The most beautiful week, day 1, Saturday

Last week was magical. My whole family, three sons, one daughter in law and three grandchildren came to visit us here in France. It was the very first time in the twelve years we have had our cottage that the whole family was together. They arrived on a very dark grey Saturday morning, very tired from a looooong car journey overnight, but with big smiles on their faces. As you can imagine, I took about a million photos during the week, and as I want to remember every single moment, I'll be filling a few blog posts with them :-). You are welcome to share the week with us, but of course you can also skip this week completely, lol, I won't mind if you don't read the posts ;-).

So, here goes. I had been following their progress right from the start, from all of them meeting up, driving to Folkestone to the Tunnel terminal, to arriving at Calais and their long journey across France. Of course I didn't sleep a wink Friday night to Saturday morning, tracking them on Find Friends on the iphone and seeing their progress kept me from worrying too much. And then there was that magic moment when I could hear their cars coming up the hill, turning into our little lane, and there they were.... and I was so excited, I didn't take a pic of them arriving! First pic was this one when my three sons came through the gate -

And almost the first thing out of the cars was this frisby-ish thingy ( which caused much hilarity over the week by landing in adjacent fields, amongst cows ) -

 This is youngest son Nick, btw

And this is oldest son Chris -

 Middle son Stefan, father of my three granddaughters -

My poor darlings were so tired -

but still there were many many smiles -

A cup of tea always works wonders. This is my beautiful daughter in law Ashley, who looks gorgeous even after a sleepless night in the car -

and my oldest granddaughter Paige -

I had found a sweet princess dress for Grace, which she promptly put on -

Where do they get their energy from? Paige and Emily, the youngest one -

And while we were tucking into delicious French breakfast pastries -

our little darling decided to get ready for summer :-) -

But the weather gods had other ideas, it started chucking it down when the boys were unloading Nick's truck -

A little snooze is always a good idea -

because you wake up an hour or two later full of energy again ( at least for a little while, lol ) and the rain had stopped, yay -

Ah, my saintly No. 1 son, lol, the photo caught him throwing the frisby ring, and made it look like a halo! -

At 4pm we took them to the gite we had rented for Stefan and his family, and cooked them dinner there. They loved the place, so after dinner we left Stef and family there and returned to our cottage with Chris and Nick. What a wonderful first day. My eyes are tearing up again...........

Day 2 will follow tomorrow!

Toodlepip xxx