moving fin

Thank God! We are finally done moving!

We started this morning at 8:00, took a half hour for lunch and worked constantly moving things over till 5:30. The crazy thing is that we were only moving ONE ROOM! Just the library took nine hours!

We brought over 57 boxes of books. 2 filing cabinets, 6 boxes of old papers (stuff for taxes for the last six years), Six 7 x 4 bookcases and so much more.

Until yesterday I actually had everything put away nicely and the house looked like a normal house except with an empty room. Yesterday I brought over all the stuff we were storing in our master bedroom closet. But still I had it in nice stacks in the bedroom.

Right now it looks like another family moved in on top of all our stuff. Boxes are just piled up everywhere!!

But I am here now. There is no more going back and forth. *whew*

I tell you I am going to get rid of so much of this stuff!

Wait - we didn't just move the library - we also cleaned out the porch and found a BIG black widow out there. I am already pretty scared of spiders and there were hundred of them out there. But the black widow with the egg sac on my porch... ewww.

Pere and I werent sure what to do about the Widow, she was big and in an inconvenient place for killing. But when Pere was taking some trash out I got some windex and sprayed it until it ran down trying to get away from me. Then I sprayed it a lot more and then I put a piece of cardboard on my shoe and stepped on it. *shiver*

I felt kind of bad for killing it and smushing it's babies but I was worried about the cleaning and maintenace guys going out there and maybe getting bit so she had to go.

Another thing, yesterday we got another praying mantis, a much bigger one. It was so big it was kind of creepy. I put in it in pickle jar since the smaller one we caught earlier was in our regular bug jar. I had caught a spider and put it in with him. Then we brought it home and I put the top of the jar on. I totally forgot about the poor guy and when I was getting ready for bed I saw him lying on his back in the jar looking about dead! I quickly opened the lid and he started coming back around. But it was bed time and the other bug cage was still at the old apartment out on the porch. So I stuck him in with the smaller mantis. I felt a little bad because I thought it would probably kill the smaller one.

Later I went into the kitchen and I saw that the smaller one had gotten himself onto the back of the larger one. Pere and I wondered if they were mating. Apparently not. This morning the big one was lying dead on the bottom of the cage and the little one was still standing!

Did you know that matids eat vertebrae?

*******

So now I am home and it looking like I have several days of hard work, putting things away, ahead of me. But I am looking forward to it.

This place already feels like home.

talks about all kinds of things

Though we haven't had much time for traditional school work this week we have had some great conversations while we are carrying boxes back and forth from apartments.

And Z has been having a good time playing with the other girls in the neighborhood.

Last year at this time I was really excited about the idea of Z becoming friends with all the little girls around here but it didn't really pan out. Maybe because I was too busy or so maybe some other reason. But now we are so close and Z and the neighbor girl are constantly knocking on each other's doors. Also another girl in our complex is homeschooling now too and so is outside during the day riding her scooter around.

I am happy for Z.

Audition update and more

So far Z has had ten auditions (3 print, 1 voice over, 5 commercial, and 1 for television), two callbacks and one job.

Today we got the call for that second callback. It is for a toy company and they want Z to draw a picture during the commercial. So Z is supposed to draw a picture this weekend and bring it with her on the callback. Her agent told me not to help her. LOL I said something like "That would be weird. I wouldn't try to help her."

I was feeling kind of tired of driving around to auditions - I think the excitement has kind of worn off, but getting the callback today kind of brought it back some for me.

Tonight Z and I found a Praying Mantis and I brought it home and put it in our bug cage (luckily we have a few of those hanging around.) Z asked if it could sleep in her room. *heh*

Also math is going really well. I figured out that the book Z is working on has one page for second grade and one for third for each topic. Z has been doing both pages and doing them very well. I am really excited for her. If and when she goes back to her regular math book she will be much stronger.

Today Z had her first Japanese lesson since we went to France. We have a lot of practicing ahead of us. I can't wait till next week when we can get back to a full schedule of homeschooling. We have been off almost the whole month of September.

I'm back

So I finally got our internet hooked up today. Wheee! *hee hee*

Today was a fun day for Z, I think.

