We made it!

We finally made the move over to France! It seemed to take a while, and was definitely stressful…but we got here and we love it. The sun was kind enough to welcome us for the first couple of weeks, then we had lots of rain, some sun, more rain and now it's absolutely boiling!! Like anything new it's taken a bit of getting used to but we have made lots of lovely friends here already and everyone is so friendly! We are so lucky to have the opportunity to live in such a beautiful place and have so much land to enjoy.

Learning French is definitely hard work! It's going to be a slow process for me, I'm looking forward to the day I can have a conversation with ease, at the moment it's very stop and start. I had my first conversation last week on my own with our farmer neighbour's mum and I think it went ok. I tend to understand more of what people say if they're not talking to me directly…maybe because I don't feel nervous!?

We had some lovely chickens when we arrived, unfortunately the fox ate them all!!! We'll get some more at some point when we have a fox proof pen. So for now we just have a dog and a supposed outdoor cat who tries to come inside all the time! We're going to go and look at some baby pigs next month, so we might end up with some more animals soon. There's plenty of people offering kittens to us, might have to consider it to keep the mice at bay in the winter months.

The girls are enjoying school, Millie can count up to 20 in French, which her teacher said was really good as she's still in the nursery class until September. They do lots of fun things, lots of games, singing and craft. Their teacher is so lovely! Evelyn runs up to her every day and gives her a big cuddle and of course the kiss on each cheek.

I'm enjoying the French patisseries and baguettes a little too much! They are delicious…too delicious!

The veg patch is coming along really well! It has taken many hours, days and weeks of hard work but we're only a couple of metres from the end now. Luckily we got some help along the way too. I now have much more defined biceps…not done anything for my jelly belly though!?

Trying to get the house ready for teaching French students during the summer months, it's going to be very busy! 7 days a week for 8 weeks, hoping we'll have lots of fun too!

Daisy's first swing

We went to the park the other day and Daisy had her first swing. She was a bit unsure and nervous while it was swinging, but still gave a giggle when I spoke to her. She liked it much better when it was still!?

Day at the Beach

While we're in Norfolk I decided I'd like to visit Holt...I'd got into my head it was a really nice place, well it is a quaint little village with some quirky/arty shops, but if you have children don't bother going! Everyone treat us like we had leprosy! After and hour we just left and went to look at the coast...firstly we went to Cley-on-sea, then we went onto Wells as we didn't see the beach last time we went. The kids had fun playing on the sand and climbing the sand dunes. It was a beautiful day, even though it was very windy by the sea...we left before the rain hit. I even managed to resist having fish and chips again...even though they are so delicious!! Got to try and eat healthily (had a sneaky chinese anyway that evening ha ha!).

Baby Blanket

I started knitting a baby blanket about 2 years ago and I finally finished it!!! It was my first attempt at knitting since being about 12 years old, so I'm quite pleased with the result.

Gardening with Nanny

We're lucky enough to be staying at my nan's house while we wait to move to France. My mum and Millie did a spot of gardening the other day as it was so lovely and mild. We had so much fun spending the day outside, it felt like a bit of a holiday (I think all those childhood memories spent in the garden came flooding back!). It was a beautiful day! Evelyn discovered ladybirds for the first time and really enjoyed letting them crawl on her hands, they were everywhere and kept landing on the girls' hair and clothes. I love days like these...would've been perfect if Ben was there too!

Millie gardening

Ladybirds

pure delight

Wells-next-the-sea

On Saturday we decided to go on a drive along the coast, I've never been for a drive in that direction before. The villages were so lovely!!! It was a lovely scenic journey. We ended up stopping at Wells-next-the-sea, had a potter around the shops and then had some lovely fish and chips and ice cream....even thought it was cold and wet! True English style! We didn't go on the beach as it was so soggy! But we did see a pirate ship, which the girls loved!

I didn't take my camera but this is what we saw:

Granary

The little port

Cute little shops

the pirate ship!

Baking Day

I got the baking bug the other weekend, so decided to try some recipes out form the Sainsbury's Magazine that I'd bought. The cupcakes were a bit fiddly but were so delicious!! It involved making a lemon syrup and putting lemon curd in the middle. The only downside with the recipes I used was that they told you how many calories each serving was, so I only ate 1! The other cake was a chocolate tray bake which was very easy apart from the icing that ended up in little balls of chocolate icing, thankfully Ben helped me rescue it...I liked putting apricot jam on before the icing it really gave it a nice taste!

Lemon cupcakes

Chocolate traybake