A week and a half of Toussaint

All Saints' Day.  You might have heard of it, mostly as the day that comes after Halloween.  Or possibly that day that honors all the saints, but at least as far as I've seen that's not been a big thing.

And yet in France, school kids get a full week and a half off from school for All Saints' Day (Toussaint) - last Friday was their last day and they go back to school this Wednesday.  I think that's more than I used to get even when Easter and Passover fell close to each other.  Wikipedia tells me it's one of only four "holy days of obligation" in France (the others being the Assumption, Christmas, and the Ascension) but it does not tell me why different countries get to choose their days. 

Anyway, delighted as the kids are to have a vacation it's been rough for me.  I've had to work long days almost every day the past week and I worked yesterday evening.  This is mostly because with J filming Masterchef outside Paris one of the parents had to always be with him so it left me with the other kids.  Also baby O was sick enough that he didn't go to daycare Tuesday through Friday, so I kept him at home, thereby keeping little M home too.  That doesn't go over very well because M needs to go out to run around and play - when she's at home she mostly just picks on O, watches cartoons, and throws tantrums.  Also it's impossible for me to put them down for naps at the same time, so the only way I could get them to sleep was if one of the two oldest kids was around to watch the non-napping little one; if they weren't around I would just have to put up with difficult, overtired kids.

My power went out Wednesday night - apparently because my neighbors and I were all using too much electricity at the same time, although I wasn't using that much - and I was not able to get it back until Friday evening.  I ended up sleeping at the family's house Wednesday and sleeping here in the cold Thursday.  It was a very bad end to an extremely frustrating week.

They're still off from school tomorrow but O will go to daycare and M has a class trip thing in the afternoon so I will be better off.  Tuesday I'm taking the two oldest ones to Disney, yay!

Preliminary reports from Masterchef show that J is not doing well at all.  The other kids pretty much are all children of chefs and the parents prepared the recipes.  They have a huge advantage over J, the poor thing.  Also he both cut his finger and dropped a pan of foie gras on himself, burning his hand, all on the first day!  I got a tentative report of what place he came in but I won't say until it airs.

Lastly, Aurelien visited my apartment for the first time today and spent more than five minutes just laughing at it.  He says it should be advertised as an apartment specifically designed for midgets.