My kitchen table - my life

This was my kitchen table yesterday and I realised that it summed up my life so well and what I hope to achieve on a daily basis.  Let me take you on a journey round my kitchen table/life ...

Starting top left and going clockwise:

Bowl of bread dough rising - this one is pumpkin bread and it turned out really tasty.  The sharp eyed among you may notice the dough is covered with plastic and you would be right.  It is a bag that had tortilla wraps in it and after being used several times to freeze things it split so got downgraded to a bread cover.

My 13 year old Nokia phone - yup, I really do have an original Nokia and it is at least 13 years old.  Dare I ask how many phone upgrades you have had in 13 years?

2 tea towels - these came from my Mum's house after we cleared it out.  We tried to salvage as much as possible of things that could not be given to charity or sold on/recycled.

My Sunday Photo - April 10th 2016

Take one tree, two home-made rope swings and add 2 boys - mix together for a lot of fun!

My Sunday Photo - March 27th 2016

For Moo's story please click here - Meet Moo - The Cat who Came to Stay.

My Sunday Photo - 6th March 2106

Last Sunday Tom took part in an athletics tournament up at Caen where he had qualified in the 50m hurdles (or haies = hedges, in French).  There were 5 heats and the medal winners were the fastest 3 from any of the 5 heats.  The faster qualifiers went in the earliest heats so as Tom was in heat 5 he (and we) knew, realistically, he stood very little chance of winning .... which he didn't.  But, he has only just moved up to this age category and he is up against boys a year older and a lot bigger and more developed than him, so we were very proud that he qualified.  Oh and the hurdles are higher now!

His athletics club was also really pleased with his performance.  He has a good technique apparently (although I don't think that shows in this photo) and they have asked if he will do extra training with the older lads so that hopefully next year he will stand a really good chance of getting a medal.  

One thing though - I think we need to buy him a new pair of running trousers sans un trou dans le genou (without a girt big hole in the knee!) in that case! 

Silent Sunday - January 31st 2016

It seems it is not jut small children who like making bubbles.  Allow your teenage son loose with the washing up liquid and you might not see clean plates but he will be adept at making hand-help bubbles.  That might explain why my washing up liquid went down so quickly this week!

Bananagrams! January 10th 2016

We are a family who enjoy a good game and this is one we have not played for a while until Simon and the boys rediscovered it recently.  It's Banangrams and is probably best described as Scrabble on speed!  There is no scoring but each player makes their own grid with the available tiles taking more tiles at various times through the game.  The winner is the first person to use all their letters on a completed grid with no errors when all the central tiles have been taken.  If that doesn't make sense it all becomes very clear when you play ... and it's addictive.

It is also very good for the boys where English is not their first written language which can result in some interesting spellings at times.  However even just playing it a few times of late has helped them with some of the many difficult spellings the English language throws up.

But one small query remains, how do you pronounce the game? We always called it Banana Grams until Ben looked at it and said Ban Anangrams.  So which do you think it is?

Silent Sunday - June 28th 2015

The Cake Holiday - the evidence!

For reasons that are pretty obvious from the pictures below, the recent holiday the boys and I took to England was nicknamed "The Cake Holiday".  It all started with pain au raisins on the ferry and progressed from there.  

Pain au raisin on the ferry

Well you cannot visit a National Trust property and NOT eat cake, it would (as my friend and fellow cake eater, Nicky, pointed out) be quite rude ... although maybe eating TWO each on a visit to Knightshayes near Tiverton was a touch greedy. 
 

Lunchtime cakes at Knightshayes

Afternoon cakes at Knightshayes

On Saturday we visited friends and Ellie baked us a cinnamon and raisin jumble cake.  Her father is head gardener at Sidbury manor which just happened to have an National Garden Scheme Open Day - with cake - we felt it would, again, have been rude to have declined to eat the cakes they were selling.

Ellie's cinnamon and raisin jumble cake

Afternoon tea at Sidbury Manor

On Sunday we chilled at Mum's and whilst we didn't eat any cake per se we did do a nice walk down the valley and clocked the tea shop in the village ... (and had rhubarb crumble for pudding which sort of counts in my book!).

On Monday I really needed a day shopping in Taunton so enlisted the help of 2 friends - and cake - to get both me and the boys through the ordeal.  I detest shopping, although in fairness did do very well and the boys detest shopping even more than I do. So friend, Andrea, came to give me moral support and guidance whilst friend, Jo, came to take the boys off my hands.  And we felt morally obliged to bolster ourselves for the day ahead with cake!  M&S cake no less.

