just another morning here

My attempts at alphabetical amusement pale into insignificance compared to Merry’s!

We’ll just have to do without titles till I can think of something original to do with those … numbers, maybe?

Anyway, we’ve had a busy few days doing all sorts – here are the highlights.

Monday was school … Anna’s dance clothes that I bought off ebay had finally arrived so she was over the moon to wear them. The dance teacher told me afterwards that she actually thought Anna was quite promising with her dancing and would we be interested in some proper dance lessons so I had to say yes (how to butter up a prospective customer, eh?!), but we have yet to see if anything comes of it.

Tuesday we had our Free Range Learning group – we’ve decided to go every week if we can. One parent takes a short practical French session which the girls love, they’ve been singing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ in French ever since … and there are other activities going on as well, plus all the socialising. The group was in the Telegraph, the other day, actually – read the article here.

Wednesday has seen swimming, some catching up at home with our postcard project, plus a bit of maths work together on the computer, another HE meet-up in the park, popping into town to get some parcels, then going to St. Luke’s for some more resources. And I wonder why I’m tired! I’ve been out the last two nights as well so tonight I’ve pleaded washing overload instead of going out again – now I have to get round to actually sorting some of the washing!
Anyway, I was really chuffed with Josiah at the pool today, for the first time he actually went off and swam on his own without needing me to hold him all the time. This is a major improvement!
Also, while we were at the park, I spotted a flier in the building there about some Music Awareness classes for 4 – 6 yr olds which I didn’t know about before. I rang the organiser this evening and it seems they may have some places so I’m hoping they will, I’ve been looking for some general music groups for ages with no luck – I just didn’t want to start individual instrumental lessons too early.

Also, this evening we’re playing with our new toy – a hyperpen & tablet. I got it with an offer from Serif, along with PhotoPlus 7 and DrawPlus 6 – more software to load the pc up with! Completely unnecessary, really, but I wanted to try one out because I’m left-handed and have problems with drawing when I have the mouse in my right hand. Abbie’s left-handed too, so I was thinking of her, too. Anyway, guess what – I hate it and Steve loves it! Still, we’ve got to use it a bit and give it a chance. The kids are looking forward to using it for drawing, as it is really sensitive for that. We’ll see.

Our first week was spent in the Ardeche, chez Baxter at Les Monedes, St Paul le Jeune. The Baxters are a british couple who moved to France over 15 years ago and have these two lovely apartments to let as well as living in a further apartment themselves. They made us really welcome with all home comforts in the apartments … they’re building a pool there at the moment and we would definitely go back there again if we have the chance, it was fantastic. These are a few of my pictures with commentary … enjoy!

The heat really made us relax this week which was nice – I read nearly all the books I’d taken for two weeks this week! I’m trying to think if there is anything else I should remember from the week … we ate lots of pasta because it was easy, and lovely fresh fruit & veg from the market, not to mention the cheese and sausages! Abbie particularly enjoyed tasting greengages and eating them by the bucketload given half a chance!

Well, that’s it for now, if I think of anything else I’ll have to add it in later!

Josiah (poor boy) has been watching way too much tv this week because his big sisters haven’t been around doing things with him – they’ve been at a holiday club every morning this week. So today I took pity on him, after he watched Balamory where all the children were painting …

Joe chose blue paint, of course
It lasted all of 10 minutes till he started trying to splatter paint the table/carpet/walls so we stopped the painting session rather abruptly at that point!

This afternoon I’ve been very attentive and have showed the girls how to play top trumps, we read a story with lots of French vocabulary in it and then played a lotto game with French word cards, the girls have read stories and done puppet shows for me, and it’s all been very nice!

Nothing else of much interest is going on here, I’m trying to get through as much washing as possible before going away, I’m just glad I have a tumble drier because if I was relying on sunny days to dry it, I’d be in trouble! I’m also planning to defrost the freezer but that has to wait till after tomorrow’s dinner.

Picked up some euros from the bank this afternoon, first time I’ve seen any, so that was interesting. Marginally.

I’m trying to put together a comic/magazine/workbook style thing for the children around the theme of France. It’s proving harder than I thought – just look at Enchanted Learning and see how much they have on France/French language activities … most of it’s beyone me, let alone the kids! Anyway, we’ll get there in the end, and it will get added in with our holiday diary to make a project all together. I suppose if I was feeling really ambitious we could make a tape of us practising some french language, but that would mean more effort than a quick bit of internet surfing!

Bunnies in the garden

Meanwhile, the children are playing beautiful ‘made up games’ upstairs (which generally results in the total trashing of Anna’s room, but there we go). Abbie has just appeared in a bunny costume wanting to pull a carrot from the garden that she can eat, so I said it would be fine. She looked too cute to say no to.