L'été est là!

I am very sorry but I have been totally slack with writing the blog lately. My only excuse is that we are virtually never inside the house long enough to do it! The weather has been lovely and the days are so long - most nights we don't eat dinner until it is dark which is about 10 pm so as you can imagine it can be hard to find the time to do it! I was nicely reprimanded for always sending in my French homework late today - have promised my teacher to make time for it - will try to do the same for the blog! Well the past few weeks have literally just flown by. We had our friends Mark and Narelle here with their teenage daughters for a week so pretty much downed tools and played tour guides which was fun. Paul and Mark did build a very nice new garden wall in between drinking a lot of beer and generally having lots of lovely long chats. None of them had been out of Australia before so I think there was a little bit of culture shock going on. Some very funny incidents with the language ensued - side note to all potential visitors - we live in rural France - very few people speak English here - and don't need to - so it pays to at least know how to say hello and thank you. It's ok in the more touristy areas but generally around here you basically have to bumble your way along in French. Here are some photos from their visit. We took them to the usual spots - Sarlat - Rocamadour and went canoeing on the Dordogne near Beynac. That was a lovely hot day - Narelle and I were not able to participate due to both of us recovering from recent stints in hospital so we lazed around in the river downstream and waited for the canoeists to arrive. Such a beautiful area - will definitely be having a go next time.

We also checked out a 'famous' restaurant we have only about 15km away whilst they were here. "La Recreation" was the subject of a popular book although the original people who set it up have moved on - thankfully it lived up to it's fancy reputation. It's more expensive then most restaurants around here but totally worth it. We had undoubtedly the best meal we have had since moving here. Not only good looking food but yummo as well!

Since our visitors have left we have been busy with another side project. What started off being a small shade structure for the horses has now become a full on shelter complete with tack room. Paul has done a great job and it is nearly finished. We are about to do a trip back to the saw mill to get some more lining boards to complete it. The horses better make use of it! They looked pretty interested in it last night when we let them in to graze around it.

I have been riding nearly every day for the past week - I got the ok from the doctor to ride again and have been making the most of the nice weather. Even went on a three hour hack with the riding school on Sunday - was good because I now know some more tracks to use! Tolsan needs to have his front feet shod though as he gets very footy on the stoney tracks - he was trying to run on the sides all the time poor guy! I also had my first dressage lesson ever on Monday which was very embarrassing as I had an audience of about 10 people at the sand school as the gites there are all full of holiday makers. I have never done this type of riding before and trotting and cantering around in circles with no stirrups is very hard work I give you the tip! Tolsan hadn't fully recovered from the big ride the day before so I had a hard time getting him to stay in the canter - and my legs are still sore now! Here's my two - Ambre is nearly as big as Tolsan now and a couple of years still to grow!

Ok well I think that is all the news for now. Gabi is in Turkey at the minute and loving it although she is on one of those trips that goes everywhere but nowhere for any length of time so I am sure she will be off to the next country by now. Chelsea has just had a lovely week with her boyfriends' family in Florida before her preseason starts again in a month or so. Oh and here is a pic of the bath after I painted it up - hard to believe it was the same ugly dark blue one - what a bargain that turned out to be!