Colouring within the lines

In the last week or two Ilona has, to her immense delight, mastered the art of colouring without going over the lines (or cribble crabble, as she used to call poor quality colouring). Now, any hour of the day she can be found at the table, crayon in hand, making things colourish (her word, adopted from Bluet who has abandoned its charms for the more prosaic colourful). What they both now like to do is colour a picture, have us take a photograph and print it out, then put the photo in a frame.



(and one of Bluet's)

Not the Eiffel Tower

It wasn't all Eiffel Tower, all the time. We also had time to take one of those open top bus tours around Paris, where, amongst other things, we saw the Eiffel Tower. There was also plenty of time for the kids to pretend to be street urchins, pizza, a walk up the hill to Sacre Coeur, trips on the metro galore, and a memorable lunch of crepes on a very steep street.

Paris! : Eiffel Tower

So here we are, last Saturday, exploring Paris. The highlight for most of the kids was the Eiffel Tower (which Bluet said was the most beautiful tall building). The highlight for Ilona was her new shoes. Bluet was fascinated by all the souvenir sales people peddling their wares around the tower, and we ended up bringing 5 Eiffel Towers home with us. She has also been spotted pretending to buy and sell these Paris souvenirs. As you can see, we walked all the way around




Here is Bluet's picture of the tower



And her tower souvenir



Ilona's shoes:

Heatwave

Last week Nate, Lila, Scott and Abatha joined us all the way from St Louis. Our time was mostly spent trying to keep cool as we are in the middle of a never ending heatwave. We have a new swimming pool for the garden, complete with slide, so this was the perfect opportunity to try it out, and patch the leak that has already developed.

Other options for keeping cool include jumping into the nearest river.



However, we also took the train to Paris. So here is most of the group at Zurich Station, waiting for the TGV. More to come......

Pockets

Here is one of Ilona's latest artworks. Those two black marks under the mouth are pockets

heat wave

Summer has come to Zurich, and it is far, far too hot and humid - often exceeding 28C, which I am reliably informed is as hot as it has ever got in Aberdeen. Which is why I often suggest we should move there, for the weather (if I mention it in front of Ilona, she is very keen on this idea as she would like to live there with Uncle Nick). Anyway, this awful heat means that we have to spend lots of time taking the kids to water. e.g. this weekend:




Bring on the autumn, I say

But at least sometimes the girls can entertain themselves by swinging in our garden, so we don't have to go anywhere