There are two canoes at the barn for general use – all the kids have been much better and more able to use them than expected (at times a little too good as they race out of our reach/their depth etc) but they’ve been really good fun.

The weather has been mixed so we’ve been looking for things for the kids to do that doesn’t revolve around swimming in the river. Yesterday we went to a ‘tree climbing’ park where they have cables running from tree to tree and the kids (and adults) have to make their way around a course whilst attached by a harness. There were course of varying difficulty – all the kids did the fist course but Gabriel, as the oldest, had been given a ticket for the next course up. When it came to doing it he couldn’t get past the first hurdle as he just wasn’t tall enough, so he went back down and Quen and myself continued – half way round we saw another boy having the same problem but a monitor came to help him along so he could have done it afterall – although I think he would have struggled. Here’s some pics of Gabe in action – and one of Quen that he wanted adding.

Gabriel’s counting his money – we just got round to repaying him the money we had to borrow when we were on the ferry back from Mallorca (they didn’t take cards on the boat and he and Olivia were cash rich from holiday money). We’ve been a bit rubbish at paying him back so he informed us that he was giving us a day’s grace after which he’d be charging 1 euro a day in interest! That got him his money back at least!

He’s planning on putting 20 euros into the bank – where they’ll give him another 15 for opening an account.

It was under pressure from Gabriel that we put adsense ads on his site – unfortunately they’re are not performing quite as well as he’d hoped and it’s going to be some time before he gets his first $100 cheque! He’s always squirreled his money away, unlike his sister who has a hole burning in her pocket as far as money is concerned.