Welcome to the madhouse!!!

We finally got round to getting the bloke in to check out the dodgy smells from our boiler. His verdict was - the room is too small for the boiler and hot water tank to both be in so when the door's shut, there isn't enough air for the boiler to suck in and that's why it smells of gas. Convinced ? I wasn't !

Then I headed up to sort out Juliette and left him on his own for ten minutes, during which time he decided to prise a lump of limescale off the hot water tank "to redo the joint" and discovered that the pipe was totally corroded underneath and water was now leaking out everywhere. So he turned off the hot water and we now have to wait for a new hot water tank to be installed ... on Tuesday. Great news when you've got two kids with the traditional back-to-school colds. Nice price tag too - about €1000. Roll on Tuesday !

Sophie's going to start doing gymnastics in a club !!!

It all started last week when I went to pick her up from school. She said "Look what I learnt to do today Mum" and ran off to the bars. She swung her foot up on to the top of the low bar, pulled herself up so she was standing balanced on the top (scaring me to death in the process ! ), swung over to the high bar and swung over the top before landing daintily on the ground. So I made one throwaway comment - Wow, you're good at gymnastics ! Fastforward a couple of days.

Today was "Dunkerque en survêt' " (Dunkirk in tracksuits) when all the sports clubs put on a show and sign up new recruits. Mike said we should go along and Sophie was torn between dancing and gymnastics but plumped for gymnastics when they did a display of roly-polies, splits and jumping about just in front of her. So she'll be signed up on Wednesday and it'll be every Wednesday for an hour from 11 - 12am. She'll be in the initiation class of 4 and 5 year olds to start with.

If she's good at it and enjoys it and decides to keep it up, at secondary school she'll be able to do a "section sportive gymnastique" (special class with gymnasts who do normal classes plus several hour's training a week to get to competition level) and if that happens, that's one of the things my school specialises in. So I'm not putting any pressure on her at all, but I'm signing her up to the club attached to our school, just in case - then if she still wants to, she can go to school in my school if she wants to ! But there's a long way to go yet.

The gymnasts in class are always EXTREMELY neat and tidy, never a hair out of place, well organised and serious ... but I don't know if that's because they are the type of girls who do gymnastics or if the gymnastics turns them into pristine little girls. Time will tell !!!

The freaky thing is, it costs €55 (£40) a year - and that's about how much I made last week selling freebies on ebay !!! Easy come easy go !

As promised, better late than never !

Sophie in Mermaidia mode

They both clap and dance along to the Hi-five CD which hasn't moved out of the CD player since we got back (Nice one Em !!! )

Foil printing on an old Tshirt (and the original one pretty much survived the washing machine ! )

After the bright-red iced apple muffins, it's time for the chocolate covered cherry muffins (thanks to Mrs Tate and Lyle and their recipe comp for providing hours of entertainment delicately placing all the "princess silver balls and chocolate hearts" ! )

A smile so big it hardly fits on the page !!!

OK OK, I admit it, I scalped her ... but in my defence she wouldn't stay still and I had to cut it on the run (What do you mean, you can tell ?!!) Oh well, it'll grow back ... and at least she can see now !!!

After a bit of a tearful Sunday night, Sophie headed off to school this morning, putting on a bit of a brave face but having a few wobbly chin moments when mentioning Stanislas. We scanned the lists for her name and she's in La Grande Fabienne's class (as opposed to La Petite Fabienne's class who does the 2-3 year olds !!) ... and Stanislas isn't !!! So she was all happy and bubbly at lunchtime, went back a bit unsure again after dinner (wasn't sure what he'd be like in the playground) and when I picked her up from the childminder's tonight, she was leaping around the room telling me about doing painting and sitting next to Maeva and all the school rules ... She's now upstairs singing her head off and when I asked her earlier if she liked school again, she said yes (whereas she's been totally off the idea of going to school since last year). Phew, one less thng to worry about !!!

I went back to school today too ... well, I went back on Friday without the kids but today was their first day back. I had three classes, and the only naughty one is the one I'm form-teacher for ... that figures, it's always the same so they must pick them specially for me !!!