It was a quiet week-end for us, mainly because Toby had to fly back to Canada rather suddenly to sort out some stuff (significant tapping of forefinger to nose, I'll explain in full when he's back, just in case any customs and immigration folk are browsing this blog...) but Toby managed to see the girls play tennis before I took him to Geneva airport.
It's becoming clear that Indie really doesn't enjoy team sports - something about hating being told what to do, I think, remind you of anyone? - so in the lesson she was completely listless when it came to hitting the ball, but she came to life when they had to run around the court collecting the balls. So here's another one of those parenting conundrums: do you force your recalcitrant child to do lots of team sports because it will be 'good for her', or do you play more to her strengths and let her do the more individualistic sports, which she clearly enjoys more? Probably, as with most of these things, a bit of both is the solution.
I had a bit of a panic driving Toby to the airport because I suddenly realized, while I'd reminded Toby when we got in the car to make sure he had his passport, I'd forgotten my own passport, and there was a little matter of a BORDER to cross. I'm clearly still not in the European mindset for passports - in Canada you basically blow the dust off your passport only when you are flying yourself, or going to the States for some cross-border shopping. But thankfully we weren't stopped - in fact, Toby says he's never been stopped at the French/Swiss border, but I wasn't assuming there couldn't be a first time...
Yesterday afternoon, while Indie was at a birthday party (social progress!), I took Anna and Zoe to a little theatrical circus presentation in town. It rather suited us because there was very little speaking, it was mainly mimed, so even Zoe could follow along easily, and some of the circus skills - gymnastics, diablo, juggling, balancing a table on a chin! - were very impressive. And, as the average age of the audience was 3, it didn't really matter if any of the tricks went awry, in fact, it was when something was dropped that the performers got the biggest laughs.
I thought I would include a few pictures of the family that were actually taken almost a month ago now, when friends of Pete and Lesley's were visiting from Hong Kong, and we bribed lovely photographer husband Will to take some family portraits of us in front of the mountains in exchange for a parapont ride down the valley. We took a cable car up the mountain for an early session, and had a lot of fun running around the mountainside as Will snapped away. I think the silhouette shot is particularly fun - expect to see it on our Christmas card this year... Bizarrely, the mountains look so crisp in the distance it almost looks like a fake backdrop. But I promise you, it's the real thing. Anyway, really nice to already have some family photographs of our year living by Mont Blanc.
we enjoyed Toby's visit this Tuesday night, and are driving to the airport together
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