A year in Bordeaux: Summer

We have had a good first week of the summer holidays. We spent time downtown, splashed in the water mirror, went to the market, the swimming pool, the park, the skate park, and the playground, and spent time playing at home. On Tuesday and Thursday, Fiacra and Ailbhe went to the Centre de Loisirs for the day and enjoyed it. Connell and I both went for bike rides and we had our last French lesson until September.

Last weekend we bought a second bike for Connell and I, and a bike seat for Finian. We love all being able to bike together.

Finian's first ride in his bike seat

Ready to bike to the pool

We are trying to do a little bit of schoolwork with the kids over the summer. Fiacra needs to practise his English and French reading and also writing in English which he hasn't done since we left Canada. But what do we end up doing? Always math, the very thing both Fiacra and Ailbhe excel at. Today for some reason, we started talking about measuring quantities, which led to talking about weight, which led to Fiacra taking many boxes and packages (including a container of pringles) out of the cupboard, lining them up and calculating the total weight. Ailbhe discovered the pringles and to Fiacra's increasing irritation, started to eat them.

"Fi, can I just have one more"

"No Ailbhe, you've had quite enough already. Mum, we'll need to fill this up with water to get it back to the right weight."

At this point, Finian woke up from his nap. When I came back downstairs with him, Fiacra had given in to Ailbhe, and had given her the rest of the pringles. He had filled the container with water but had added an additional 1.5 times the original weight to account for the pringles/water switch. The container was overflowing slightly, so he put a dishcloth underneath to which he assigned 10g. The total weight was 5571 grams. Everything was then left on the table so that Connell could guess the weight when he got home, a fairly pathetic guess of 3000 grams. Connell continued guessing, and each time Fiacra would tell him if his guess was too high or too low. Connell said he was using a binary search for his guesses which he'll explain to Fiacra another time. No end to the fun in this house!!