M&S carrot cake

M&S lemon drizzle Cake

M&S ultimate chocolate cake

Tuesday we met up with more friends and as I felt the 3 of us invading was a bit of a cheek, we took lunch.  Quiche and, yes, you guessed it - cake!  Eaten in the garden with an insanely loud wren singing in my ear from a nearby tree and swallows swooping overhead.  It was a very English of lunches with my banana and raisin cake for pudding.

Banana and raisin cake to share with friends

We spent our final day on Wednesday at Mum's and planned a longer walk than Sunday ensuring, though, that it included the tea shop we had clocked on Sunday.  However, I hadn't taken my proper walking boots and the boots I was walking in were really hurting my toes.  We therefore spent rather too long lounging by the river and none of us really fancied the extra 2 hills to get to the tea shop that could, by that time, have been shut anyway. So we headed back to Mum's house (I limped and the boys showed off by running up the hill) and once home we tucked into some sultana cookies Mum had bought.  Very nice sultana cookies actually.

On Thursday we took the ferry home, our bellies well and truly filled with cake.  Strangely for the boys, when we ate dinner, Ben (and I) decided not to have a cake for pudding and Tom only ate half of his. I really do think we were totally caked out.

Are you a cake lover?  Are you drooling at the selection above and if so which would you chose?  I think my favourite was the lemon drizzle but as I am not 100% sure we may have to do a re-taste when we next return to England!

Silent Sunday - April 19th 2015

The Cake Holiday

This feels rather weird.  For the first time in over a year I am not sitting here on a Wednesday evening writing a gardening post to link up to How Does Your Garden Grow. Not that I have abandoned the garden this week, quite the opposite in fact and I have been working in there like a complete maniac. The reason is the boys and I are off the the UK on Thursday with a week. So over the last few days I have been trying to get ahead with things and it was only as night fell that I realised I still had loads to do and writing a gardening blog post wasn't going to be one of them ... oh and I hadn't taken any photos anyway.  So you will just have to believe me when I say how many spuds I planted, seedlings I planted out, seeds I sowed and weeds I pulled. LOTS!!

So why the Cake Holiday you may well be asking?

Bribery mostly.

I do have a few things planned that I know the boys will not be over keen on doing, namely shopping and visiting at least one national Trust property.  However the promise of cake has made these appear slightly less unappealing. We are also catching up with friends who will be manning the cake stall at an Open Garden Day and going to a Boot Fair where there is a fabulous café next door.  Oh and catching up with another friend where I have said I will take lunch and I have promised her ... yes, you guessed it - CAKE.   We will also be starting the cake holiday as we mean to go on and buying pain au raisins at the bakery for our breakfast on the ferry.

Just as well I have been back on the 5:2 diet before this holiday then, as with all this cake eating planned I may well put back on every pound I have lost!  Who cares - roll on tomorrow and those pain au raisins!

As for further blogs this week I have one almost finished and I will do my best to finish at least one other.  I wonder if it will involve pictures of cake?!  Normal (ish) service will be resumed from Friday 24th April.

Let the cake eating begin!

Wednesday Wonderings - Kids' birthday parties

Posted by Rosie

A couple of press articles have caught my eye over the last week or so.

First, there was all the furore over the parents who invoiced a 5 year old boy who did not turn up for their child's ski slope party.  Then there was yet more shenanigans when Myleene Klass (a celebrity previously unknown to me) tweeted how unhappy she was that 2 parents had asked for a donation towards their children's presents this year, so they could have a class present rather than lots of individual presents.

Image from Pear Tree Greetings

Well I have to say on both counts I was somewhat flabbergasted.  The invoice drama was as total non-story that should never have had any media coverage (says she who is dragging it up again).  I feel that both sides were trying to get their 15 minutes of fame for something that should have been sorted out at the school gate, long before invoices were dispatched. 

However the class gift story fell into a whole different category.  I may be a bit out of touch with middle class England, and certainly schools where the fees are £5,000 per term and to be honest I had no idea who the celebrity was, but I did feel her response was not out of place.  Whether she should have let her views known quite so publicly, on Twitter, is another matter, but I would have felt exactly the same had I been asked for a donation towards a class present.  In their defence, the asking parents said that they did not feel it was unreasonable as they felt this would be a better way for the parents to give their children something that was wanted rather than 20 presents that the children may not want and would serve only to clog up their houses (or words to that effect).

