A new school year

Man, it is almost the end of December. I have uploaded so many pictures on the blog but I haven’t had time to post them yet. I can’t wait another year so here they come:

This was the first day of class. Josh is in 1st grade this year. First year of elementary school in our school system. Here he is with his "potes" Sev’, Aless’ and Ulyss’:

Standing in line before getting into class, with his teacher Sonia:

 

I forgot to take a picture of William’s first day (poor kid!). I was running back and forth between the preschool building and elementary school building to get both boys into their respective classes and talk to each teacher and in the midst of it I forgot about William’s traditional shot. Oh well, I doubt he’ll ever ask to see it anyway...

This is him a couple of days after school started. He is happy as a clam in this class. He is with Josh’s previous teacher Michelle and in the same classroom Josh was. Plus his age group was too small for a class so they were divided in the small class (Maternelle petit) and the big class (maternelle grand) and he ended up in the big class, he is proud as a peacock!

The first week end after school started we went to Lyon with some school friends. I wanted to show the boys the "parc de la tête d’or", a big park with animals. They had fun riding their bike or scooter and playing with their friends.

This cotton candy ball was almost as big as William!

The boys were invited to a friend’s birthday party at a kid’s entertainment place. They had a blast. It’s a sort of Chuck’ E Cheese but the theme is pirates. It was a fun afternoon for all (I got to hang out with some of the parents who stayed).

When we got home that day, we found tata Coco and Nicki paddling in the pool! As if their visit wasn’t enough fun, haha. They were driving back from a trip to Slovenia, Croatia and Venise where Nicki had purchased this canoe to navigate in Venise. No one knows if it’s legal... haha, but no one stopped them either. I’d like to see the pictures of the tourists on their gondolas, passing by Coco and Nicki...
 I think the limit for this canoe is two people, however Nicki’s limit is "when it sinks you swim". No age limit either.

Another week-end after school started the boys went to the botanical garden and parc mistral in Grenoble with their school friends (Aless’ and Mass’).

And William had a playdate with one his school buddies.

So far the boys have enjoyed the school year just as much as the school break. They are doing great in school. Josh is learning to read and write. William is learning to trace letters and coloring like a pro. They enjoy school a lot and have been eating at the school cantine every day which gives me a full 7.5 hour day of work four times a week (3.5 hours on wednesday).

"one must be polite"

The school cantine:

One saturday morning the boys asked for my face painting supply. I gladly obliged. It was priceless watching them paint each others faces!

I think they did really well.

We started a reward calendar in September. I needed William to loose his thumb sucking habit. The promised reward was a new DS game. He was highly motivated. It lasted almost 2 months. By the time we finished the calendar he was capable of going one day without sucking his thumb (in order to get a check mark for the day he needed not be reminded to take off his thumb more than three times during the day, but by the end, he could go a day without being reminded once). I was really happy and I thought we were done with the thumb thucking phase.

He chose a Mario sticker game.

Sadly once the calendar was over and the reward earned he slowly went back to his soothing addiction. I am still fighting him daily and regularly taking away his DS priviledges. I won one fight but the battle is not won yet... I need new ideas.

Just before Halloween our village celebrated its yearly Apple Festival. This year, my parents had the bright idea to abandon me during apple season (Next time one of my nephews or nieces gets married in the US I’ll have to ask them to work around apple season!). I was left with this over abundance of apples to deal with.

Dozens of baskets and boxes stacked up in the garage. I was running out of containers but a Giraud-Carrier does NOT throw away an apple (At least not publicly).

I made lots of apple sauce and on the day of the festival some villagers pulled out an old apple press to make cider. It looked like it could be 100 years old but it was fun to watch them operate it and yummy to taste. We brought some of our apples and went home with a few bottles of cider.

 

Josh and William in front of the extra vintage apple press. Josh had found a stack of pokemon cards at the yearly garage sale that happens during the festival. It was Christmas before the hour.