Au Revoir Puivert

THURSDAY MORNING WE will leave Puivert and return to our home near Antibes. It has been an incredible summer in so many ways. Some of you know that the house that we rent in Le Rouret is one that we have to vacate during the months on July and August. It many ways, that is a bit of a drag (moving around, packing things up, etc.), but we now realize that it's also kind of a cool thing because it means we can spend two months of the year in another part of France at no 'extra cost'. In other words, we don't have to pay extra for our 'vacation' because during the months we are away we're not paying any rent on another home.

July and August have been wonderful, especially for the kids. Not only did they get to spend several weeks with Kerri's parents (thanks PP and GG), but they also got to be a little more independent during these months. Because Puivert is a small little village, Kerri and I let them do quite a bit more things on their own -- things like riding their bikes around the village, exploring the small country roads, walking to the bakery, running into the village to get ice cream, or running to the store for some milk. Little things, to be sure, but quite a bit more than they have been able to do 'on their own' before.

Since today was our last day, we decided to spend a couple of hours at the local lake. A lot of the crowd has left already, but there were still quite a few people around -- we arrived early enough to stake out a plot of sand to build sand castles. At first our goal was to try to replicate the Chateau Puivert you can see in the background of this photo -- but we didn't have the right shaped tools so Patrick came up with his own design.

Oh, and the photo at the top was taken at a small water park/picine in Axat. Don't let this photo of Julia fool you, she didn't spend much time relaxing -- she went down the water slide about 100 times in one hour!