That got me thinking that actually the problem goes back a bit further than either of these incidents.  It goes back to a day, unwritten in history, when a Mum somewhere decided that it would be an excellent idea to invite the WHOLE class to her child's birthday party and in doing so set a dangerous precedent where everyone suddenly had a minimum benchmark to attain.  Parents not wanting to appear mean had to do the same.  Suddenly, in an average class of 30 pupils, there were 29 parties to attend through the year and 29 presents to buy for 29 children, many of whom you do not even know ... hence the buying of unwanted presents that clog up homes across the land.  Great for toy manufacturers.  Expensive for parents.

And it got worse.  Other parents will always want to out-party everyone else and so class parties just got bigger and bigger.  Suddenly you were talking bouncy castles, hire of the local hall, entertainers, ski lope parties and all sorts of other big and expensive adventures.  Kid's birthday parties managed to jump from a few friends round for cake and a round of pass the parcel to something parents may need to take out a second mortgage to afford.  That unnamed Mum who invited the whole class has, in my opinion, got a lot to answer for.

So what do our boys do for their birthdays?  

Tom's birthday was last week and he asked that, rather than having anything particular now, could he take one friend to our local theme park in the summer?  Happy with that.

Ben is a bit more of a party animal but we always limit his parties to about 10 friends.  No entertainer, trips or pricey extras, just a few children, lots of running around, a table full of food to fuel hungry, energetic kids and maybe a treasure hunt if I get around to making the clues.  Ben's happy with that too.

That's how we do it.  What do you think about the children's parties?  Are big parties just the norm now and am I being mean not letting the boys have large and expensive parties?  Please do let me know in a comment.

Silent Sunday - February 1st 2015

Country (nearly) teenagers

Posted by Rosie

In less than 2 weeks we will have a teenager in the house. About 16 months after that we will have two.  How did THAT happen?  

So what do (nearly) teenagers get up to on on  Friday afternoon in Normandy, when they are lucky enough to come home early from school?  Do you know what?  I don't know!  They came home with a friend who is having a sleep-over and soon after arriving they changed out of school clothes into old home clothes (thank goodness) and muttered something about secret camps and exploring, before disappearing out of the door.

Was I worried when they hadn't come home after a couple of hours?  No! You see this is what I did when I was their age and this is what our country (nearly) teenagers do.  And I used to go out alone at their age and certainly without a mobile, where-as I know their friend has a mobile and and I also know that they know all our neighbours and had they needed help they could have knocked on any door without any problems.

Mind you they left their presence known before they skedaddled off:

Shoes just left where they were taken off:

And a table covered in chocolate powder, school books, milk and Babybels that somehow did not get put away:

They finally came back just as it was getting dark having thumbed a lift from Simon who was on his way home ... which gives me a vague idea about where their secret den may be, especially as their friend mentioned the spring they had seen.  I should have been a detective ;)

I am also guessing that they had a good time, if the state of the clothes they lobbed in the wash are anything to go by (and the rosy cheeks of their friend):

Afterwards they watched a bit of TV and are now playing some game that involves moving all their furniture in their rooms ... which is resulting in bits dropping though the floor and INTO my wine!!!  Oh well, it beats them sitting in front of a computer screen all evening and will hopefully wear them out so they go to bed at a reasonable hour.  Am I hoping for too much, do you think?

Our 10 Favourite Games

Posted by Rosie

We do like a good game be it a board game, word game or cards and now the boys are older we can, as a family, get our teeth into some slightly more exciting games.  However let me get one thing straight first. I DO NOT LIKE MONOPOLY!!  It is a tedious game based purely on the luck of the die with absolutely no strategy involved at all.  In fairness Tom and Simon do like it and will play from time to time but Ben and I give it a miss.  What do we like then?

Some of our board games

Cluedo

An old classic but still a favourite.  Whilst there is a certain amount of luck involved it gets your brain thinking and frustration levels rising when some-one drags you right across the board when you have just one question left to ask in the room where you were.

Ingenious

A game where you have to fit together coloured tiles to gain points in different colours.  Beware though, the winner is not the person who has the highest points in a given colour but the person who has the most points in all the colours. It all very well getting maximum points in everything except one colour as in that way you will actually be last.

Caracassonne 

We got this for Tom last Christmas and have played it more times than we would care to admit to.  The aim is to fit together tiles to build fields, roads, buildings etc and gain points along the way.  We have several expansions to both lengthen the game and involve more strategy and I would certainly recommend getting Traders and Builders if you find yourself enjoying this game.

Labyrinth

This moving board game comes in various levels and we have just moved up to Labyrinth Master.  It's all about finding artefacts in a labyrinth that itself changes with each move.  It can be exceedingly frustrating!

