Celebrations

Today dawns bright and sunny though cold. We have had a biting easterly wind for 3 days but it seems to have passed now. Consequently there was a frost last night that saw me having to break the ice on the geese water again today! It's March!!! All the locals are saying how unusual this is and that Spring is well delayed. I can vouch for that actually as last year when I gave birth to Sammy there was a beautiful massive forsythia in full yellow regalia but this year it's not even broken bud. We do have our crocuses out though and the daffs are about to pop if they don't get choked off by the frost that is.

This afternoon we had un petit fête for S's first birthday together with it being almost 3 years since we signed up for a life in France. I have spent the past three days making lots of cakes in a bid to use up some of our egg mountain and fortunately lots of folk came to eat them all up - 11 families including our mayor. R and B had a great time playing with the other children outside whilst S and his friend played happily indoors with all the new toys and books. R is absent from the photograph as he was too busy playing with the other children to come in for the candle-blowing-out session.

We got lots of nice compliments on how far our French has come on (yikes scary as I *know* mine is still atrocious so how bad must it have been!!!) and our Mayor said that he was glad to have such open-spirited people as part of the community.