Before our life was enriched with the birth of our children, we've written our progress and adventures on this page. As we find our life now already busy enough, we will not update this web page anymore. But you can of course, nose through the past...Click on the dates to go directly to the corresponding news04-11-07 13-02-2007 23-06-06 08-02-2006 13-10-05 28-03-05First of all we want to apologize for the promise we made in our last ‘News’… We did not place any update sooner, it’s been even longer than the update before. Well what can we say… There is always an excuse but is it important to tell them, will it make a difference? Well this excuse is too good not to tell because the reason is that we got married in Mirepoix on the 16th of June! Working towards that date we tried to finish the house, which helped keeping up the spirit, but gave little time for doing something else. Unnecessary to say: we could not finish it all. So still in the mood, straight after the 3 weeks of party that our marriage was, we continued in almost the same speed. Et voila, we can now proudly present a finished Les Papillons on our website. Of course there is still work, inside we are talking about finishing details, but outside there is still enough to do (which will always be the case as we already learned). But now, winter is coming near, our wood stove is burning every day since last week and we are thoroughly enjoying our little dream house on a hill in France. We feel welcome in our new home land, we slowly start to have more friends around us and we more and more find our way in and around Ariege. Sinterklaas has set foot in Embarou, everybody is working hard on their poems and are getting ready for the big night in December... Life is good… Some of you have been waiting a long time for this, after so many months finally an update! We are sorry it took us so long but let’s be honest; it was quite a hectic time with many adventures… There was the Pilgrimage which ended so suddenly, due to Lucy’s illness, and brought us in Embarou sooner than we thought. Then we had to start our ‘new life’ in the beautiful south, which was not only exiting for us, but also for the animals. We started straight away with building a stable for Muis and Snip so that would be finished before winter. The horses had a hard time to adjust when they realized that they were going to stay here. They did not like the hills of their new land and Muis even refused to go anywhere else than the few flat parts that are there. Lucy was sick for a long time and we went back to the vet twice because she didn’t seem to get better. (She’s doing fine now!) Some weeks after our arrival Daniel started working again at his job and I got back in the routine of renovating the house like in our working holidays only now this was not a holiday anymore! See for yourself what we’ve been doing... For those of you who wonder if we are still happy: More than that! Every day we enjoy waking up in Les Papillons, our new way of living, the French country and it’s people, the sunshine and even, when it finally fell after months of dryness… the rain. Still, there is a lot to do before the house will be finished and we will definitely try to post the next update a lot sooner! Back at Embarou for the last work holiday! The next time here will be for only 3 days to bring our stuff over from This time we had a big help with us; Mirek who could do (and lift) anything you asked him. Although we had the unpleasant surprise of our terrace wall that had fallen down after the spring rain, we managed to get a lot of work done. As ever it was not enough to finish the house but step by step we are getting there. We had visitors from There were again the already famous Embarou Saturday night party's but they did not last till the morning... after working more than 10 hours a day you do want to get to bed before 12 o' clock you see. Unfortunately we could not put all the 1589 pictures on the site and we chose to put the work pictures there and not the party one’s, so you can see the progress we made. After this update it will be a bit quite on the Embarou site until we arrive from our pilgrimage. After that there will be plenty more to see. And if you get tired of waiting J you can always follow our travel stories on the www.pelgrimstochtnaarhuis.nl site! Sanne & Daniel After an absence of 3,5 months we were back at Embarou. And how different was that… not because the house or our little village had changed that much; even the How short 10 days can be if you want to do so much! We arrived on Wednesday and were welcomed by Jacob and Suzy with a wonderful meal and a made bed. The next day Rob from EEC Couriers and his nephew Erik arrived from We had a wonderful weekend all together and we are very grateful for their help! Lucy had her first holiday in her future house and tried to speak French with the neighbor’s dogs (which she did by the end of our stay). In the second part of the week we had a delayed Christmas feeling caused by more than 20cm of snow. It was almost the perfect excuse for not returning at all. But we did return and back in Sanne & Daniel Only 3 weeks back in The holiday in September was (again) very productive. This time we had help from René and Michiel from Connecting Media who wired a good part of the house and our dear friend Stef came over, and worked like a madman again! We also had a lot of help from our incredible wonderful neighbors Jacob and Suzy, you can’t think of anything that they didn’t do to help us. We feel very lucky that we, on this enormous planet, found these very special people to be living across our street… We realized this was the 8th time we were there since we bought our house in January 2004 and feels more and more like home, it is, as if the house is loosing it’s patience to wait for us. Or is this just a nice way to describe that we feel we are getting ready to move..? We worked hard and almost every day, but still with a lot of pleasure. See for yourself under Pictures what we worked on this time! Our next visit will probably be somewhere in January 2006 so in the meantime we will start filling the living room with 'Things for The biggest news for this page is actually not about our house this time.. it’s about the new member of our family; She’s our 10 weeks old puppy who will become about half the size of Muis & Snip; a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Meet Lucy:
We hope you enjoy the new website and we will let you know the next time there’s been an update! Sanne & Daniel 28-03-2005After september we went back for a week in November and March, you can see all the progress we made on the pictures.In March we brought back our neighbour Jacob who' s been a great help and friend since we bought our house. He spent a week in Holland after not ever leaving France in 46 years! Our next visit will be in May, when Daniels brother Davy and uncle Ralph will come over to help us.Well, we hope you enjoy our website and if you want to comment about bugs or problems you find on the site, or just tell us a story, you can find our details under ‘contact’ (the butterfly on the main page). Sanne & Daniel |
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