Le marché de Père Noël

Usually by this time of year, I'm more than a little bit excited for Christmas but I haven't yet got into the spirit of things this year. It just seems that the French don't go quite as Christmas crazy as we do back home. 


The local supermarkets have only just started to get their Christmas stock in and I've yet to see any shops with their decorations up yet.  I'm not really watching TV these days so I'm missing out on all the Christmas adverts you're constantly bombarded with and as we're travelling back and forth over the holiday period I'm not really going crazy with the present buying as it will be impossible to carry everything with our Scrooge-like EasyJet baggage allowance.


[Note to anyone reading:  Please don't bother getting us any pressies this year! We really won't be missing out. Max and Luke don't understand yet, Lily has everything she could possibly want and being at home with our family and friends is the best present anyway. Just read that back and it sounds a bit mean...what I mean is obviously Lily, Max and Luke will be getting their pressies from Santa Claus and therefore won't need anything else.] 


Anyway this morning I thought we'd head to our local marché de Père Noël in the hope of finding some Christmas cheer. The market didn't really inspire much of the Christmas spirit unfortunately as it was super busy and trying to manoeuvre the double pushchair through the crowds was fairly impossible.


In true Max style, he didn't want to go anywhere near Santa Claus, hated the music the band were playing and wanted to touch everything that had a 'Touchez Pas' sign. Fortunately a crêpe calmed him down and a vin chaud sorted me out.

 Max's worst nightmare

Where's mine mam?

There were a few nice bits and pieces that I could have bought, but nothing that would have travelled home very well, so we left empty handed. Hopefully I'll get in the mood soon somehow!

Another bit of excitement chez nous this weekend was on Saturday when the Batley family from Whitley Bay came to visit for the day. They're considering a move to Geneva, so were in the area checking out some of the international schools. It was great for the kiddies to get together and for us to see some friendly faces from home! If anyone else is in the area, please do call in!

 Max and Joseph

 Birthday brownies

Worn out

Lily giving Amy the lowdown on French life. Or not...

Stu is now over in Ireland for work until late on Wednesday.  He's taken jump leads with him and texted me where he's parked the car to avert another airport carpark disaster.


I'm sure nothing can go wrong this time....

Tutoyer, vouvoyer

Along with getting the hang of when and when not to faire la bise, I've also been trying to get my head around when to tutoyer and when to vouvoyer.

You learn in school that you use 'tu' when you know the person and 'vous' when you don't know the person.  But when do you know someone enough to transfer from using vous to using tu? And what are the exceptions (as it's French and there are inevitably many)? Here's what I've learnt from my experiences so far!

• When talking to litte children, always use tu.
• Family members, use tu.
• Whenever there is an element of a professional relationship (ie doctor, teacher or someone serving you in a shop) use vous.

Simple? Unfortunately not that simple. I was under the impression that you had to use vous on meeting people for the first time but in actual fact you can skip using the vous entirely with people you're in a similar social situation with. For example people of the same age or people who attend the same social interest group as you.

The other week I accidently tutoyed with the daughter of one of the neighbour's friends, and apologised as soon as it came out of my mouth but it was ok she said because we're of the same age group. During toddler group I was vouvoying all over, which someone explained to me wasn't necessary in that situation.

I've not had the awkward 'you can tutoyer me' moment yet when you move from addressing someone as vous to using tu but an example of when that would happen was when Stu was in the process of renting the gite from Catherine and Eric - the relationship reached a point where it went from that of landlord to that of friend (I turned up when everyone was on tu terms!).

Confused? I am...

Pause Poussette

I braved my first French toddler group yesterday. I probably would have done it sooner, but it has taken me this long to find one! They really don't go in for the whole baby club type thing like we do back home. When Max was tiny, I had somewhere to go every day.

Me, Max and Luke turned up fashionably late (didn't want to risk going for the full two hours, in case I hated it) and found ourselves welcomed by lots of friendly faces. Luke was going all out with the charm offensive which was handy as Max (who had been up since 5:45am) decided to act up, not sharing toys and kicking off big style if anyone invaded his personal space.  I had to stop him twice from making a run for it out the door as he wanted to go home. He eventually got into the swing of things though and found a little girl to play nicely with.


Anyway, the people were lovely.  A couple of the girls spoke a bit of English, and one of them had spent six years in England as an au pair. It's a great way for me to practise my French and for Max to improve his social life.  We've even been invited for café et gateaux at one of the girl's houses this afternoon, so looking forward to that!