This morning we worked on her favorite and most asked for subject, science. We are learning about the human body this term and today we read all about the skeleton and then Z took a test that I made for her, drawing questions from the book.

At 10:00 she had her first class of Shakespeare for this year. When the director saw her she grabbed her up and swung her around and doted on her and at first it was heart warming but then I worried how it might seem like favoritism to the other kids and parents so I was glad when that was over. And apparently she is not getting special treatment because when I came to get her at the end of class she got reprimanded for trying to talk over one of the teachers. *heh* But then they thought she was cute because she was asking for a script to start working on and was disappointed that they weren't going to choose a play that day and give her a script.

After Shakespeare we had lunch and then it was time for another new class - Girl's Club. It is for girls 5 - 9. There were around eight girls and they played some tag game, made puppets and sang a getting to know you song. To be honest it was kind of babyish (meaning the leader treated them like they were very young.) I heard an eight year old complain afterwards that she was too old for it but I told her that the mom's are going to take turns hosting it and that many of the things we do will be fun for older girls (i.e. things that Z is interested in.)

I am going to host Show and Tell for the Girl's Club next week. I picked that because it is very easy and I don't really have to do anything. I told the leader that I needed some time to come up with cool ideas. So far I have come up with talent show, a fitness event, a fairy school, and a Japanese theme class. ;) I just needed a little time.

Then Z played with her good friends and I talked to the mother of one and asked if her daughter would like to come over for a playdate. She just turned eleven so I wasn't sure if the mom would be keen on it but she said that her daughter loves to play with Z and she will probably come over sometime next week.

Then Z had an audition for Hasboro (sp?)

Then right after dinner our new next door neighbor, one of the other five year old girls in our apartment complex and the only one I had invited to Z's birthday last February, knocked on the door and asked if Z could come play.

So today Z had:

an hour and a half with 17 other kids interested in Shakespeare
a hour with eight other girls at Girl's Club
another hour with her three close girlfriends playing in her park
and forty-five minutes playing with the girl who's front door is about 8 feet from ours.

:)

I had a pretty good time myself. Last week, which was the first day with our new merged park groups, I was kind of overwhelmed. But today I decided that I like that there are more people. I am still friends with all my old friends but now I can make some new ones.

I wanted to take some pictures today so I could share just how many kids there are in our group and they fun things they do for the six hours they are together but I forgot my camera.

I saw:

baseball, kickball, gymnastics, wrestling on a beam, tye-dying t-shirts, Magic the Gathering and YuGi-Oh card games, a birthday party, bike riding, scootering, reading, sign-languages classes, Girl's Club, Chess, Shakespeare, and lots of pretend and made up games. It was very nice. :) I love homeschooling and homeschoolers.

feeling guilty

So I have been reading this book about Communist China from the 1930's on. It is really depressing and disturbing but really good too.

One thing that has been brought up a number of times in the book is how, under the communist regime, there was really no "consumer culture." People didn't just go out and buy stuff just to have it. You didn't have fifteen pairs of high heels. Even thinking about wanting something like that could get you into trouble because there were peasants out there who had to make their own shoes or who wore none at all.

This is not to say I agree with communism in any way, I certainly don't. But I am moving this week and bringing over all my shoes (twenty two pairs) and three huge boxes of bathroom stuff (Just how many bottles of moisturizer and special shampoos do I need?!) and other sundry and unnecessary items has made me feel very guilty.

We (I mean my family) have so much and there are many families who are barely getting by.

I was wondering if there was a way I could trade many of the things I don't want anymore for things that I need for our new place. For example, the shelves that hold our cds and dvds don't have a space in our new place. I need something smaller. I was thinking it would be cool if I could trade mine to a place and find something that worked better for me. (I know all about e-bay of course and I may end up selling a lot of our stuff that is still in good condition there.)

But then I was thinking that I really should donate a lot. I mean, we are not rich and it is a hardship for us to have to buy big items. And it would be more financially responsible for me to sell or consign what I can. But there are many things that I don't need that someone else could use. (Why do I have two ice cream scoops and two garlic presses!)

