Bonnes fêtes

Time to log in again. Unbelievably it's nearly Xmas - this year has literally whizzed by in a bit of a blur! We are off to Toulouse tomorrow to get Chelsea from the airport. Her university holidays aren't very long unfortunately so she is only coming for a couple of weeks, but it will be great to see her again. Also a bit excited to catch up with Gabbi for Xmas - it's been a few months since we have seen her and she ventured off on her London adventure. I think she is enjoying it, although at the moment she is doing some very long hours at the bar she works in so I don't think she is able to do anything much other then work. We are spending xmas all together in London - I have rented an apartment for a few days so hopefully we can throw together a big traditional English roast Xmas lunch. Can't wait!

The days are so short here this time of year. The trade off for the extremely long days in summer I guess. Sometimes it feels the sun has only just come up and its gone again. We have had some pretty cold weather too - last week we had a day where it was still minus 7 at lunch time!

Paul has been cracking on with the house. A few weeks back we had the underfloor heating pipes in and the screed laid. We had a friend in to help who had done it before and our good friend Yves who owes Paul some time came along to help too. We were going to hire a big cement mixer but it was going to be 70 euros a day so Paul had a look on Leboncoin and found an ancient petrol powered one for 250 - so that worked out pretty good. It did the job with no problems and now we have our own for the bigger concreting jobs we still have to do.
Here are some pics from the couple of days doing the floor. It rained lightly the whole time - I did cop Paul and Yves having a cheeky beer quite early in the day - the photo kind of says it all! In fact they thought they were going to be loading the mixer flat out but since it was so big they had plenty of time between loads to take it easy!

We have left the screed to dry out, which could take a while with the very rainy miserable weather we have been having and have now gone back to work on the second floor.
We have laid the oak in the spare bedroom and Paul has rebuilt the fireplace for it. And only today he finished the tiling in our ensuite - although it still needs grouting. It looks awesome - he has done such a great job.

So - no other news really. We are going to have a few quick days checking out the ski fields in Andorra next week - there has been some good snow and more due tomorrow so hopefully will be nice and soft for the inevitable big wipe outs that are on the cards!!