Hallowe'en

There's a lot of dressing-up in our lives at the moment as all the birthdays seem to be themed (we are getting a lot of use out of the knight and pirate costumes). Tristan vetoed being a pumpkin - it wasn't cool enough as he wanted 'real' wings so we bowed to pressure and turned him into a bat.

Trick or treating was loads of fun and we got a reasonable haul too! It was the first time I had ever been and it was quite a learning curve I now know that the people who commented on how good our pumpkin was were completely lying (I had never seen the 'competition' before, next year I will make much more effort!)

France part 2: the beach

Despite the rain we had lots of fun at the beach.

Building sandcastles (this one took a lot of knocking by the sea with brave knight, Tristan, to defend it!

Rockpooling (many crabs and shrimps have been tracked down).

Introducing Samuel the the sand a la francaise (he predictably wanted to eat it).

...and generally walking about being grateful when it stopped raining! Tristan had the annual task of eating oysters (he had two and claimed to like them - I think its peer pressure!) and of course there was some inevitable diy (a shower to repair)

France part 1: Papi and Mami

We went to France in October. Tristan was very excited (especially by the bunkbeds in the cabin on the ferry). The weather was atrocious unfortunately.

We introduced Sam to his extended French family (and reintroduced him to his grandparents) - and French doctors as he had an infected eardrum.

Tristan showed off his pretty good French and had loads of fun doing things like collecting eggs and riding (although he didn't like it when it went too fast).

On one of the few dry days we managed to pretend to be knights and visit the castle - Tris was quite blood-thirsty and highly  taken with the idea of the English invading France and attacking.

Laughing

Samuel loves giggling - but you have to work to get it!