Summer in France

This year the girls finished school on a Friday - well Olivia did. Mathilde woke up the night before with a temperature of 39.8 - just to add to the "shear bliss" of flying a 12 hour flight.  

A trip to Dr Chow with a shot of antibiotics left us with a zombie like little girl. Delirious from the high fever that would spike like it was nobodies business. The excited little girls that we always see before heading off to the airport were nowhere to be seen. Olivia was worried about her little sister and to tell you the truth, so was I.

But long story short, we made it. She had no fever, it was all kept under control with numerous doses of paracetemol and neurofen.

We were the med pumping parents. You know the kind you never want to sit next to if you have kids yourself!

With a sigh of relief we finally arrived. But what the hell.... 16 degrees. It was so cold, grey and wet.  Luckily that only lasted a day or two.  Up side to the cold weather was that there were still cherries on the trees and lots of them!

So what do you do when you can't eat any more cherries? You preserve them. We made cherry jam, cherries au sirop and a french holiday wouldn't be complete without the famous cherry clafouti.

I even had my little helpers. Olivia cut the cherry stems and then placed them in the jars with a spoon or two of sugar.

Mathilde couldn't get enough of opening a door and being outside. Freedom at its greatest in an enormous garden with fruits and flowers to pick and kittens to chase .

This cherry tree is ideally placed, right next to the climbing frame. Or should I say the climbing frame is ideally placed. The cherry branches heavy with fruits offer easy access to little girls with a big appetite.

Overheard

This caught my attention...

My girls were busy playing restaurant in the living room and busy ordering from the 'Chez Patrick waiter'.

Mathilde :  " I'll have some of those cockroach things"

Olivia : " What??? "

Mathilde :  " You know those cockroach things that mama eats at Chez Patrick? "

Olivia : " You mean shrimp "

Mathilde : "Ah yes, shrimp with curly hair pasta and tomato sauce, with a pizza to share and some chicken"
 Some appetite she has our Mathilde.

Luckily no ones listening..... what with cockroaches at Chez Patrick.

Nothing like the smell of thyme!

Amazing how a smell, even the slightest can whisk you off to another place. Remind you of someone or something.

You see, I have this stash of dried time and every time I dip my hand into it, it transports me back to our fields.
In France we have fields of olive trees or olive groves if you prefer.

The ground is studded with scrawny thyme shrubs thriving amongst the calcareous soil. Every step you take releases the pure smell of thyme essence while tiny little crickets jump in every direction.

I love it here. My girls love it here. They pick the thyme, rub it in their tiny hands and inhale the scent. I love the fact that they do this and appreciate the small things which are in fact really big things!!

The thyme is picked, dried and packed up in a ziplock bag ready to travel the 9700 km back to Hong Kong.

It's a simple pleasure like this used in a beef stew or coq au vin that remind us of a place, our a beautiful place.

On the move.....again.

We're on the move but luckily this time, we're only moving house and not  continents.

The girls are off school .....again. This is making the task of sorting through their rooms a little of a nightmare. They don't want to toss one single thing. I have 2 little hoarders on my hands.
Every little paper or piece of plastic I touch I hear 'we need that' or 'this belongs to something'.

So their rooms I'll leave until they are back to school because what little eyes don't see... little heads, hearts and hands won't want or in their case 'need'. I must just remember to empty the bin before they get home because as always they'll see it, yank it out and won't let it out of their sight.

I attacked the cleaning of their doors and beds. I knew the day would come.

Stickers everywhere.
I  know that the 10 minutes of peace I had when I gave them the stickers that they used to "decorate their beds", was so not worth the 1 hour of scrubbing along with chipped thumb and index finger nails.
Damn those stickers.
Rule number 1 for the new place - NO STICKERS!!!

Don't even get me started on their walls which were full of those little stars and moon thingys that glow in the dark.
Well I've just removed them from the walls but unfortunately with them came chunks of plaster. Typical. So it was off the Aberdeen to buy some polly filler and I'll have to get to work because no way can I hand this place over with the walls in such a state.
Rule number 2 for the new place - NO STICKING THINGS ON WALL.

So its Hong Kong for the length of another project. I have no complaints.
Better than returning to France.... for the time being that is.