Year 3 - June

29th June 2007 - Holiday in France

The private river came in handy for washing the car seat cover.

The trip to France was our first holiday in 7 years and our first holiday with Evan. No more relaxing in the sun holidays for us! Evan was so excited about the aeroplane, though Caroline did wonder how he'd react when he saw that they were bigger (much bigger) than the toy ones that he is used to playing with. We arrived at the airport with a fair amount of time to spare and were informed the flight was delayed. Evan had a real issue with the baggage as he didn't like his toys disappearing down the conveyor belt to the plane. We had lots of tears and I had a real difficulty calming him down.

We'd had a big breakfast at the Hotel but were starting to feel hungry, so we found a restaurant to eat at. We ordered and waited only to discover that our plane was now boarding. We weren't able to cancel the food as it arrived shortly after - we rushed down a few mouthfuls whilst we waited for the bill and then ran as fast as we could to the gate. What a waste of money - our poor pizza was sitting at the table hardly touched and I wasn't anticipating a great meal on the plane.

Jacques prepares a natural fire for the BBQ. The sausages were yummy!

We had to catch a bus to the aeroplane to board as they didn't have a proper gate for us to board from so Evan was able to see the plane up close and personal. We had terrible weather leaving Gatwick, the plane actually took off in a thunder storm which caused really scary turbulence through the black clouds where we even witnessed lightening that looked extremely close. Caroline and I suffered with ear problems for most of the flight but Evan seemed ok and only cried when the plane descended into Marseille Airport.

The holiday in France was lovely, we had great weather and we were looked after really well by Caroline's cousins. I was a bit nervous about all the driving and after discovering where they lived, down a steep gravel track the size of a car where half way down you have to cross the river they own - how cool is that! I'd like to own half of a river! Crossing the river was the most nerve wracking piece of driving I had to do all week and I had to do it twice every day! The bridge was so narrow, I nearly crashed straight into it once.

Those little legs get tired easy, luckily mummy saves the day.

We took to the French way of living really easily and we made sure that we found something interesting to do every day ranging from walking, shopping and one day we rented a boat on the lake. It really was a fun week and we found it really easy to relax - when Evan wasn't running off that was. It was very quiet and so dark at night time that you couldn't see without a torch that even Caroline managed to get a good nights sleep and that was with Evan sleeping in the room with us.

I managed to break the water twice whilst we were there, all I did was turn the tap and nothing happened, fortunately they had a back up supply from the river. Caroline became a star fly-swatter in her spare time. We both tried to improve our French and hopefully it will carry on now that we are back at home. I was really sad when it was time to go home, shedding a few tears in the process. I guess I just had this sinking feeling it would be raining at home and this would probably be our last holiday for a while now that we're poor.

Evan is not sure what to think of the life jacket.

On our final day we set off at a reasonable time (2pm) aiming to be in Marseille for 4pm, leaving us 90 minutes to get checked in. The journey to Pascale and Jacque's house wasn't so bad because we were given a car with GPS, the only really issue was when Evan was sick 5 miles from their house. We'd managed to clean the car up, but I was nervous that if the same happened on the return journey we'd be in trouble because we wouldn't have time to clean the car. Caroline had figured how to get the GPS to speak in English, so at least that was somewhat easier to navigate with. The journey went rather smoothly until I approached Marignane. We weren't able to plug in the airport to the GPS so it was directing us to the town. We were only a few miles away when the familiar screams from the back convinced me to pull over very quickly. Evan was very sick, but this time we managed to get him out of the car first.

Pascale helped with the carrying when Evan got tired.

This was only the start of our problems. We got lost in the Town and Evan attempted to be sick again and we finally had to ask for directions to get to the airport. We arrived at the airport with less than an hour until take off. We then got lost in the airport and by the time we found the check in desk, she informed us it had closed. We wandered around and finally found the BA help desk who made the lady check us in despite her insisting that it was closed. It then took us 30 minutes to get through security. Our flight had the final calls for boarding being displayed on the TV screens so we ran as fast as we could to the gate. I carried Evan in my arms - he thought this was an exhilarating adventure. When we got to the gate there was no plane. I was shattered and stressed. I sat on the floor in pieces thinking about our luggage that was on the plane and the fact that we were sitting here. Caroline wandered about and I was trying to make a phone call when she came rushing back saying that we were at the wrong gate. I threw everything into the bag, this time lacking the energy to pick Evan up - all three of us ran to the correct gate, that just happened to be the furthest away from the one we were currently at. All I remember is shouting "Run Evan, Run as fast as you can", he just kept giggling because it was so much excitement for him. We did make it to the plane, luckily it had been delayed as we arrived 15 minutes after it was due to take off.

The return flight was much better than the initial flight with neither one of us experiencing ear problems.

 Pascale, Merci beaucoup, nous avons aimé les vacances et espérons un certain jour où nous visiterons encore. Appréciez le soleil. 

10th June 2007 - Marwell Zoo

Beautiful Endangered Snow Leopard...

We finally made the trip to a Zoo as this is one place I wanted to go to last year but we never quite made it. Evan absolutely loved it, although I was disappointed that he didn't get to see his favourite animal "the Elephant" because Marwell Zoo doesn't have them. Next time, we'll take him to Colchester Zoo as I believe they have Elephants there. We didn't arrive until after lunch time, but we still managed to squeeze the whole Zoo in. The weather was fantastic, possibly a little too hot as the poor animals spent a lot of the time under trees resting. The Giraffes were fantastic but they'd just been fed so they weren't so close to the viewing platform. Caroline's favourite was the Tiger, it came right over to us and growled, still such a beautiful cat though. I fell for the Snow Leopards, they very great. The saddest part of the day was reading about all the animals facing extinction, some are actually now extinct in the wild. Can you imagine a world with only humans - at this rate this is exactly what it will be like unless we start taking care of the environment that we live in.