A summer update

We're now half-way through the school summer holidays. The 3rd anniversary of our move to France has been and gone, and this week was the 1 year anniversary of getting the keys to our 'new' house!
The main reason for rarely blogging these days is being so busy with work. For the first time, I've been able to continue working during the school holidays. The kids stayed the first week with my parents, have spent a couple days at the holiday club (centre de loisirs) and also stayed with hubby's parents for a few days.

Kids at Grandma and Granddads

I had several requests to teach some collège and lycee students (secondary school) during the holidays, so to make it easier for childcare I put all the lessons in the first 10 days of the holidays. The students got intensive English lessons (an hour a day), it was a HUGE amount of work, but the pay at the end of the week was worth it!
I do have several days with the kids, in fact I'll only be working about 4 days during August. During the early weeks of July we had a long heatwave so we got to the beach as much as possible. This is the first year the kids have both wanted to go in the sea, and thank goodness, it was so refreshing in the 34 degree heat!
Since then we've had rain and mixed weather, but the temperature hasn't dropped below 20, which is nice!

At the beach on Daddy's day off

At the beach with Grandma and Granddad

Hubby doesn't have a lot of holiday to take, as he works for a small company he doesn't get the typical French workers 10 weeks of holiday (slight exaggeration, but it seems like they have 10 weeks off!). No seriously he gets 27 days + national holidays, which is very generous.  Anyone who works the 35 hour week in France, also gets RTT days. Which means they don't actually work 35 hours in the week, they work 40 or more, and therefore get days in lieu which gives them more holiday, sometimes up to 25 more days. As we had a weeks holiday in May with my family down in the Charente Maritime, and we have a week in the UK planned in September, that doesn't leave him much holiday, so he's taken off every other Friday during summer to spend with the kids, this gives him a few long weekends which is nice.

The school year has been and gone, it was a very busy one. We're both heavily involved in the kids school, as it's an associative school, not publicly funded. Hubby spent the whole year revamping the website and we created some blogs to follow the kids classes too, so I have been blogging but for someone else!! It's all done now and received huge praise.

Max completed his first year in maternelle (nursery school), he's really adapted well. His French drastically improved (thanks to the playground) and he's started speaking Breton in class. He has tons of friends, mainly the older kids 9-11 year olds. For some reason the whole school is in love with my boy, he seems to charm most people he meets! His best friend is Axel, who happens to look just like him and happens to be Laila's best friends little brother! So they make quite a foursome!

Max with Axel (who is who?!)

Laila progressed well this year, her Breton is now excellent, her French is faster and more fluent now, without losing any of her English. She has a firm best friend, Eloise, there's no separating them! She has a couple boys swooning after her, and she in turn swoons over 2 different boys. Nothing like unrequited love eh?! In September she starts "Grande Section", which means she'll be the eldest in the nursery section of the school. She still wont officially learn to read until next year, it feels so late, but she's progressing extremely well with her reading at home. She reads very well in English, although not very often at the moment, she can also read at a slightly lower level in French. She could probably read in Breton if we tried, but I'm certainly not qualified to help her with that right now so I'll leave that one for school!!

Laila and Eloise her BFF

Actually Grandma told me today that she played a game with Laila,  the questions were in French, Laila read them(sometimes working out what they said using the pictures) and then translated them for Grandma! She was extremely impressed!

She got her ears pierced last month, after a year of begging me, I decided this summer was a good time. Last year I felt she wasn't mature enough and I was also worried about Max pulling them out! She was very brave and Max hasn't touched them, so all is well!

Laila with baby Tom, her newest cousin.

Laila and Max with 2 of their cousins

We hope for a few fun days out during August. There's a bank holiday here next Thursday so hubby has a long weekend with us.

Hopefully some more time spent with cousins and grandparents and then in no time at all, we'll be getting ready for the new term ahead!

Happy Summer to you all! 

Bonnes Vacances!!