How to eat your way through France

It is fair to say that we did not see a vegetable or fruit for two weeks and life was good.

What's the best meal you've ever had?

52 Weeks of Grateful: Places

We've settled in back home, kidded ourselves that we're over the jet lag (jet lag just implies that Australia is so far away from everything... ... ...). We've loved the children to bits and pieces and are well and truly over them already (how long is a day in the school holidays?). Ah, life is back to normal.

And yet...

This week I'm grateful for...


287. Places - that touch you, that embrace you, that change you.

288. Eyes - stuffed full of so much looking that they will hurt forever.

289. Wonder - it lives in us, always.

What's the latest wonder-ful thing that you've seen?

Sorry for the mess with the linky while I was away. And there I was thinking how clever I was to be working from the road! Let's also just say that wi-fi is not as available in rural France as I thought it was...

Over at Village Voices this week I'm grateful for diversity. Of course I am! Why don'tcha come on over, Valerie? Da da da da...

PS - Don't forget to Instagram your #52weeksofgrateful snap this week. I'll take mine tomorrow!

Road tripped

 We flew into Paris...


... took a road trip through...

... France and into Italy...

... down to Lake Como.

Then we went to...

...Venice, before taking a train ride into...

... Rome.

Then we flew home again to the best view in the world...

Happy to be there.

Happy to be back.

Do you want more details of our trip, or would that just bore you senseless? 

Is blogging about your adventures the 2012 equivalent of a slide show?

PS - To help you make that decision, just know that I have 1,372 photos from our trip...

Quick hello

Hello!

Ha! I was almost going to back away slowly at my 'quick hello' and end the post, but I suspect you would not be impressed?

It was also very tempting to name this post 'quick bonjour', but it turns out that despite now being a firm Francophile, I am not quite pretentious enough. I will work on that -  Je vais le faire immédiatement.

(OMG, I'm a natural.)

There is lots and lots and lots of good stuff to tell you about our trip, but I will wait until we are home and I can typewithmorethanonefinger. Tap, tap, tap. Just know that we are up to our ears in the good life right now, breathing through a snorkel and loving each other.

To bring us all back to earth, here is a post I wrote for Live4 that's just been published while I'm away:

Reading Aloud is a joy at any age.

I enjoyed writing this piece immensely. To be honest, whenever I write for another site, I just write it as if it was for my blog. It's much less scary that way. Commenting over there is not friendly, so it would be so fab if you could pop back here and tell me your favourite book to read aloud with the kids. We are always after new ones!

Miss my blog and miss you! I know it's a bit odd, but I really, really do. I think waxing lyrical about how much my 'readers' mean to me would be even more pretentious than breaking out in French that I don't understand. But it's tempting.

What's the hands-down fave children's book at your place?

Road tripping

We fly into Paris...

... through France, Switzerland and Italy down to...

... Venice. Then we take a train ride through...

... the Italian countryside down to...

...Rome.

Then we fly home again to the very best view in the world...

See you all in a couple of weeks.

♥

{Click on the images for the source}