Welcome to the madhouse!!!

Juliette gives up trying to learn how to walk and decides to learn how to sit on a chair instead ... and fails miserably !!!

Sophie makes it look so easy !

Awwww sharing toys nicely with no squabbling ... how long will it last ?!!

waiting for the bus

at the park (more interesting than the aquarium !)

If she wasn't wearing tights, it'd be rude !!!

playing is thirsty work

I'm so gorgeous it hurts !

at the zoo (with a lynx)

Here's what we got up to last week on our hour long "cruise" around Dunkerque industrial port. Ready for the guided tour ?!

The Duchesse Anne

the lighthouse

customs

big ships

Very nice Mum *yawn*

What's your name ? Do you think boats are boring too ?

Look Mum, I've got a new friend !

Heeheehee disco cruise ... come and dance !!!

I'm tired now, I think I'll have a lay down on this nice bench.

Is ANYONE on this boat even vaguely interested in the port ?!!!

Funnily enough, we'd all planned on going to the port museum next so we tagged along with Sophie's new friend for the rest of the afternoon !!!

The sun finally put in an appearance so after a quick trip to McDonalds indoor play area (Sophie's decided her all-time favourite Happy Meal combo is ... McFish and carrot sticks !!! We didn't twist her arm, honest !!!) we headed off to the garden centre to stock up on plants. I must have a lower boredom threshold than Mike because after 1/2 hour, I wandered off with Sophie and Juliette to look at the animals in the pet section and buy treats for Charlie (carrot flavour biscuits !?!) and Vicky (chewy bones ... decided against the plastic honey flavoured pigs snouts, when I suddenly realised they weren't plastic at all !!!). We watched a cute little white mouse scurrying about and playing in a cage ... until I spotted a snake in the corner of the same cage and realised that was its lunch !!! I pointed this out to Sophie and for the whole of the rest of the time we were there, she wanted to keep popping back to see if the snake was eating the mouse yet !!! (It didn't, luckily !)

Got home and Mike set about planting the new stuff, opened up the growbags, wandered down to get the flower pots, came up and moaned abut the birds throwing dirt around and trying to get the seeds, then discovered that it wasn't the birds at all, Vicky had buried the end of her chewy bone in the growbag !!!

Well, we made it through the first week of the holidays without slowing down the pace ! But next week, it'll be a lot easier going or we'll be too tired to enjoy Disney.

Thursday - aquarium and park in the morning, hour-long trip around the port on a boat (Sophie made friends with a little girl and spent the whole time playing and dancing !!! ) and the "musée portuaire" (port museum).

Friday - zoo in the morning and ... wait for it ... a sleep in the afternoon ... and for once Sophie was quite happy to go and lay down !!! That was the first nap of the week for poor Juliette, except for a few minutes snatched here and there in the pushchair ! Finished off with a ride around the car park on her bike and suddenly, there were about 20 kids all playing together on the car park - no idea where they all came from but they all seemed to play nicely together !

I'll add some more photos soon but the camera's batteries have run out and need recharging (and we all know how it feels !)

Well the plan for today was painting in the morning and making cakes in the afternoon, but Sophie decided she wanted to head back into town to go to the shops and little park in the afternoon instead, so we headed off (after cleaning all the paint of the table and Sophie !!!) to the tourist office to get the Tourist Pass for tomorrow and Friday.

It's a great deal - it costs €10 for an adult and one kid goes free (Juliette doesn't count). You get a €5 shopping voucher and two unlimited day travel tickets for the bus (worth a couple of euros each so that's already covered the cost of the pass). Then you choose three attractions and you can get free entry to the aquarium. So the plan was, tomorrow do the aquariul in the morning and the ostrich farm in the afternoon. Then on Friday do the zoo in the morning and the boat trip around the port of Dunkirk in the afternoon. But the ostrich farm isn't open yet so it'll be the aquarium and the boat tomorrow and probably the zoo and the port museum on Friday.

But I seem to have worn out Sophie now too !!! It should be a nice quiet weekend this weekend !!!

Yesterday we did bubbles and cooking in the morning, and a trip to goat park (feed the goats, go on the swings, eat an ice cream) in the afternoon. Got home, put Juliette in the high chair while I went to get her food and .....fast asleep already !!!

Even Sophie went straight to bed with no fuss and fell asleep within ten minutes !

You had to find one of each colour of golf ball to exchange for chocolate

Yay, it's the magic green ball for an extra present - a watch, which has been proudly worn ever since, even thought it needs a battery and she can't tell the time yet !

Princess balloon hat, make up, chocolate - now it's off to see if the loonies from England have arrived !!!

Well it may have been a bank holiday today but it definitely wasn't a Mum holiday !!! This morning was put aside for dejunking/tidying up ("putting away the freebies" was even the official activity for the morning on Sophie's holiday wallplanner !!!) and I even attacked the dust bunnies (and pencils, empty orange juice cartons, sweet wrappers and hairbands !!!) that have been breeding under our bed. Then we (me and Sophie) made luch - Mediterranean fish casserole (with tomatoes, garlic, onions and olives) and as she wanted to peel and chop (and taste) everything, we were lucky to eat before mid-afternoon !!!

Then as promised, we went back to the circus zoo (last chance as they leave town tomorrow). The loony-looking big tusked elephant had mysteriously disappeared, which is a bit of a worry. As McDonalds is only across the road, we went to the indoor play area for an hour (Sophie invited a little girl to her house for Halloween for some reason !!!)