On my drive back from Reno in July I had an epiphany. I realized that consumerism/advertising is a trap that keeps us from ever finding out what we really want/need. We are bombarded with images and ideas that tell us that to be a certain kind of person you have to own certain things. But owning things do not make you are certain kind of person.

How you behave and how you live your life is the person you are. If you spend a large portion of your life shopping for a "life" then you are wasting it.

I am not saying we should live like monks or communists. I believe we can have more than we need. For example, sleeping comfortably is important to you then by all mean, go ahead and splurge on a comfy bed. But I think we should be more aware what we are trying to accomplish by owning so much.

Many times we are trying to buy an image but we don't live in images. And I think there is a great dissatisfaction trying to buy the life you want rather than living it. Like buying a membership at the gym or some new workout clothes it gives the the image of a person who is going to get in shape - but many people never follow through. People who wish they were the type of person who cooked might buy some expensive cooking equipment, but still eat take-out or prepared food 5 nights a week.

People have less time to DO the things they want becasue they are working so much to pay for the stuff that they bought, stuff that doesn't really add to their lives.
*sigh*

okay, I don't have time to write anymore. I need to bring more of my stuff over to my new apartment.

moving

we are moving into our new apartment this weekend.

Yesterday was all the heavy lifting - big furniture items. Today and for the rest of the week we are just carrying over small boxes. I don't have internet at the new place until Wednesday, so I am not getting much chance to post.

Why other things are important

Sometimes I get frustrated when other things intrude on our homeschooling time. I have so many things I want to teach Z, especially now that the school year is just starting and I had done two weeks of homeschool brainstorming in France. This week we didn't get to do any geography or history at all and I was really looking forward to it.

Yesterday Z had an audition that 2:40 at a place that took an hour to drive to and more than and hour to drive home from. the whole afternoon was gone. Then today we visited our older friends from Camarillo that we have coffee with every other week. We only had time for math before going and we didn't get back to till almost lunch time.

But I have to remind myself why these other things are important.

I decided, when I sold the bookstore, that I was going to continue seeing some of the people for whom the bookstore was an important part of their life. There is gentleman in this eighties who was a customer and one of my employees, a woman in her fifties with a daughter in high school and an older son who recently became a father.

Every other week we meet and have coffee and I listen to them and I share things I think they would want to hear and I bring Z and they dote on her. I ask after their kids and grandkids and I ask their advice on things.

I think to go there and make small talk and have coffee is more important that school work at that time because it is teaching Z that we don't just leave people behind. It is teaching her that the connections we make matter. It is teaching her that we can have intergenerational friendships. It teaches her that sometimes we drive 45 minutes each way to visit with people who are older and lonely and who get a great deal of enjoyment from our visits.

I think what she learns there is very important.

The auditions are harder to justify. What is she learning? Maybe that some endeavors take time to come to fruition. A father we met at one of her auditions told me that his daughter went on 20 auditions before she got her first job. I heard the average is 50.

I am learning that if it were just about me I not that interested in driving an hour to meet with someone for five minutes and not get a job over and over again. Note that I am not a professional actor. ;)

But there are some things I do care enough about to go and put myself out there over and over again in hopes of getting somewhere at some point. Right now Z cares about this. So maybe she is learning a valuable skill - the skill of dedication and salesmanship.

I don't know for sure. For her it all all fun at this point and she gets to list to The Order of the Phoenix in the car which is quite engrossing.

*yawn* Okay I am getting tired.

p.s.
Happy New Year!

2nd Audition

Today Z had her second audition for this week. Yesterday she had an audition for a Disney commercial and today it was for a Mattel print ad.

Earlier today I wrote about some frustrations with math. On the way to the audition this afternoon I talked with Z about the process some and I think she has a better idea now.

I realized today that I am very spoiled with Z. I often don't have to "teach" her anything. I just tell her something once or she reads it herself and she knows and understands it.

I feel kind of bad because I realize I didn't really teach her how to do those types of problems . I guess I thought she would just figure it out on her own or would at least instantly understand it when I explained it to her the first time. :( Now I feel like a jerk for having that kind of expectation. My excuse is that that is how things usually go.