(It's a bit of a shame that Max spent most of the time yesterday trying to avoid her little boy and getting extremely pissed off when he came anywhere near...fingers crossed he will be a bit friendlier today!)

Les cuisses de grenouille

The major event chez nous this week has been going out for dinner on Thursday night to try frogs legs.  We went to local restaurant Le Grillon, where you can get all you can eat cuisses de grenouilles served with gratin dauphinoise plus dessert for 25 Euros.

The legs were like mini chicken wings, not dissimilar in taste, maybe a bit fishy and quite fiddly to eat. They were served in a garlicky buttery sauce, that got quite sickly towards the end, but on the whole they were nice. Probably won't order them again, but had to give them a go while we are here. Don't think I'll be trying snails, horse or tete de veau any time soon though...

Winter has sneaked up on us this week. I was extremely disappointed to see that it was colder here than it was in Whitley Bay at one point! Mornings are absolutely freezing, but it's still getting up to about 14 degrees over lunch time (although the intensity of the sun makes it feel warmer).  We lose the sun behind a mountain at about 3:45pm and from then it gets colder again.

The added extra of winter coats, hats and gloves just makes the whole getting in and out of the car thing even more fun, which means I haven't really done much this week whilst Stu has been working.

Lily's French has increased ten-fold over the past few weeks. I think she could easily sit and pass a GCSE in it now and get a fairly decent grade. She's got so much more confidence at speaking it and reading just seems to come naturally. At the end of this year, she is definitely going to have surpassed me!

It's become one of her missions in life to find French words that Stu doesn't know, which is quite a difficult feat however she succeeded this week when she came back speaking the French word for cockchafer, which she'd learnt in science. It seems that cockchafer wasn't in Stu's French or English vocabulary, so well done Lil.

Not just a pretty face

We're having a quiet weekend now as Stu is off to Paris first thing on Monday morning for two nights for work.

Luke is due his next set of jabs on Tuesday, which should be fun as I'll have to take Max along too making it about 100 times more difficult to hear what is being said to me.

Better finish up now as Max has just appeared at the doorway with a razor trying to shave his chin...

Les Alpinistes

We've just had a long weekend here in France as they have a bank holiday for Remembrance day, so we decided to go and explore some of the local mountains and take advantage of the awesome autumn weather we're having at the moment, whilst testing out some rather fetching new snow boots.


On Friday, we went to the Crêt de Chatillon (1699m) where you can see both Lac d'Annecy and Lac du Bourget from the summit. Or you could if there wasn't a blanket of clouds just below us!  We did get a spectacular view of Mont Blanc though and had fun checking out the ski runs.

High above the clouds

Snowboots already been pinched :-\

Lily was excused from Saturday's adventure as she had revision to do.  This time we went to the Col de Granier (1134m), and had a nice walk through the trees and a picnic in the scorching sun.

Going to try and Photoshop Lily onto this picture

Sunday's summit was the Molard Noir (1452m) where we traversed the top of the mountain taking in spectacular views over the side.

My little mountaineers

Those little lakes in this picture are where we spent the end of summer in our boat!

To put the heights of these places into perspective, the highest mountain in England (Scafell Pike) is only 978m.  Obviously we didn't walk all the way up to these heights as one of our team can't walk yet, another only has little legs and one is weighed down having to carry the non-walker. We usually manage about an hour of walking before Max starts whinging and my back starts aching. Lily tends to whinge before we go out, but when we start hiking you can tell that she secretly loves it really. 

It's incredible the amount of breathtaking walks there are literally on our doorstep. I just wish that the babies were able to appreciate it!

L'atelier, Chambéry

One of the bonuses of our visitors the other week was that me and Stu were able to go out for an evening without kids.

After walking round Chambéry and checking all the menus we decided to go to L'Atelier where we were lucky to get the last unreserved table.

I have to say this was one of the nicest restaurants I have ever been to! The head chef Gilles had previously worked in Michelin starred restaurants but had given up his Michelin star dream to spend more time with his family.  Once we were seated he came and introduced himself, sat down and talked us through the menu options.

For each course you could choose from either two or three dishes. A lot of restaurants here work like this, which I like.  Fewer options means you're more likely to try something a little bit different and it also means you're sure that the ingredients user are likely to be the freshest possible (ie no lasagne that's been festering at the back of a freezer for months).

