Farm shows and birthday parties

We are visiting friends in France at the moment and the kids are having a brilliant time. We have been to visit a local farm animals show. 

The local (Charente) horses are absolutely enormous, we learned that they are used for pulling ploughs. 

Caden took lots of nice photos of the cows. These ones were competing for prizes.

The boys play on a hay bale.

Love this photo!

They slid about on the railing for a bit too, we tried some of the local meats from the butchers and had a look at the stalls and the tractors. 

Another day we went to a birthday party to a girl whose birthday falls on exactly the same day as Caden's. The weather was perfect and there was a big play area with sand and a pulley that Miles and Marc had a lot of fun playing with. 

Birthday food scoffage!

Caden's social skills have come along very well over the last couple of years. He makes friends almost as easily as Miles now. Here he is playing with one of the friends he made at the party. 

Miles and Caden playing in the sand. 

Caden gets a shoulder ride. We also went looking for the noisy frogs this day too by a small pond, the frogs make such a racket. They all leap into the pond when you get close, there are hundreds of them. It is so cool! We also found loads of tadpoles and saw some with little legs sprouting already. Spring is here earlier than England and the warm weather is a big incentive to get out of doors.  

Marc and Miles go fishing!

Caden takes a chocolate face selfie!

The kids have a bit of quiet ipad/movie time.

On Caden's birthday he chose a sponge cake which one of the dogs broke into the kitchen and ate (oops! It was funny though) so I took him back to get another which he was happier with anyway. We got magic candles which they all tried really hard to blow out but they kept relighting. Marc closed the shutters and we all sang happy birthday! Then the kids all gave Caden a present each from them. It was lovely!

Caden was very generous with giving up his presents to the others so Marc and Miles and I made the lego Ninjago set together and Caden took his favourite present (a tray of battered squid rings) and played some new games he had been bought for his birthday on his iPad while eating them. He is fairly obsessed with the various animal simulator games at the moment and I got him about ten different ones at 79p each on his birthday.

The boys continue to learn French, Miles in particular is doing well with picking the language up but both boys are getting the hang of it. They have been doing a lot of playing outdoors, jumping on the trampoline and just playing with stones, sticks, dirt and making food out of leaves, picking flowers for my hair and playing with the dogs. Wholesome happy kid stuff! 

 Educationally, we have recently had some interesting conversations about passports and the EU. We have talked about borders and countries and identity. They have enjoyed flying on the short flight over here and we have talked about clouds and how they form. Caden thinks that they look like he could just jump on them and bounce. We have been reading books in French and listening to French songs so they get used to hearing the language, hopefully this will be good grounding for their French lessons in the future. Caden loves to classify animals and we have looked at bugs together, counted the legs, talked about arachnids and insects. We have lots of good conversations about whatever he is interested in and he is confident with asking, which is great!  They are getting very used to animals and Caden continues to learn loads about Dinosaurs and sea animals. He is really into his dragons at the moment too. We have been listening to the audio books of how to train your dragon, both the boys really love the story.