Like in science, Z will watch a video on Brainpop, which has content aimed at 3rd - 12th graders, and Z will watch a video on the 12 systems of the human body or body chemistry and then take the online quiz at the end and get maybe two wrong because she wasn't paying attention - like she will forget what Lipids are or what the endochrine system is. But otherwise she gets all the answers correct even though the information was totally new to her.

I know some kids can comprehend complex maths without anyone teaching it to them. I think Pere is like that. But for Z, at least for this topic right now, she needs me to explain things more. There is nothing wrong with that and again I have to state that I do feel like a dope for not realizing that I should be spending more time explaining some of these math concepts to her.

p.s.
I have updated the "Z's Reading" links.

maths frustration

I think the work I am giving Z for math is too hard.

She has a book that is all word problems.

Here is the type of problem that she is having difficulties with:

Jane buys three caramel apples. Susan buys two pretzels.

Who spends more?

How much more?

So what Z had to do is look on the menu and find the price of 3 caramel apples and add them together, which she can do.

Then she addes together the price of two pretzels.

Then she compares the two answers and is able to answer the first part of her problem - Susan spends more.

But when it comes to figuring out how to tell _how much more_ she gets confused. Several times she just added the two amounts together and didn't seem to notice that that answer didn't make any sense. :(

When she would get lost I would ask her leading questions to help her find out how to get the answer. And she would seem to get it but still about half the time she was getting those types of problems wrong.

I am not sure if I should scale back and do work that she doesn't find as challenging or if I should just take more time to teach her this idea and keep going on.

Homeschooling Group Park Day Experience

Today was our first day back to our homeschooling group's weekly park day. Next week Shakespeare and Chess start but this week the kids just got together an played the whole time.

We were there from 4 1/2 hours! And even then Z was about to cry when I said we had to go home because she was having so much fun playing with her girl friends.

Our group merged with another group this year, so instead of 20 or so kids there are about 50 or 60. And instead of Z being the youngest and her girl friends being 7 - 10 there are now five other girls her age! But she still ended up playing with some her old friends and only one new girl, a six year old, joined their fun. It ends up that for about three hours the girls were acting out a game of Kingdom Hearts... weird. Now Z wants me to rent the game for her to play. :)

Next week there is going to be a "Girl's Club" so I hope Z will get to meet the other girls and make more friends.

I got to talk to a lot parents, it was really nice. There was one lady there who I only got to meet twice last year who is homeschooling her two very gifted kids. The older daughter is 14 and just starting college, the 12 yo boy is going too because the mother figured if she had to drive her older daughter to college and hang out there and wait for her that it would be practical if her son could take classes too. Anyway she is a very interesting woman to talk to. And, as always, it is nice to talk with someone with whom I can be open about the whole gifted thing. It is refreshing to not have to second guess everything I say.

I like talking to her because her kids are older so she has already been there and done that. but I was able to help her too. Her son is quite good looking and is thinking about trying to act and model. So I am going to help him out with that. The daughter is beautiful too but not as interesting in performing arts.

I am excited to get to know them. I remember how taken Z was with them last time we met them. Z thought they were so cool and she rarely says that about kids. That was when they had made up some game about being Parliment and trying cases and the other kids were lawyers and criminal and innocent people (these are the kind of games homeschool kids play:P) complete with British accents.

I also saw some old friends and one of them I told about Z's acting and she was very supportive. She said her husband had seen Z do Shakespeare last year and said she was a natural. I thought that was very nice. :)


Anyway it was very good time but the dynamics of the group have changed now that there are so many more kids. It used to be so small that all the kids played with each other. Today there were so many kids Z hardly even saw some of the older kids that she used to play with because they had a dozen or more kids their own age to play with.

my little dormouse

What shal I call
My dear little dormouse?
His eyes are small,
But his tail is e-nor-mouse.

I sometimes call him Terrible John,
"Cos his tail goes on --
And on --
And on,
And I sometimes call him Terrible Jack,
'Cos his tail goes on to the end f his back.
And I sometimes call him Terrible James,
'Cos he says he likes me calling him names...

But I think I shall call him Jim,
'Cos I am so fond of him.