Yartzee

A dice throwing game but with a certain amount of strategy involved especially as it nears the end and you must decide whether to risk all for the chance of 50 points when you throw 6 of the same dice or cut your losses and risk something easier but for many less points.

Ticket To Ride

We got this for Simon's birthday and love it. Can you get your railway constructed across Europe without another player blocking your way?  Great fun!

Ticket to Ride

These are probably our favourite games to play all together but if Simon and I can pull ourselves away from Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride we are also very partial to word games and one particular card game:

Scrabble

This classic can never really be beaten although we do have to set a few ground rules as to which words we allow.  Qi has always been a bone of contention between us!

Big Boggle

Letter dice are randomly placed in a grid and you need to find as many words of 4 letters or more in 3 minutes. Who could believe 3 minutes could pass so quickly when there are lots of words or so slowly when so few can be found!

Bananagrams

This is possibly best described as Scrabble on speed!  If waiting for your turn in Scrabble bores you then you need this game.  You each build your own scrabble board in front of you where you can alter it as you pull new letters from the pack.  When all the letter tiles have been taken, the winner is the first person to have a complete and correct scrabble board in front of them.  Woe betide then if you pull a Q or other hard letter right at the end.  Fast, furious and with no adding up of scores either.  Love it!

Banagrams

Cribbage

This is a popular pub card game and one that often makes no sense if you are watching without knowing the rules.  Listening to the 2 players place cards whilst calling out such oddities as Fifteen - Two, Pairs Four and One for his Nob can be confusing and this only get worse when the same card laid at different times gets completely different scores.  It does make sense though and is a great game.

Simon and the boys also play Risk (both online and as a true board game) whilst Tom and Simon can often be found head to head over a chess board.  This year Tom won the small chess tournament they have at school each year and could become a very accomplished player over time.

Finally a call out to you.  Tom's birthday is coming up in the New Year and we'd like to get him a new board game.  I was wondering if any of you have played Pandemic or Lords of Waterdeep and could comment on either of these.  Or do you have a favourite board game you could recommend to us? Just don't say Monopoly! 

Silent Sunday - November 30th 2014

Word of the Week - Friends

Posted by Rosie

friend

frɛnd/

noun - a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations. 

 

 

This last week has definitely been a week of catching up with friends and is one of the things I love about our trips back to the UK.  My Mum lives on Exmoor but I had already left home when she and Dad moved so I have never lived there, yet I have many friends in the area .... thanks to the Internet.  People who I have met via the Downsizer forum and Facebook and who became friends after staying in the gite, all live relatively close to Mum and the boys and I got to meet up with loads of them whilst we were there.  We gossiped, we visited places together and we ate cake and crumble and cake and maybe even a lot more cake (boy is my waistline suffering now!).  

 

Friends!

 

Sorry for those of you who I didn't manage to meet up with this time.  I will do my best to fit you in next visit. (Nicky - I was thinking maybe a visit to Killington or Rosemoor Gardens when I am next over?!).

Oh and today I am off to meet another friend who I met through Facebook.  She owns Lou Messugo, a gite in Provence and is up visiting Normandy, so we are meeting up for the first time this morning.

How did you meet some of your friends?  Was it through school or work, do you live in the same place or did the Internet play a part?  Do let us know in a comment.

 

Yoga Anyone?

Posted by Rosie

We're off on our Holidays ....

Posted by Rosie

It's half term and the boys and I are going to England for a week.  Simon is however staying at Eco-Gites of Lenault to look after guests and the animals although he will get a holiday later with the boys.  He has only just got back from a week in the UK (not a holiday) so we are a bit like ships that pass in the night at the moment.

I have managed to schedule a series of blogs for when I am away.  There's limited Internet at Mum's so I won't be online too much (except when I can cadge some time on the computer at friends).  Do please still write your comments and I'll add them and reply when I can .... I might even risk turning off moderation and hope the spammers stay away for a while, we'll see.

Until next week then - au revoir mes amis :)

Digger Boys at Eco-Gites of Lenault

Posted by Rosie

It’s strange isn’t it that if I ask the boys:

“Could you help lay the table please?”
“Can you please empty the dishwasher?”
“Would you just come here for one moment?”

... The usual replies include:

“Yeah, OK!” but no child appears;
“In a minute” (which is a minute in their time that in no way matches a true minute and is totally unrelated to the 2 minutes they are supposed to brush their teeth for.)
And “Do I have to?” said in a very drawn out tone known so well to parents with children of a certain age.

HOWEVER, if Simon happens to say, “Would you like to have a go on the digger?” then they scream “Yes please!” and arrive in a millisecond!