End of September

Last Friday, the American lady that we met at the Pierrefonds castle when my parents were here came for lunch. She went with me to pick up the boys from school, and take Benjamin back after lunch, and we had a nice walk around the village. Noah helped Frédéric prepare the homegrown, homemade raspberry syrup to go on the cheesecake I made for dessert that day. 

After some major resistance from Benjamin to backwards somersaults at gymnastics Saturday, we broke the old, flattened baby mattress out as an improvised tumbling mat so the boys could practice their somersaults at home. (Are we crazy, or what? That's rhetorical.) I tried to get them to stand and look cute together before they started tumbling, but, well. 

Thank goodness for a faster camera than we used to have. 

Here they were all tired out from gymnastics, and were "resting." Or so they told me. 

Both boys had an all-day field trip to the forest yesterday. We're still paying for that with Noah - he is definitely not ready for all-day school yet! The highlight of the field trip for Noah seems to have been the picnic lunch and peeing in the forest. Benjamin must have listened well to the Tourist Office forest guide, because today he showed me a booklet they gave the kids, and explained it all to me. 

Frédéric was off work yesterday, so we had the whole day to ourselves! And... spent it doing yard work. Sigh. Frédéric chopped at the hedge, weeds and ivy that had overtaken the back corner of our yard, and I helped him bag it all up to take to the dump. Fourteen yard waste bags later, we are closer to done than when we started... This should make room for a nice, large vegetable garden next year. 

 Now, if we could just dismantle the garden shed, and the cinderblock shed, and put a shed where the cinderblock one is, so we could see that whole corner from the house... well, let's just say that to-do list is not likely to be the "all-done" list any time soon!