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Before long it was our one year anniversary of homeschooling and as we were back in England again we planned on having a party for the whole family where the girls could show all their projects and work over the last year. The days prior to it were spent baking, tidying, arranging artwork and finishing off half done projects.

The year had been a success. My one goal for Candace was just to get her to enjoy reading again. She had changed from a little girl who loved to pick up a new book to one who moaned when we went to the library or bookstore saying it was boring. It took less than a year, and she was back to being my happy little seven year old girl again. Now at sixteen, her favorite books are by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, so we definitely did something right.

A Move to France

After vacationing in the central part of France with my brother and his wife, we spent the next few months working out how we could live there. We had totally fallen in love with the beauty, peace and quiet of the Auvergne. Being an area of extinct volcanoes makes it particularly stunning and perfect for hiking, fishing, picnics and just general exploring. We decided to start learning French in preparation for what we hoped would be a new life there. We bought picture dictionaries, watched some French films from the library and got a French friend to come once a week and give the girls lessons.

Six months later with the car jammed to bursting and a friend driving our rental van with the rest of our belongings, we set off for a new life. We knew this would be challenging as we were going to an area without any English people, unlike many other places in France. We didn't know anyone, but felt confident about making new friends as soon as we joined up with our local church.

One of the first phrases we had to learn was to explain that the girls were homeschooled. The best we could do was 'enseignez dans la maison' which meant 'we teach in the house'. We thought that the amazed looks were either our accent or bad French. We learnt very quickly that it was just that they had not met anyone before who homeschooled. So in our broken French we tried to explain that it was perfectly legal and quite normal in other countries.

The local school teacher called round one day to ask if the girls would like to attend the village school for a couple of afternoons a week to help them learn French. In turn they could help the local kids with some English. It worked rather well and

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