just another morning here

One evening we headed down to a lake near to Langres – the Lac de Charmes. It was really nice but yet again I forgot my swimming gear – thought I’d put them in Joe’s bag but I hadn’t! Josiah particularly enjoyed swimming here and yet again the children had to be dragged out of the water. It was really nice to see them all enjoying themselves so much.

The main highlight of this week turned out to be Nigloland, despite the high temperatures and blazing sunshine again we had a fantastic day there. I think some of the photos ended up being taken with the normal camera but here are a selection.

this is the closest Steve is probably going to get to driving an F1 car. Abbie and I had the Mercedes one behind Steve & Anna, but photos of my F1 debut are on the other camera!

The girls forced me to go on the pirate ship … two minutes before queuing up we saw a girl being sick having just got off it, which did rather put me off, but there we go! We’d only had a crepe for lunch about an hour ago …

Josiah and Grandpa again – this time having great fun on the cowboy ride! Grandpa is sporting a new hat in this picture, having irretrievably lost his cap on the log flume we went to the shop to buy new hats – the kids all chose bandanas which I think are really trendy … don’t think Anna’s taken hers off since!

And a little family picture (sorry I’m looking the wrong way!) of us on a very pleasant little ride – aaah!!

This is Abbie at the gite, playing in the garden … about the only photo I have of her looking vaguely nice, she’s suffering from ‘I’m growing my hair out’ syndrome, it’s at a very awkward stage and probably will be for a while longer, gggrrr!

One night Steve and I cooked a meal for the children and made the kitchen into a restaurant – Steve wrote out a menu and the children ordered what they wanted – in French, too. It was really fun, Joe especially enjoyed being allowed a real wine glass!

Another day we went to a garden park (which was rubbish by National Trust standards, I have to say!). Here’s Anna being a statue …

… and the little ones getting wet in the sprinklers. It was still hot this week too, until the last couple of days.

On our last day, after a trip to the supermarket to stock up on wine (!!) we went to Brasserie Le Foy in Chaumont. It was Anna’s idea to find a restaurant for lunch and it was a great idea. It was a fantastic way to round off our holiday, we all enjoyed the food and the ambience …

Once home from Chaumont we slowly packed up the car – this is Joe on our very last morning wishfully thinking that he could drive all the way home! Steve did eventually persuade him to swap seats!

Here are the breathtaking views from our balcony …

… and down the road past the house … very picture postcard, eh?

This was the garden which was across the road from the house (but it was a very quiet road so perfectly safe to let the children go across unaccompanied), on three levels, the top of which was completely shady and had a little swing.

One of the reasons we chose to go to the Ardeche was because of a camp with french and english church friends that we were part of for the week. Steve played drums every evening with the band, and Anna especially enjoyed her Asterix themed children’s group.

My parents were at the camp too, in their caravan, so one day we went river swimming with them which was great fun. We also met up with an old friend from Bible College and that was good.

During this first week it was SO hot – the highest temperature we saw was around 43C. So most afternoons we came back to the apartments for siesta time –

… and when we weren’t sleeping we were keeping cool with our two favourite games this week – firstly the Ice Pack game, where it was a competition to see who could keep the ice pack on their tummy the longest …

… and secondly, water fights! The kids had ten euros each and on the first weekday when we went to the market in St Paul, they spied these Water Blasters for nine euros apiece and decided to blow their pocket money in one go! We thought the water pistols would break within a couple of hours of playing with them because they looked fairly cheap and nasty, but we had to eat our words because they’re still going strong and they were great fun for the whole holiday, so well worth their money!

and as you can see, it wasn’t just the kids who enjoyed them!

One of the things we did during the week was to visit ‘ Les Grottes de Cocaliere‘ – some caves and underground river things which were fascinating (very educational, stalactites and stalagmites and all that stuff!) … the main reason for going was that we thought it would be cool, and it was! We weren’t allowed to take photos there, but here is Joe before we went in – I couldn’t resist the photo, he was just too cute in his shades.

On our last day this week Steve and I drove down to a lovely little town called Cassis on the south coast, with the children, to meet my Uncle Jacques. We had a fantastic time on the beach together, thankfully Steve found some shade to sit in, and we had to drag the children out of the sea before they got sunstroke! They really enjoyed swimming in the sea and I was gutted that I’d managed to forget my things, because it looked beautiful and clear and warm … we surprised the kids by buying them each a rubber ring for today and they really appreciated them. (this was after trying to let them swim safely in a river a couple of days beforehand – I forgot the armbands!!)

Jacques also showed us some incredible photos of the forest fires, taken from his house … and of the helicopters flying past dropping water to put the fires out. It seems he really was very fortunate that his house was just outside the village.