The Games Have Begun

Scaffolding

Hello,

I just wanted to let you know that the games have well and truly begun. Our 'big house' no longer has a roof, or a chimney for that matter, but is wearing a beautiful shower-cap blue plastic cover. Underneath that cover, the workmen are busy installing our new (more expensive than we ever dreamed of) windows. Once the windows are in, the new tiles will go on, and then - voilà - our house will have a roof again.

From inside the spare room, with the start of a new window

And, once the roof is on, we can start thinking about the electricity, the plumbing, the heating, the insulation, the walls, the floors... and all the rest!

Looking upwards, through the 'top floor', to where the roof once was

What fun (seriously, it's a huge adrenaline rush!),
Hoping you're having fun where ever you are in the world!
Robynxxxxx

Knocking Down Walls

Hello, this is just a wee email to say that the workers have started in the house!

Yes!

Today they knocked the stuffing out of the walls in the (three) living rooms.

Yes!

Let's get this party started.

:-)

Robynx

With a Little Bit of Imagination!

Our Heart Cloud

 You know how childishly good it feels to see images in the clouds? Well, Jack and I found a heart in the sky the other day... and I realised that my feelings towards seeing that heart are the same as my feelings towards seeing the house finished!

That is, with a little bit of imagination, I can imagine walking into our battered, empty bathroom and sitting down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. I can imagine standing in the back corner of the garden (where for the moment there are the ruins of outdoor buildings) drinking a nice glass of wine or two as Ben cooks some of his brilliant food the BBQ. I can imagine a day when we aren't driving from the apartment to the house with dirt in our hair, and plans in our heads...

and perhaps it's getting easier to imagine such as future as the workmen are going to begin their work this coming week.

Yes!

hoping the sky above your head contains lots of blue sky but also clouds worthy of a daydream or two ;-)
Robynxxxx

Finished!

Sunday afternoons

Where the shower used to be

Okay, Sunday afternoon found Jack and I back at the house 'finishing off' the shower, peeling off the vinyl floor (look carefully and you'll see the floor surface has changed), taking off more tiling, and starting to extract the bath from its casing.

Yep, that's all we did... and it was enough!

The funny thing? Once again, Jack was a great help not only actively working beside me but also finding me the right tools. I was busy using the crowbar to take off the tiles when he came to me with a small sledgehammer and a solid triangular device that was just right for job. Then I was trying to pull screws out the wall with a random pair of pliars when he came to me with the 'pliars which are specially made for extracting nails!'

Funny things, kids!

And useful, too :-)

hugs to one and all!
Robynxxxx

Starting to break the bath

Jack sealing up the pipes

Jack taking out the screws

A Few Miles Make All the Difference!

Our Gite

I've just spent the week in another world... with Mum and Dad in the gîte pictured above, with the river Bruche (complete with ducks and cute ducklings) flowing by and the cycle path (complete with hoards of men cycling by in their dayglo lyrca leotards) weaving past the window. Our new home was only a few kilometres from Molsheim but, goodness, it felt a million miles away. No internet, no reason to use the phone, nothing to do but relax and be together. Bliss!

Jack and Emma

Life is a Question of Perspective

The Pretty Bit of Our Garden

Life is a funny thing.

When I'm planting flowers and digging out the weeds in our garden, I feel like we're working on a huge strip of earth and that we're creating something so beautiful and important... and we are.

However, when I climb up the stairs of the house and look out the window, I realise that our flower patch is just part of a much bigger and messier picture.

The really funny thing? As long as we can keep planting and looking after those flowers, the rest of the mess just doesn't matter to me.

And that is just like life... for as long as I can be with my family and friends the rest of the crazy universe just isn't that important. That doesn't mean I don't want to be in the universe (Ben and I are going to clear our yard and make it a BIG beautiful garden), it just means that the universe isn't yet the most important thing in our lives. The flowers are.

The Whole Garden

And I've been busy, too!

Before Jack and I got to work

Yes, I got my girly power on!

Demolishing the bathroom, so we can install the kitchen, is my project and I'm having fun!

Seriously, I didn't ever think I could do all this on my own.... with Ben in the apartment sleeping.

Only I could... with the help of Jack.

How did Jack help? When water first started gushing out of the sink pipes, I said I was a bit scared. His reply? Think of Grand Corps Malade, a French rapper who sings about how we should overcome problems in life.Why? I replied a bit surprised that my five year old, out of the blue, was making symbolic and lyrical comparisons during the demolition of a bathroom! Well, he said, Grand Corps Malade always you should keep going when you're scared because it's being scared that stops us from doing what we want!

That was it! Two minutes later the sink was off the wall and I was proud of punch of myself and my wee Jack!

After Jack and I got to work

And who says bathroom doesn't just say sink and bidet (bidet!) and bathroom tiles and 1970's wallpaper, they also say Dr Who-like tardis-like shower cabinet and bath.

Now the shower's gone, there's only the bath (and more of that darn wallpaper and those daft tiles) to go.

Sunday afternoon, here I come!

hugs to one and all,
Robynxxxx

Just some cute photos of Emma!

Ben's been busy!

Emma in front of outdoor toilet and pigsty

As the men are coming to change our roof in the weeks ahead, we had to move forward with the big project of demolishing the outside toilet and pigsty. Thankfully, a good friend of Ben's came of and lent a hand... with the sledgehammer. The outdoor toilet was quite funny, as there was still cobwebby toilet paper hanging from its faded pink holder, a twee picture of a little boy peeing (cough), and a calendar from... 1986! The pigsty was somehow more charming and the stone trough is still in place as we'd like to excavate it carefully enough to be able to use it for flowers later on.

