Painting, honey and heat .

Eben painted bananas at school today in the following colours, chocolate, blue and jaune. Is the poor boy confused or what?!

Gwils has decided to crawl, he was trying to stand straight up and walk but kept landing on his nose. He is also pulling himself up right and pushes his playpen along so he can reach the things little people aren't supposed to touch. We collected loads of mirabel plums from a small tree in the garden and we are all enjoying those. Our greengage tree only seemed to give one plum this year and that landed on Gwils when he was sat on a blanket under him. I went out and he was covered in a sticky mess and the stone was on the blanket next to him. Lucky or what?

Flo is now in a class of 13 students we got our 3rd class back. There are still 3 levels in the class but it is much more manageable. They have a temp teacher at the momment but it is one they know as he did a day a week in Ebens class last year.

Gareth helped Flo extract the first honey from her bees on Wednesday. She sold her first pot to a neighbour. What actually happened was that we suggested she give it away and she didn't like that so Gareth gave her 3 Euros for it. Quite the little business woman, keep it up I say. I just saved a bee that was stuck in the honey pot. Its daft they make all that honey then go and get stuck in it.

We went to Auxerre on Monday and managed to get the wood burning fire we wanted. We were expecting to pay 466 Euros for it but it must have been in stock for a while as it only cost 186 euros, a positive bargain so hopefully it will heat well. Of course the weather has turned hot again so we haven't tried it yet. It was really hot yesterday and I went running with our friend Florence and picked a route in full sunshine not realising quite how hot it was. By the time we got back I was as red as the t-shirt I'd been wearing. The kids are enjoying the swimming pool and the last of the tomatoes are ripening. We have hundreds of courgetted from a neighbour who is on holiday so I've been juicing them. Its a bit strange but drinkable.

Baby Hand Swats

Have you ever noticed that if you swing something in front of a baby they can't catch it but if you loose concentration for a second as you move a spoonfull of food towards their mouths they swat down and grab the food leaving you with an empty spoon and them with a handfull of squidgy purée and a big grin on their faces? 

Winter Heating

The first week of school is over and Florence is having a great time. Yesterday she had to explain the maths to her classmates as she was the only one to understand. Eben keeps telling us hes been naughty but the teacher says it just hard at times to keep 8 little ones all concentrating on the same things at the same time. There are 5 children in Ebens year this year, last year he was the only one most of the time.

This morning all 3 are up stairs playing and several toys seem to have died and are to be thrown in the fire water. Eben is keen on the idea of death at the momment and told me that if I touched his music powpow then I'd be dead. What a charmer!

We have ordered wood for the winter and now are looking for a decent wood burning stove the one we had last year wasn't very good and we had two chimney fires with it. Its a Godin colonial and looks fantastic but doesn't heat enough for the size of the room. We nearly bought a Godin chatelaine cooker but it was damaged so we are back to square one. Last night we ate tartiflette with Maurice and Jacqueline it was lovely but hopefully not a sign that winter will be here early.