Got home and had another cooking session, which probably got the neighbours talking, as Sophie helped make meatloaf (squashing tinned tomatoes and onions into raw minced meat with her hands, going "ewwww it feels like brains"!!!) and then homemade strawberry squash (liquidised strawberries, being pushed through a cloth, with Sophie going "oooh look, I've got blood all over my hands, let me lick it" !!!) The kitchen looked like a bombsite afterwards so it's more "Messy Cook Messier Cook" than Big Cook Little Cook ! But it all tasted nice so I've said she can help again tomorrow !

At this rate, I'll be totally knackered by the time I have to go back to work (although ... wait for it ... after ten weeks at week, I'll have two whole months off !!!!)

After counting down the days, Sophie got up today and announced "yay, it's a 1 and a 5 so it's only one more day until the Easter bunny and now there's no more school". Looks like she's got the calendar thing all sussed out !!!

She's even managed to reconcile all the different Easter traditions she's heard about. Mum says it's the Easter bunny who brings the eggs, Dad says it's the bells (they go to Rome and pick them up) and the teacher said they fall from the sky. So Sophie worked it out - the Easter bunny throws them up in the air, they bounce off the bells and fall down to the ground. That's one smart cookie !!!

We went to Picwic today and got a few bits to keep her occupied - bubbles and 1 metre of playdough !!! Plus two pairs of new shoes because the others were worn out.

Heehee the box is even taller than me !!

Look at my cool new pink baseball boots !!

Well I suppose that's one answer to "go and put your old shoes away please" !!!

We went to the circus zoo last weekend (oops the week's run away again and I haven't had a chance to get on my blog). It's a total bargain because it's only €2 per person to visit the animals in their cages, whereas the circus show is over €20 each, and if you time it right, you get to see the last-minute rehearsals anyway !!!

The poor thing was crashed out until the trainer came and hissed something at him in German and he woke up !!

Wow they've even got a unicorn and a pegasus ... oops I mean a Barbie magic horse (Sophie was impressed !!!)

A little monkey - oops wrong photo

This one got shackles instead of a silly hat for some reason (probably something to do with the size of his tusks and the fact that these elephants trundled inches away from us to get to the big top minutes after this photo was taken !)

If you look closely, he's got five legs !!! Must be why he's called a dongkey !!!

Another horny animal ! You'll have your eye out with that !!!

Zebras at a circus ?!!

"The Common Donkey" - kids are so easy to set up at this age !!!

One lump or two ? Skinny looking camel

Who turned the lights out ?!

What do you think you're looking at ???

The circus clowns

Aaahhhhh such a cutie !!!

Last summer Mike won a weekend away in a prize draw at a Haven camp of our choice. I said we could go to the Paris one and do Eurodisney so we've finally managed to get hold of the woman who deals with the prizes and booked a weekend away in a "bungalow" for the bank holiday weekend on 1st May. So it is incredibly flukey that Nestlé have started a promotion sending out free invitations to the Eurodisney parks to some of the members of their online club. We just have to cross our fingers that we manage to get hold of some now !!!

I'm all excited about seeing Mickey again already but Mike doesn't want Sophie to know yet because she'll get "over-excited" so I'm having to keep a lid on it. I've already started telling her there's a surprise but she'll have to wait and see what it is though so I bet I'll crack within the next few days and tell her ! I love seeing her get all overexcited anyway, I'll just have to leap around the room and jump on the beds with her so she doesn't get in too much trouble !!!

We went shopping (ummm mainly freebie-shopping actually as I went round all the perfume shops getting free samples !!!) in the big Calais shopping centre last weekend and the Disney Store was selling loads of stuff really cheap. Sophie got a princess hat (to go with her princess costume) and a light-up Disney Princesses tracing machine all for the royal sum of €10 ... which is funnily enough what I got paid that very morning for doing 1/2 an hour's mystery shopping. Bargain !!! Funnily enough, all the English shoppers were going "oooh look at that little girl's pretty princess hat, I bet you'd like one like that" and all the French shoppers were looking at her like she needed a visit from the men in white coats ... not to mention the looks we were getting as her parents for letting her walk around in public like that !!! (Well, me mainly, Mike suddenly seemed to be about ten paces ahead, so I think he was trying to disown us !!!) Our local residents are getting used to us now though, they don't bat an eyelid any more when I go climbing up the rope bridge and go racing down the slide with Sophie on the way home from school !!!

Meet the incredible dancing dog, all it needs is Juliette in her high chair with a pain au chocolat, feel free to sing along and don't forget the silly dance :

A - ga -doo doo doo push pineapple shake a tree

A - ga -doo doo doo push pineapple grind coffee

To the left

To the right

Jump up and down and to the knees

And what does Juliette think? Na na na na na na *blows raspberry* you didn't get any anyway !!!

"Mummy's a loony, mummy's a loony !!!"

It's been pointed out to me ( thanks Emily !!!) that I haven't updated the blog for weeks so here goes ... story of my life since the last time :

work work ... freebies freebies ... work work ... school reports and "conseil de classe" class meetings (into the third and final term of the school year already !!!) ... flogging stuff on ebay ... more work work ... ummm that's about it really !!!

I've had another couple of compulsory days on "strike" - Sophie's school was closed two Tuesdays in a row so the childminder didn't want to keep all four kids all day long. Hopefully that'll be the last ones though as I'll see the difference in my paypacket in a couple of months when all the strike days get deducted. It's getting silly now anyway - people are just jumping on the bandwagon and causing damage (shopwindows smashed in, dustbins set fire to, car windscreens smashed, ...) and Sophie's school was closed in protest at job cuts whereas the national strike days (on the same days) are supposed to be about the new job laws. Where's it all going to end ?!!!