Remember last summer after we returned from France, I mentioned our plans for renovation? Well it’s not finished yet. In fact it hasn’t even begun. The demolishing and messy work will begin when we leave for vacation. Up until now, we’ve spent most of our time throwing our hands up in the air over the cost of everything.
But that has all passed and now we are in prep mode. Right now we are shopping with our architect/interior designer for kitchen cabinetry, appliances, plumbing fixtures, etc. If we put our order in now, we’ll have them delivered just as the builders have completed building the new walls. We go for vacation for ten weeks and during that time the keys to our home will be in the hands of our builder. Hello? Someone we hardly know will have the keys to our home and, on top of that, will be putting a hammer to it! And we won’t be here to see how! Risky business that is.
I wrote this post Friday, August 18th 2006. I am recycling it as my entry for the Mother’s Day Giveaway photo competition.

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Some good news. Françoise came home today with news that she had tied first place nationwide in the French exam. She was placed in the French speaking division. Well done Françoise!
Just to clarify there are six different levels to the National French Exam and within each level there are five divisions (A to E) depending on the student’s experience with French. We are unsure still which level she took but her division is B. The B division is for a student who has one parent that is French and has had at least two years outside experience with the language.
We were invited by friends to go out on their boat last Saturday. And we had perfect weather for it too. At first I didn’t think the waterways around Austin were great, at least not until Saturday (maybe I keep comparing everything to Sydney). We were quite impressed. We got to see one of Austin’s most expensive homes too currently on the market for $13M. But $13M or no, we really had a fun time. Here’s Pascale with Julie, and Christian tubing.

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