-A. A. Milne

When Z was around 2 1/2 or 3 she loved to hear A. A. Milne's poetry and I read "When We Were Very Young" to her everyday. "Halfway Down", "Happiness", "Twinkletoes", "Politeness", "Rice Pudding" and this one written above, called "The Christening" were some of her favorites.

It has been half a life time, half of Z's lifetime that is, since she first found her love for poetry. It was so strong then I gave her the online nickname of Poetry (do any of you remember that?)

Today I found Milne's second book of poetry "Now We are Six" out on a table in the living room and realized that Z must have found it on the bookshelf and brought it out to read at some point recently. That reminded me of the time she found her own "Little Dormouse."

I am assuming it was when her love for that poem was at it's zenith that we were at the beach (it was just down the street from our home back then) and Z found a grubby half of a worm shaped fishing lure - kind of like a bigger plastic gummy worm. She dug it out of the sand with a stick and named it "Dormouse" and insisted on bringing it home and made a special "bed" for it out of a jewerly box and kept it on her nightstand. Sometimes she would take it out and carry it around. I think I finally got rid of it when I found out that those fishing lures can be poisonous if put in the mouth and I was worried that she might do that.

*heh* I just asked Pere if he remembered Z's "Little Dormouse" and he said "Ewww, yeah, that dirty worm thing?" *grin*

Speaking of Poetry and poetry Z was building Lego's with Pere tonight and told him "I am going to make up a riddle for you" Then she stood still gazing off into space for awhile. (She has been interested in riddles since reading the scene with Bilbo and the Golem in The Hobbit.) No long after she came up with this:

Windy and cold, just like a river
It may entice you to shiver

the answer? A fan.

As a riddle isn't that great but I liked the poetry of it. I especially liked that she tried to incorporate one of her vocabulary words from today into it.

:)

Back to School Day II

Today was an interrupted day, like many these days, but I had decided in France that I don't have to try to get everything done in the morning and save all of the afternoon for free time. So today we got a lot of homeschooling done even though I took a two hour trip from 9:30 - 11:30 to drive to Z's agency and discuss which head shots they want to use.

We got back just before lunch and normally that would have meant very little homeschooling accomplished, just math, grammar and spelling today. But after lunch we continued on to Japanese, piano practice, some more science (Z studied the 12 systems of the body and learned that our skin, hair and nails are the Integumentary System) and finally reading with vocabulary.

I am trying something new with vocabulary this year. I am taking vocabulary words from her readings. I ask her to read aloud, today from an old-fashioned book of fairy tales written in 1937 with more difficult vocabulary than most children's books of today, and when she comes across a word she doesn't know for sure I write down the sentence the word is in and copy and paste the definition of the word of dictionary.com. After Z finishes reading we go over the definitions. At the end of the week I will ask her to match up the definitions with the words as a test. Her words today were luscious, enticing, dismal, fugitive, and refuge.

I am also trying to do a more formal spelling program with Z. I found this list of second grade words online - http://www.polk-fl.net/Berkleyelm/secong_grade_spelling_lists.htm. Today Z got all the words on the first list correct (I just said the word and Z wrote it down_ except bring with she spelled brang, probably because that is how I pronounced it to her. ;S

Math was a little frustrating. She makes all these little errors and get problems wrong that I know she could get right if she would just pay attention. She often adds subtraction problems or starts subtracting in the ones place and then adds in the hundreds place! But somehow she got all her multiplication and division problems correct.

I am not sure what to do. She is at multiplication and division in her workbook but she is obviously still having problems with paying attention/focusing/whatever on much easier problems. *sigh* I am making up my own pages of problems for her to work on as practice that have old stuff and new because I know she likes the new but I don't think she is ready to leave the old.

Science has been great. I am using Brainpop a lot again. I might as well since I have a subscription. It is a good supplement. Z had always said she wants to be a Doctor and an Astronaut when she grows up so I decided to study the human body and then space this year. After that, in the Spring, I think we will do a long nature study.

We haven't started History yet. I am waiting for my D'Aulaire's Norse Myths book to come from the library. I decided I wanted to hit the Vikiings before we start into the Middles Ages.

