Well I think it has been nearly three weeks since I have last blogged. I know I have been getting very slack on it but we have my mum and dad here still and don't have any internet in the barn where we are back ensconced in, so that's my excuse and I am sticking with it. I promise to not be so late next time. The first week they arrived we had them out putting up the horse fence. And stripping our new front door. They spent a good day on one smaller one with the scrapers before we found that the heat gun worked a treat so they had the other larger one done pretty quickly.
Dad has done two of the horse paddocks but the last one has been put on hold as one of the boundaries is a little bit under dispute. We need to get our farmer neighbor to come over and have a chat as where the boundry is - where it looks to be on the map is about 4 metres out to where he has been mowing to. The mairie (town mayor) suggested we get the surveyor in but we aren't that worried about it yet.
After a week or so I went with them on a bus tour of Switzerland via a day in Paris. This meant a very quick tour of the Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Champs Elysees and of course the Eiffel Tower. I still love Paris - it is easily my favourite city - can't wait to be there with Gabby in May! Switzerland was lovely - luckily for this time of the year it wasn't completely covered in snow - lots of beautiful lakes and mountain scenery. It is super expensive though. Most of the places I felt like our little group looked majorly scruffy compared to the locals who all looked like they had just stepped off the pages of Vogue. Surprisingly the other people on the bus weren't all out on day passes from their nursing homes like I had expected. Odd but not old haha. Not my preferred way to see a country but I have to admit having commentary on the bus trip meant we found out a lot more about the place then if we had just driven through. Here are some lovely pics I took of the place - including one of Mum and Dad enjoying the sights on the Glacier Express train through the mountains ha.
Whilst we were gone Paul missed us terribly. Well he would have if he was actually ever at home. I think everyone thinks he is incapable of making a meal for himself as of the 8 days we were away I think he was home for a total of 2 evenings! He had a great time. He also went to his first French language school class - which is also his last for a while as he quickly discovered he was a little more behind in the text book then he could cope with. So he is having some remedial private classes from now on and I am going to go tomorrow for my first class. Will be good to do something constructive about our awful French. Paul is still off to the museum each week and loving it. He is meeting more people every week and I am sure it will be helping with his language skills. He even went to the AGM for it on Sunday - the meeting was half an hour long and the meal went for four hours ha - got to love France! He amazingly got quite a bit of work done as well - this is the second floor with lots of wall framing done.
Since we have been back we have been getting stuck into making a garden area - I did a stone wall around and Mum has made a lovely path to make it easy to get to it to water etc.
Dad has been digging in the trench for the horse paddock water. All I need now is a horse! I am working on that although I don't want to rush in and get something I am not happy with. Here is Dad getting our old wheelbarrow back into shape.
We took them for a walk to L'Abbaye on Saturday - last time Paul and I went we got lost - however I think the right way home was still about the same amount of walking - three hours later we made it back. I think we all slept pretty well that night!
Tomorrow is Mum and Dads last day - I am off to my French lesson in Gourdon - a menu du jour somewhere I think will be on the cards for lunch. Thursday we are taking them down to their flight in Toulouse - I am sure they are looking forward to getting home and having a rest!
Paul and I, with the weather warming up can get stuck into doing some of the jobs that you couldn't do in the cold like the walls in the living room and kitchen. It freaked us out a little last week when we realised we have some other friends coming to stay in about 10 weeks. We had hoped to have the lion share of the reno done in the house by then - looks a little bit unlikely at this stage. Oh well we know of plenty of local friendly B&B owners :)
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