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.

Thirteen websites for children and parents

This is my first Thursday Thirteen and I want to share a few of my bookmarked sites with you.

1. Boowa and Kwala is a brilliant site full of games,songs and stories for children under ten and suitable for the tiniest. It’s all bilingual - English and French We love it.
2. Also in French and English is Poisson Rouge – Red Fish. I find it a little strange but P. and Charlotte have had fun with it.
3. Starfall is designed to help children learn to read and even though it’s still a bit early Charlotte enjoys looking at the letters and playing the games.
4. Kneebouncers is designed for small children. There’s no mouse necessary, the babies just need to hit the keyboard for something to happen.
5. The Fisher Price site is also suitable for the very young
6. DTLK’s printable crafts for kids is full of lovely craft ideas for kids. We’ve made lots of cards from it, pumpkins, penguins and even P.s Christmas present last year…The craft ideas are very clearly explained, easy to use and adaptable for different ages.
7. Family education has great ideas for crafts for toddlers and sections on just about anything parents might want. I’m addicted to their sudoku game in the Mom’s Coffee Break section.
8. Activity Village has coloring pages, crafts, educational resources and, and, and…
9. Gayle’s Preschool Rainbow has loads of fun and educational activities for children.
10. For tiny tots – the Go Baby homepage at the Disney Playhouse. The Disney site also has lots more characters – we liked Ooh & Aah and Mickey Mouse among others.
11. The BBC website has pages for all their children’s characters. We found it through the Teletubbies but our favourite is probably Boogie Beebies. We ordered the Boogie Beebies DVD’s as soon as we found the site.
12. Another TV website is the Australian ABC Parenting. This has the ABC Playground site for children from 2 – 7 but I bookmarked for the wonderful parenting advice pages.
13. Find more useful advice at Raising Children Network.

After all this you probably won't believe me when I say that the monkeys hardly ever use the computer! When Yann was tiny and it was too hot to go out Charlotte and I spent a lot of time playing children's games. We have just re-discovered the songs at Boowa and Kwala though and here are the monkeys entranced by the Beep beep song.

I hope you'll find something useful in my list. See more here.

Happy Thursday

Wordless Wednesday - 7th November

Go to Wordless Wednesday hq or 5 minutes for mom for more participants.

Fall into Reading 2007 - better late than never

I've been considering taking part in this challenge that Katrina at Callapidder Days is hosting for a while and have now decided to take the plunge. It doesn't matter that to me that I'm joining halfway through - I'm a quick reader, I don't have to make myself a huge list.
I'd be reading all the time anyway and I hope that this list will make me get through a couple of books that I've started a few times and haven't managed to finish yet.

Most of these books are from the local library. It's English section only has one and half small shelves and I hadn't looked at it for ages because I'd read everything From there that I was interested in. Suddenly quite a few new books have appeared - a delight for me!!

My selection was mainly based on the covers as I hadn't heard of them all before, so my list is a real mixed bag. At least three of them I know absolutely nothing about. I hope they'll be interesting and worthwhile.

Here goes (in no particular order)

Long Way Round (Chasing shadows across the world) by Ewan McGregor & Charlie Boorman

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

The Ballad of Lee Cotton by Christopher Wilson

The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers (in progress)


That seems like plenty in the run-up to Christmas.

Go to Callapidder Days to find out what's on everyone else's list and join in too.

Menu Plan Monday - Nov 5th

The long-awaited meet and have your photo taken with Hello Kitty was not quite what we had been expecting. The "official" polaroid photo is probably no better than my snap and everything went extremely quickly.

Charlotte enjoyed herself though. She was really well-behaved, held my hand all the time and was fascinated by the city centre. She loves the goody bag which I was impressed by as well. Its contents were much better than I had feared - cute pencil, stickers and a lovely keyring.



Here's my menu for this week


MONDAY Tofu sausages with boiled potatoes, carrots, broccoli and tomato salad

TUESDAY Savoury waffles (we had guests last Fri so they didn't get made)

WEDNESDAY Vegetable stew (to use up the celeriac P. bought by mistake!)

THURSDAY Lentil curry and rice

FRIDAY Homemade pizza with mushrooms, peppers, sweetcorn, olives and cheese.

SATURDAY Nut roast (if we manage to find celery!) with red cabbage and lots of veggies

SUNDAY Fridge surprise - to eat up all our left-overs (with microwave baked potatoes)

We had some changes to last week's menu but all in all I was really satisfied about how well my plan worked. Putting it up here gave me great motivation to stick to it.

The monkeys also ate pretty well. Yann was not 100% fit so he didn't eat as much as I expected but both of them tried a lot. I was proud of them.

Frugal Friday - Bananas

We eat a lot of bananas here, of course.

Occasionally the monkeys seem to go off them for a couple of days and they start to go brown and spotty.

They are sweet and delicious (and much more fattening!) then but do need to be dealt with quickly before the fruit flies arrive.

My frugal tip is to peel the bananas, wrap them in cling film and freeze them. Eat them frozen and they taste better than any banana ice-cream, just wonderful. This doesn't work with those tiny baby bananas - they have a strange consistency when frozen and aren't good.

If I don't have time to peel and wrap, I just put all the bananas in a freezer bag and freeze. I defrost them (in a large bowl - to prevent gunk getting all over the fridge) when I want to make banana bread and treat them like fresh bananas. They look absolutely dreadful but are fine for baking.
Our favourite is Delia's banana and walnut loaf. I buy reduced brown bananas whenever I see them just for this recipe and walnuts are a must for my cupboard.

Mmmm... my mouth is watering already.

A few favourite books

Chapter One - from Charlotte's bookcase


I started reading a bedtime story to Charlotte every day when she was just a few months old. At first she hated it and screamed as soon as she saw the book coming. At that age though, she didn't have any chance to escape so I read to her whatever.

We have always read a lot together and to try and give her a bedtime ritual she had the same book at bedtime for well over a year.
I find "Hush, little Ones" very peaceful and relaxing, perfect for going to bed with.

As she's progressed we've found many other books that we've read as often as this one.

I can read this book aloud with my eyes closed and I think Charlotte probably knows it off by heart too. I just love - the idea, the text and the illustrations.

Another favourite by Judith Kerr is
We also love Mr Gumpy and the children and the dog and the cat and the rabbit and the pig and the calf and the goat and the chickens...













This list could go on and on but it's too late for more now.