Tomorrow we have another interrupted day. Wednesday is our park day with our homeschool group. We are both looking forward to seeing our friends, most we haven't seen since the summer break started except at the two parties I hosted. I am going to try to get some maths in before we leave for the park because I am concerned with her performance these last two days and I feel that more practice will help.

I do feel really good about the amount of homeschooling we are doing and the quality of it.

France

This morning we are listening to our cd of French children's song (thank you Marianne!)

The song La legende de Saint-Nicolas is a kind of sad sounding song and it made me start to miss France.

I really loved it there. I wasn't sure that I would. Actually until just now I didn't realize how strongly I felt about it.

Paris was an amazing city and I think I would live there in a heartbeat. I am not saying I would want to be a French citizen. But I would like to live in France for a year or so - yes, experience an entire year there... all the seasons and all the holidays.

I think I am a city girl at heart. I love the shops and restaurants and the people going to and fro. Paris, at least in the late summer, is a very outdoor city. People are walking everywhere and out of their homes eating, shopping, and drinking cafe.

Paris also has a great public transportation system. It was so relaxing to know you could just take the Metro everywhere in the city or a train out of the city to Nice or Cannes.

Paris also had so much history! I walked around half the time in a state of awe, (think Dabrowski's overexcitabilities) thinking about all the things that happened on the streets where I walked. It gave me such a special feeling to be walking in the footsteps of history.

Also in Paris caring about how you look (i.e. having a fashion sense) is not at odds with being an intellectual. *laugh*

Back to School

Today Z and I got back to school. It was great. She was excited to do everything and wanted to do more of every subject.

I knew she was looking forward to doing "new" things so I started her on a new math activity book I have with the theme of "Menu Math." It was pretty easy but fun for her. Then I had her do 16 mixed addition and subtraction problems with carrying and borrowing from her 100 Math Activities workbook.

I took a little break after math to make some phone calls so Z went to Brainpop Jr and did a topic on Allergies.

For Language Arts:
Grammar – Daily Grammar Day 14 and 15
Grammer Skills One - Making singular nouns plural (adding s, ed, or ies)
Cursive workbook – te, je, ti, pu and the words jet, pure and tile

Japanese:
Singing practice 8 songs (she sang on her karaoke machine) :)
Flash card practice – 28 vocabulary words

Then more science on Brainpop, the topic of Babies (reproduction) plus a test

Then we got into more science. Z loves science and this term I decided to work on the Human Body as that is always one of Z's favorite topics.

So we read 8 pages from the First Human Body Encyclopedia , then I made her a 12 question test with fill in the blank and multiple choice questions.

She practiced piano for awhile and then went to her piano lessons, it is on Mondays now. She had a great lesson. She is practicing a few pieces from Kabalevsky for an upcoming recital.

By the time we got home it was pretty late. Before bed I red her an old-fashioned version of Snow White and Rose Red from one of the rare children's books from my collection. Then Z read to me a few pieces of poetry. Then we cuddled for a bit and both ended up falling asleep (we are still dealing with jet lag)

Saturday at home

Well it has been 24 hours since I woke up in France this morning. After a flight from Nice to the U.K. and a loooooong lay over at Heathrow and a LONGER flight (over ten hours) back to L.A.. we are finally home.

I wanted to check my cell phone messages before getting into bed to make sure everything is still on with our apartment complex and us moving next weekend.

Anyway, over the last two weeks I only got 6 messages. 3 were from Zoe's agents.

One was for a Christina Aguilera video

One was for a Dora the Explorer commercial

and one was for a print job with the clothing company Diesel and they said that Z would have to be comfortable working with a boa constrictor...

LOL

I am going to bed now.

Harry Potter L'Ecole des Sorciers

I didn't know Z could do this

Tonight Tante Juliet was reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone or Harry Potter L'Ecole des Sorciers in French to Z.

Then Z started to reading along, at least that is what I thought at first. But after the first sentence I realized that Z doesn't read French that well.

What she was actually doing was reciting word for word from memory! Her Tante went on and would read one sentence in French and then Z would pick up and say four or five more sentences and by the way she was saying it we knew she was just reciting from memory.

I have to say I am pretty amazed.