After ordering we were presented with a little amuse bouche and some strange parma violet flavoured drink while we waited for the food to arrive. For starters I had a fricasée of mushrooms with a poached egg, while Stu went for the lobster pasta option:

Main course I went for the duck and foie gras and Stu had some fish:

And for pud, I had a lime thing and Stu had a chocolate and pistachio fondant:

Including drinks it came to a very reasonable 76 Euros.

We'd intended on taking the opportunity of free babysitting to go and have a few drinks, but by 10pm we headed home as were were falling asleep in our pastis! Oh the joys of never getting more than three hours unbroken sleep.I'd definitely recommend this place (if you're not a fussy eater) and look forward to going again.

La célébration

Max had a fabulous birthday weekend in France. He started the day opening his pressies with grandma and granddad watching on Skype, and didn’t stop playing toys and eating crap all day long.  We had our own mini fireworks display when it got dark and finished up in bed watching his new Cars DVD.

 Duplo farm!

Birthday pain au chocolat (Stu had to stop me from putting candles in his birthday chicken nuggets)

 New car from Lil

Les petits

On Sunday we decided to take a trip out.  Three of Max’s current favourite things are trains, tunnels and mountains so what would be better than a train that goes through a tunnel and up a mountain?! Well, lots of things would be as it turns out. After driving for an hour to locate the funicular station, we were greeted by a big red FERME sign. Great.

He wasn’t too disappointed though as it meant he could go home and play with all of his new toys and watch Cars again (and again, and again).

I'm feeling a lot happier after a lovely weekend with la famille, and Stu has got most of this week off work which eases the pressure a bit. I'm hoping to get a couple of hours to myself at some point over the week, which could actually be the first time for 17 weeks. It is honestly miles easier going to work everyday than looking after Max and Luke!

It's quite hard to believe that little Luke is now 17 weeks old. It has flown over! By this age, Lily and Max had started on solid food, however I've decided to hold off this time. He doesn't seem to be hungry for anything more than milky I learnt from Max that weaning makes absolutely no difference to babies who are shite sleepers, and I really cannot be bothered with the hassle of pureeing!

So Lukey will be waiting as long as possible before he gets some proper food. I don't think he'll be wasting away any time soon?!

Quit stalling woman and pass me the filet mignon

We're off to Decathlon now to get Stu some Speedos so he can take Max to the swimming pool in Chambery, as you're not allowed to wear shorts here. He is less than impressed at the prospect of nugget huggers, but I think it's hilarious!

A tout à l'heure!

Bon anniversaire Max

Two years ago today a little firework exploded into our lives.

Since then he has grown into a chatterbox, a charmer, an adventurer, a goon, a negotiator, and a bit of a softy. He's cheeky, curious, strong-willed, sharing, caring, cautious, frustratingly contrary, angel-haired, monster obsessed, shark loving, unexpectedly empathic, energetic and mischevious with a crazy imagination.

A typical little brother who loves to terrorise his big sister. In training to be a responsible big brother, even if he is still far too rough.

He can always be found singing happily to himself, same tune (wheels on the bus), different words (absolutely anything that comes in his head). And his remix of the Postman Pat tune never fails to bring a smile to my face.

He's a handful and a half but we wouldn't have him any other way.

Happy birthday Max!

La souffrance

I've been a right misery since the guests left.  I'm finding it so difficult to get back into the swing of every day life and have hardly left the house.  It's like that week after Christmas when all the excitement abruptly stops and you end up just dossing around, the days all blurring into one.  I'm just sooooo bored! At least back at home I could always find something to do or someone to see right on my doorstep.

I'm also finding French impossible again after a week of hardly speaking it. We had pizzas with the neighbours on Monday and I felt physically exhausted from trying to hold a conversation. Max had a great time though, playing with one of their friend's grandaughters, Lucille:

He asked her to 'viens jouer' (come play)! It made me realise that he needs company of his own age, so I'm going to try and get a creche sorted soon.

Sigggghhhhhh.


Anyway, I need to shake this misery off asap! Maybe it will help when Lil goes back to school tomorrow and I'm forced back into some sort of routine again. 

Also it's Max's second birthday this weekend so hopefully that will bring a bit of excitement to the household. Although I already found him opening his pressie so that won't be much of a surprise for him! We're going to try and find some fireworks for him today as obviously Guy Fawkes isn't celebrated in France. 

I'm starting to feel better already after getting that whinge off my chest!

Edited to add: One bit of news that brought a smile to my face this week was the safe delivery of baby Alexander Dixon, born in record time on Hallowe'en! Congratulations to Susie, Digga and Niamh! xxx