It's been an eventful week - from a meteorite to a winter storm.

Saturday: Hello Kitty. See here.

Sunday: Was a perfect sunny autumn day, while driving home from an afternoon walk in the woods we saw a meteorite burning up just over our village!

Monday: Was taken out for lunch in the swanky restaurant in the expensive new hotel just near us. We were practically the only guests and although Yann immediately put the tablecloth over his head and got very restless, all the staff very very friendly and seemed pleased to see him.

Tuesday: Picked up a ticket for Charlotte's very first theatre performance! It's going to be on in the local library at the end of the month. We're looking forward to it already.

Wednesday: Yann went to kindergarten! Only for about an hour and a half and I was in the building all the time (listening to Bruce Springsteen in order to help the woman who runs the place understand and translate it!!) He played happily with the other smaller children and there were no problems between him and Charlotte.
I'm now constantly thinking about when he could start (= when I go back to work) and whether Charlotte should go to pre-school next year.

Thursday: Overslept! In the afternoon Charlotte and I went on a magazine (and breakfast cereal) buying spree in the supermarket. We bought lots of magazines for the stickers that came free with them (don't worry, they were cheap ones). We'll use the stickers to decorate our Christmas cards and envelopes .

Today: Storm tide. P. arrived home before 3p.m. because his office building was evacuated before being cut off by flood water. He's been working there for three and a half years and had never seen the river so high. Yann and I went down to the ferry terminal to see the water and give P. some quality time alone with Charlotte.
Normally the white-sided pier on this
photo descends steeply to the pontoon for the ferry. At four o'clock this afternoon, as you can see, it was going up.
That was almost half an hour after high tide. We could see from the tree trunks that the water had been higher.
I heard on the news this evening that it was the highest tide since 1999, 3.33m above normal high water. There were hurricane force winds on the North Sea coast but it wasn't too bad here.
I'm pleased to say that no-one was injured and there wasn't so much damage.
I was a bit worried about my parents who took the ferry from Bruges, Belgium to Hull, UK today but they didn't have any real problems apart from not being able to sleep because of the storm.