Views of Antibes

I wanted to post some pictures I took on the streets of Old Antibes

Wall Art







Cats about town





Doors and Door knockers




For my mom




and Z did get to go back to the beach today :)

Friday in Antibes (our last day in France *sniff sniff*)

Today we took one and a half hour walk down a waterside path known as Smuggler's Path


The whitesh stuff on the ground is all glass!! There was the one whole beach at a cove covered with glass.



interesting rocks


the view across the water


the path


Pere out on the ruins of an old wall


Pere and Z down some stairs with a whirlpool to the right


Looking back on the way we had already walked


The way ahead


more of the path


what is in here?


ah, interesting



then we noticed a storm front coming and we weren't sure if we would make it to the end of the path before it started raining


We made it off the path just when ti started sprinkling. But we hit a downpour on the way to the bus stop! We were totally soaked, even with out umbrellas because the rain was so forceful. But we found some trees to sit under at the bus stop and had fun singing the Smurf's theme song and playing Smurfs. Z was Sewing Smurg, Juliette was Baker Smurf, Pere was Musician Smurf and I was Smurferella the Smurf who owns a used bookstore. ;)

Did you know that the Smurfs was a Belgian show? It is very big in France. Juliette bought a big Smurf/Schtroumpf comic book and has been reading it to Z (it is in French.) So we have been speaking in Smurf, which if you remember means subsituting the word Smurf randoming for nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc.

Thursday in Antibes

Today was a rainy day. So we mostly stayed indoors - just venturing out to eat. Z watched a lot of British cartoons (our cable get some British channels.) We also played a lot of card games, some parcheesi, did some coloring and mad libs. Z is up to chapter 16 in Goblet of Fire.

Pere did Kakuro all day and I worked on a new blogging project that I hope to unveil soon.

For breakfast we had crossiants and coffee. For lunch Pere and I brought home a baguette, some smoked duck slices and some brie. For dinner we went to Chez Juliette. Pere had rabbit stew and I had a fish soup.

Only one more day in France and I think it will be raining. Z is going to be very disappointed if we don't get to go to the beach and go swimming in the Mediterranean.

Wednesday in Antibes

Today was a pretty low-key day. It was a nice change of pace.

This morning Tante Juliette, Pere and I went out for fresh croissants for breakfast, usually just Juliette and I do it. We also went to the Farmer's Market and Pere bought some chicken and vegetables to make for dinner.

After breakfast Grand-pere, Tante Juliette, Pere, Z and I went to the Fort Carre on the other side of the Marina.



It was built on what was once a Greek (then Roman) temple to Hermes (then Mercury( back when Antibes was Antipolos. Z and I pretended to be Greeks bringing an offering to Hermes so that he would deliver a special message for us.



After sight-seeing we had crepes, savory and sweet, for lunch.

Then we went to the local Archeological museum that housed a lot of Roman artifacts. Z loved it and was disappointed it that it was only two rooms. She was hoping it would be bigger "like the Louvre."

Then Pere, Z and I wandered around the town for a bit and took Z back to the park to play for awhile.



In the evening we ate dinner on the rooftop patio. It was so nice!

Tuesday in Antibes (Cannes)

Our place in Antibes is called Le Trois Palmes and this view from the balcony is why

Today we took the train down to Cannes. I got some good pictures there.


typical hotel on the beach front




a typical beach


We gave the guy who taught his dog and cat to sleep together some money

After lunch by the beach we took a ferry to Ile Sainte Marguerite, where the Man with the Iron Mask was kept prisoner.


Ile Sainte Marguerite and the prison - from the ferry

The prison had once been a fort and before that a Roman settlement. In the prison was a museum with Roman artifacts.


samples of pigments used in the Roman art


wall art in the cell of the Man with the Iron Mask


View of the Prison/Port


A chapel on the island


old building at the fort


black and white of old building


cool item on Cannes McDonald menu


Carousel in Cannes that Z went on


a kawaii car


Gary Coleman at the TGV station??

Monday in Antibes

Actually the title of this post is all wrong. These first two pictures of Z in the carousel are from Sunday in Antibes.



Today, Monday, we actually drove from Antibes through Nice to Monaco.