The summer that was

Soaking up chilled time with our girls on our summer holiday to Avignon

The school summer holidays passed by in, what feels like, the blink of an eye. I switched off from the online world completely for the two weeks of our family holiday to France, and after my digital detox I only dipped in and out of the internet for the rest of the summer holidays. Now with L back at school (Year 3 *sobs*) I thought I’d share the exciting offline things we got up to over the last 6 weeks. Warning – this blog post is photo and video heavy!

We started the holidays by heading to my mother-in-law’s in the Avignon area of France. She has a lovely house with an even lovelier pool, cue LAZY days en famille chilling by the pool, playing with L and C, and reading. Heaven 🙂

I wasn’t the only one who chilled out though as Hubs really enjoyed the downtime too.

We stayed in Avignon for 2 weeks, and the middle week saw my mother-in-law and her partner taking L and her partner’s 8 year old grandson on a Greek/Turkish cruise for a week. Which meant we had a very quiet week, just Hubs, 20 month old C and me. In fact when C was sleeping it felt like Hubs and I were all alone with the cicadas:

Whilst the other grown-ups and big sis were away Hubs had great fun swimming with C. She’s been going to swimming lessons since she was 4 months old and has now moved on to Water Nippers, where they teach them how to actually swim, but the progress she made on holiday with Hubs was astounding, as you can see in this video:

Hubs grew up in the Avignon area, and I have been going there with him for over 12 years now, which meant we didn’t feel the need to do the tourist thing. It also meant we had various friends we were able to catch up with, old school and university friends of Hubs’s (not featured in the photos below), family friends and newer online friends. In the photo below you can see C with a family friend of ours, me with Ameena from Mummy in Provence who I met online a couple of years ago, and L with one of her French friends that she’s known from birth (and the only child she ever bit as a toddler!).

We had lots of loooooonnnnnnggg lazy meals, eating and drinking the glorious food and drink that France and Provence has to offer, but there’ll be more on that side of things on our Franglaise Cooking food blog. Meal-times were often times for chatting and silliness with C, as you can see here:

Whilst we were chilling in Avignon L was on her first cruise, having an absolute ball. She was so lucky that her Mamie (French word for Grandma) and her partner took her on this amazing adventure, here are some photos of what they got up to on their week away:

We had a great week too while L was away but it was lovely to all be back together again afterwards:

Our final day of the holiday saw us heading south, towards Marseille, to catch up with Hubs’s aunt, uncle, cousins and cousins’ children. It was a wonderful day with 7 children (aged 14 to 20 months), L hadn’t seen most of them for over 2 years but they all got on brilliantly and that day, along with the rest of the holiday, helped L realise the importance of practising her second language – French.

And so the holiday had to come to an end, and so Franglaise Family left France and headed back home to London……and on to some UK fun!

It wasn’t all about the kids though – there was some grown-up time and some nights out too 🙂

And finally summer was nearly at an end, so my sister and I took my nephew, L and C on a treasure trail around East London, going from the O2 to the Excel Centre on the new Emirates cable car:

And that was the summer that was. It was wonderful, incredible, lots of fun and more. Now back to school, back to work and onwards and upwards 🙂