tip over. Now, it's blocking about twenty boats that can't leave quay! The boat's owned by an association and they can't afford to have it rescued.

The class on its way back after two hours of sailing.