Tour de France in Burgundy, and other adventures

So we have finally finished the trench and started covering it back up less then an hour after it was done but at least it was all cleaned up for the Lyon Church Weekend.

We are glad that it is finally done and we can move on to other things, though we will miss having a hole to go play in.This being owen's last week at the chateau we decided to get out and do some things on our day's off. Here we are having a mid afternoon picnic at the famous stone table at Brancion.

Yesterday we went on a 28 km bake ride from the town of Cluny to the town of Cormatin to visit the castle there. It was a long 14 kms on the way back!

On arriving at Cormatin we had a snack to revive us here owen is doing a study on the differences between generic and name brand cookies.

Here is Owen, Maribeth and I fooling around on the stage at Cormatin

We were really excited that they had pumkins growing at the castle, I think that the bike ride may have killed some brain cells.

Heigh ho, heigh ho

Our current project is digging a trench between the chateau building and new building to put in a fire alarm system that is required. So we dig, dig, dig dig, dig, dig, dig, dig in the ground the whole day through.
Maribeth is rather dangerous with the pick axe, but we are all still working on our technique.

Here I am, a little tired of being in a trench but as least it is it's whole meter deep there.

The cats away... again

Aparently Jay and Debbie still trust the chateau to me, since they were gone I along with Maribeth and Owen , our teams newest edition ,went on bike to the town of Pont-de-Vaux a mere 14 kms to the weekly market.

One of our purchases was this little snack a Brioche with candied almonds in it, to regain our strenght for the trip back, of course.

Outing to Annecy

On our day off today we went to annecy a city in the alps with a family from our village. It was a beautiful day on the lake.

Here is our group in fron ot the old prison.

Pretty, pretty, pretty!

Wallpapering 101

The skill of this week we learned was wallpaper aplication. After years of wallpaper removal it was interesting to learn how it goes up. We were putting up wallpaper at missionary friends, Dave and Susan Griffiths new house. This is Susan and I.

Here is Maribeth Taylor our newest intern, here for 6 months doing one of the messy jobs of wallpaper pasting.

August entertaining

We just finished up cooking for a group of 70 some cambodians who were here for a week, it was a long week but it was fun to introduce them to some french foods they had never tried before, one thing being creme brulee, they were all quite facinated by the whole thing.

All work and no play

Here is Austin, an intern and I working on tearing down the courtyard wall so we will be able to expand it.

Anne-Christine and I the offiacl dryers of dishes at the cottage.

I really like my new knives donated to the chateau by some English friends, finally i will be able to slice a tomato and stop sawing them.

Here is Anne-Christine and I being very happy after hours of putting up stucco in on the the chateau's dorm rooms.