12 June 2013

Another 10th year milestone

Who knows where the time goes? Et où sont les canicules d'antan ? Today marks the tenth anniversary of the first night we ever spent in this house outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher. It was June 12, 2003. We had slept for the first five nights in a gîte rural over in the village of Thésée, and we'd been busy for five days cleaning our new house so that we could move in.

At this point, we've lived here longer than we had ever lived in any other house or apartment before. Dix ans ! Qui l'eût cru ?

Looks like there will be a lot of fruit in 2013.

We didn't have any furniture. We went out and bought two air mattresses to sleep on. We also bought a vinyl table and chairs that we could use use inside the house until we got other furniture — then we would put that set out on the terrace. Most importantly, we went to the Darty électroménager store up near Blois and sprang for a refrigerator, a kitchen stove, a washing machine, a dryer, a coffee maker, a telephone, a television, a VCR, and a vacuum cleaner. We had brought a laptop computer with us from the U.S.


By that Thursday night, 6/12/03, we were ready to start living here, even though we still had a couple of nights left on our rental place — and no refrigerator or stove yet. A friend had loaned us some sheets and towels, and a little counter-top oven. We had electricity and hot water. Our appliances soon were delivered. We camped in the house for nearly a month, when our container-load of furniture, clothes, and other belongings arrived from California. The weather was hot and sunny. Those are good memories.

15 comments:

  1. Staying in a gite and then camping in your own home with electricity and water! Pure Luxury! How wonderful that you guys took the plunge and moved to France! That must have been an exciting experience to go shopping for all of those necessities at once! Many of us dream about your life - but seldom do we get to live it!

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  2. Is it because of the angle of the photo but, to me, these fruits look more like gooseberries than redcurrants?

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  3. It was an exciting time for you, moving house is always thrilling but moving to another country as well........it is what many people only dream of.

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  4. "Et où sont les canicules d'antan ?"

    Judging by the forecast this morning from Meteo60... next week!!

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  5. CHM, I think we went all through that before. And your guess is as good as mine.

    Tim, I haven't been following along...

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  6. Such a milestone!

    At almost exactly the same time I was moving back to Sydney after 5 years in Seattle.

    ... and life was never the same again!

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  7. What wonderful memeories although, I'm sure it was a bit of a challenge at the time !!!!
    ...... and, it looks as if you will have a lovely harvest soon.
    Many thanks for your lovely comment over at mine. XXXX

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  8. Great memories for you :) 10 years in the same place!
    We lived in our house in sort of camping mode for weekends and most of the summer while we slowly got all of the renovation work done, and moved things in. It was exciting to be in our new place! We had our bed in the living room for a long time, then down in the family room, until we finally got the new flooring in for the master.

    Lovely new header!

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  9. Camping in your new home with running water and electricity - exciting.
    Well, I guess you had time to plan where to put every piece of furniture in your shipment.
    Rather be in summer ( worst case scenario- sleeping on the balcony) instead of moving in the fall or winter.

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  10. We've done that camping before our stuff arrived too :-)
    10 years in one place! The best we've managed so far was 7 in Wassenaar, the Netherlands.

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  11. Congratulations!

    Absolutely fantastic pics. Bravo!

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  12. Bet you guys were really happy to see that container arrive!!!

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  13. Ken... Meteo60 is now saying...
    "90.3mm rain by the 22nd"...
    but that'll've changed by the morning...
    I HOPE...
    the spuds aren't equiped with life-belts!!

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  14. De bons souvenirs de vos débuts dans votre maison française, sympa !

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  15. Est-ce que ça peut vraiment faire dix ans ?

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