1 little, 2 little, 3 little indians

This weekend is the children's weekend at the chateau with 42 kids coming from the Grace Brethern churches. The weekend is organised by children's workers from the different churches. This years theme is Indians and their lessons are on truth.

They did a reenactment of the Sand Creek Massacre, as an introduction to the weekend introducing the subject of truth.

Jay played the part of  a member of the calvary who came in and attacked the indians, after they had lied to them. It is rather a sad story for us americans but it works very well with their themes of indians and the truth.

The kids look like they are having a lot of fun as they each recieved an indian tunic made by people from the Macon church.

What a wonderful world

We took a few days to get away and gocamping  down south  to the pyrenees . While there we visited many beautiful places.

The still running abbeye of St Martin high up in the pyrenees.

The Château de Peyrepertuse the beautiful remains of a long history of wars.

Carcassone by night

Visiting the chapel of Saint Michael.

Carcassone

For the beauty of the earth

For the beauty of the earth
For the glory of the skies;
For the love which from our birth,
Over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.

For the wonder of each hour
,Of the day and of the night;
Hill and vale and tree and flow'r,
Sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.

Spring in the garden

We are doing some landscaping work around the chateau, repairing boarders, enlarging gardens, planting lots of perenial and ground cover. It's been lots of work but it's looking great!

Nadia, Jay and Debbie's cat has been doing her part as the acting garden statue.

Maribeth and Debbie doing some planing.

Spring is coming

The cherry trees are beginning to bloom and spring is coming, about time too!

At the beginning of the month Becky Johnson came for a visit and we had a lot of fun between the business of all the comings and goings going on these days.

Yesterday our team celebrated Saint Patricks day with a little team party and and irish/green dinner.

I strained my back a few weeks  ago and so I have been taking it easy,  as such I have been delegated to catching up on the last weeks laundry, which has been rather enjoyable thanks with all the sunny spring weather... well that's where I've been I didn't fall of the face of the earth yet.

Licence to bake and drive

This past weekend was another artistic day at the chateau, in the afternoon I lead a chocolate chip cookie making workshop with 8 participates it went well and everyone was very happy to take home a plate of cookies to enjoy.

My favorite thing is watching the kids paint they have so much intensity and imagination.

I was ecxited as well as I recieved in the mail today, my french drivers licence. Hurray I can now drive legally.

Too many cooks, and we didn't spoil the soup!

Saterday was the cooking workshop lead by Michele from our church. I helped him with the cooking part and others did the decorating and coordinating. Here is Michele as he was instucting the days youngest participants in how to scale, skin, and slice the salmon.

Here is the vegetable peelers getting started on all the peeling there was to do.
Here is Deborah, one of the girls skinning the fish.
Here are the ladies preparing the salmon verrines.
Here are the girls and I as we spent 2 hours mincing 10 pounds of shallots.
Here is Michele as he was teaching how to make crepe thin omlettes.
And then there was dinner...
Here is the verrines all finished.
And this is where I spent dinner time with Michele preparing the each of the 10 courses. It ended up being a wonderful time of conecting unsaved people with people from the church. Our total attendance was 27 for the dinner and we are hoping to be able to do something like this again so as to continue to have opportunites to bring the new people into the chateau.