Day: June 17, 2018

The Deep Forest

Hannah is older now, so we finally let her live out her dream of going exploring in the deep woods.

And she makes the most of it. With the circumspection and care of an archeologist, she extracts rocks and fossils from stone, gathers odd plants and insects, and writes about all of them in the pretty notebook she got for her last birthday.

What she finds, she brings to the groundkeepers as soon as we get home. They pat her back and tell her she found wonders, and that she can keep them. To us, they whisper that though the fossils she found were genuine, they’re not exactly rare around the forest.

There is one mystery she leaves unexplored, and that’s only because she knows getting into a mysterious hole in the trees as night is about to fall would earn her the punishment of a lifetime from us.

But she swears she’ll be back.

Night

Now that they’re older, the twins are allowed to join our marshmallow-roasting.

The kids insisted to share a bedroom. We hear them chatter and shout until midnight (yet somehow they think they’re sneaky), and then nothing but snoring. They spend enough of their energy during the day.

That’s the time when Nounou gets all the cuddles.

Twin Birthdays!

Cyril and Cleo are no longer babies. They celebrate their seventh birthday during our time in Granite Falls. Hugo and I spent the morning preparing two huge cakes for our babies, and Hannah helped decorate the yard.

Everything is ready for the party!

It’s a peaceful day. All the other tourists have gon hiking, so we have the place to ourselves, as a private little family.

Cyril is not all too sure about this whole situation, but he was born a full ten minutes before his sister, so we make him blow the candles first.

His sister dances in the background, happy that it’s almost her turn.

I do help him a little with the blowing. He still has tiny lungs.

Yay! You’re a big boy now!

I blow a celebratory horn — everybody has started eating the cake and no one really cares. Oh well, I still will.

Hannah is not eating, though. There are other candles to blow after all.

“Cleo?” she calls. “Mom, where is Cleo?”

“It’s fine, Hugo says. She says she wanted to tell her stuffed animals that she was getting older. I’ll go get her.”

“There’s the little gremlin”

Happy birthday, darlings!

Afternoon

The chimney had an issue that prevented it from lighting up. We’re in the middle of summer, but we’re also very high up in the mountains, and everything is more comfy with crackling flames.

Around snack time for Cyril and Cleo, they each get a slice of the pie I baked this morning.

And I read by the fire.

Hannah said she was too old for snack time, now. Instead she went outside to fish with her dad.

She’s getting really good at it! We heard for days about the “treasure chest” she reeled in. It had three apples in it, but it was an absolute win anyway.