apartment update

In all honesty not much new on the home improvement front. 

The month of August just hasn't been very productive. We've been to the house a lot and geez, it's been nice to step back and do something else.

In any case, a shot of the kitchen with the map hung.

 Here's the before and after of Seb's room. 

 The before and after of our bedroom.

Here's my week of work on the hallway. I took off a wierd partition that was behind the light coming down from the ceiling and spent alwost three days taking off wallpaper. 

Seeing as I hadn't quite had enough fun, 

I took off the base tiles as well,

 including in the toliet and hallway into Seb's room. 

By hand. I'm glad those two jobs are done.

And last but certainly not least..

the joy and delight upon discovering what was hiding

 under the wallpaper in the toilet.

That is some serious blue and yellow going on in there.

 It does allow one to play,  "where's the wild animal?" though while doing your duty. 

We have thus far found a cat, a dog and an elephant head. 

I personally don't spend enough time in there to have discovered more than the cat, but hey, whatever. We're thinking tile. Yep, instead of scraping, priming, patching....tile it. 

And there you have it. The continuing saga of our new apartment.....

I know, I know. It just makes you keep coming back, 

like Falcon's Crest or Days of our Lives.

Flea market

Hit a flea market last weekend...scored on some good stuff. 

The town had this cute little bridge,

church....

 and an old wash house with  crystal clear running water.

 It was a welcome find on a super hot day. 

Some doll parts which didn't come home with us.

what's up ??

pickles, rhubarb...

and two crazy big enormous mushrooms

 that tasted like an omlette when fried up in a pan. 

Good stuff.

Our birthday calendar....

according to Sara....

without further ado.....

The Maas Ziegler visit according to Sara.

 (Hope you don't mind, but your notes were soo funny, I couldn't resist.)

 A big hats off to the family who stayed awake for a BBQ

on their first night in their home away from home.

The shot above is from the cousins' visit in 2012. 

Below, five years later, same haircuts.

The kids hammed it up at in the town of Arromanches 

in spite of it raining cats and dogs.

 We visited Point du Hoc 

and saw the remains of German WW2 bunkers, 

remaining impacts from bombs, ammunition storage....good stuff.

 <

Yep, I did tip over on the very first turn. 

Managed not to break my arm though, so that was a bonus. 

Don't be fooled. 

This is just a photo taken off the internet,

 it was gray and windy. We did have a great time though. 

I also found this shot which made me laugh. Next time.

 What do you do when it is pouring rain and seven people 

are basically confined to a kitchen? 

Play cards, spoons, eat, drink, act silly and be merry. What else? 

We were all soo happy to be outside in the sunshine with no rain!

Cracked walnuts for our snack, checked out the nearby horses,

tried to adopt a stray cat they named "Bigfoot".

All of their hard work paid off in some blackberry jelly.

The pic below is from 2012....

 The offical Chênedouit phone booth (shot above from 2012) just got removed. 

The end of an era.....Sara and Nick, 

your last ever photo in that phone booth, you just squeezed in.

 A beautiful day at Mont Saint Michel

There were A LOT of people. 

So right behind Mark on the plaza, someone had left a backpack. 

Can you say evacuate quickly please? Terrorist alert ! Bomb threat! 

More like a tourist not paying attention, but hey.

We we all shuffled into the church. 

Not even five minutes later, the owner of the backpack had claimed it, 

and we all went on our merry way.

 Going downtown...

So below is a shot from  2012. 

Same statue, except it seems to have shrunk. 

So funny!

 P.S. The non hot guys from Sara's note 

were on the soccer field after dinner.

 Apparently they were a good bunch in spite of the all their swearing.

Well, we did sneak out for a few hours 

between rain showers.

But don't be fooled by those in shorts

 who would like you to believe it was warm, 

no one was fooling me, I stuck with my scarf.

Here we are resting our fannies on an old vestige 500 years or so old. 

I honestly don't remeber the year, sue me.

And here is the last shot (notice those gray menacing clouds) 

before the downpour we escaped by running, literally, onto the bus.

We dried off and got to dinner preparations....

They were amazingly good. 

My complements to all the chefs!

On the train.....

Lunch please!

 Forget what you think you know, 

those subways are exhausting.

Well, the dead bones (the catacombs) didn't happen due to a three hour wait, 

but we did get rained on.

 Our last dinner together with some crazy

  lemon drinks for the kids.

Well, not sure if Seb cried, it was very early in the morning and all, 

but I sure know I did! 

As usual, buckets and buckets of good old fashioned tears. 

It was soo very good to see you all!