Where the outdoor toilet and pigsty used to be

The wooden toilet door, which you can see in the top picture behind Emma, has a wooden heart carved out. I'm now going to try and save it, paint it white and keep it as a little souvenir. I'm not saying it's a tasteful idea... but, as we're throwing so much out just now, it feels nice to try and keep one or two things along the way.

 I Heart U

Springtime!

Spring is in the air... and life feels good!

The kids can go out biking, as Emma is now on Jack's old 'Draisienne' bike (a bike with no pedals but also no stabilisers) so we can now go for longer, more interesting trips. Emma's loving life at the moment as she's doing everything by herself and nappies are a thing of the (long gone) past. It's cool!

Jack's also doing just grand and his endless drawings of cars have now turned into endless drawings of houses!

The good news is that things should really start moving forward for the house in May... so watch this space for more news...

But, in the meantime, where ever you are, try and sit back, enjoy the sunshine and admire the flowers!

hugs,

Robynxxxx

Spring is in the Air.

Hello again,

We're on holiday, and goodness it feels good.

The days begin with cartoons and are filled with walks and cuddles. What else could a girl ask for?

Flowers!

So, we went to the garden centre and then dug up our 'garden' so that we could plant our flowers and pot our seeds.

In a very cute moment, Emma cut off one of her flowers to plant in the pot over the seeds she'd just planted... she was so proud of herself I couldn't find the words to say that Nature doesn't grow her flowers fast!

Maybe she does, though, because all of a sudden my kids are all big and bright and beautiful!

Just like the first flowers of our wee garden :-)

Hoping mother Nature is making your garden bright and beautiful,
Robynxxxx

Time Travelling

When you're standing in one of the three rooms which are going to combine to be our living room, you are most definitely in the 1970's. The wall paper is faded orange but the flowers are defiantly not fading despite the passing of time.

When you climb upstairs to the third and fourth floors, you go back in time. Way back. The house was built in 1759 and nobody's ever really done anything to those floors. Ben's changing that, though, as he's spent the last couple of weekends tearing up the floor, and the stuff that goes beneath.

That means that when you stand on the third floor you can see through the fourth floor to the roof. That's kinda an odd feeling... particularly when you know that we're changing the roof, too!

The funny thing is that it's a great experience to be in the midst of all this dirt and dust because you really have the impression that you're changing something important.

Thankfully, when we come home we can cook using vegetables from the veggie box that our (excellent) neighbours deliver each Friday. Indeed, that's maybe where we find the energy to keep up with quite so much time traveling!

Hope you're all doing well despite the dirt and dust of life!
hugs,
Robynxxxx
.

Winter Days

The weather is already growing warmer again, but for a couple of weeks the weather was real
ly cold here. We stayed around -10*C long enough for the local river to freeze over... and for us to wrap up warm whenever we went out! In the photo above, we're walking past the local church on our way around Mutzig.

Seeing the Light!

Here we are in the attic.... which will become our bedroom. Ben's just finished knocking down the chimney which traversed the house, which means you can now see down, down, down to the first floor. See that little corner of light? That's our living room.... seen through the intermediary level where the kids will sleep... one day!

Important Lessons

Okay, as we tackled another day of taking down wallpaper, I learned a few important lessons.

1. Taking down wallpaper can be fun. When you're standing on the ground.

2. Watching someone else who is taking down wallpaper while standing on a stepladder is much easier than being the person who is taking down wallpaper while standing on a stepladder!

3. That, even me, a girl (!) can take responsibility for taking down the wallpaper in a whole room*. My room was the bathroom (soon to be the kitchen) and I am ever so proud tonight to know that I did it all by myself, stepladder and all!

And so, while our pile of 'taken down wallpaper' grows ever higher, we are inching our way towards the end of the first 'thing to be done' on our list.... and that feels good!

Hoping you're feeling good, too,

Robynxxxx

*Though, okay, I didn't need to do the ceiling...as we're going to add insulation.

Let the games begin!

Hello there!

Okay, so the kids are fine!

Emma's convinced she's a 'georgeous princess' and Jack is as happy as ever on his bike, and all the more so because he can now pedal freely around the garage underneath our "new" house.

We've now started work on our "new house." We haven't done much so far. We've only pulled the wallpaper off the walls in the stairway and a bit in the living room. Goodness, though, it feels good to have started!

Emma and Jack are helping as best they can... soaking the old wallpaper with water so that Ben and I can tear and scrape as best as we can. Reassuringly, this first task is moving relatively quickly... and that's a good thing because we have a lot more left to go before we're done.

The electrician should hopefully be starting up soon and then from there the plumbers and builders should follow suit. If everything goes to plan, that is....

Hoping your plans are going, well, to plan where ever you are in the world,

Robynxxxx

Happy New Year 2012

Hello there!

I just wanted to take a minute to wish you all a very happy New Year!

I hope 2012 will be a peaceful and meaningful year for you and that you'll be able to fill the hours, days, and months with both projects and quiet moments of rest.

For our part, our BIG project is the house... as we returned from our holiday with Ben's parents, we swung past the house to collect the mail and to say hello to its quiet walls. As we drove away, to come back to our rented home, we couldn't help imagining how good it will be one day to come home to our true home.... for that dream to become a reality, though, we have to wait... and realise the hours, days and months of 2012 will also be spent being together as a family, working madly, and resting peacefully. At least, that's what I hope for us!

And so, however you spend 2012, I hope you spend it well!

hugs,

Robynxxxx