Walls in France: SOS Fete

Every year we usually have birthday parties for the girls. This year, we travelled instead…to Venice in February for Lucie’s 13th and to Disneyland Paris in April for Kathleen’s 11th. We did, however, want to have the girls’ friends over for some sort of celebration so we decided to throw a Start of Summer (SOS) fete at the end of the school year. We invited everyone for Sunday afternoon and hoped for good weather since we planned to spend most of the afternoon outside. Luckily, the weather cooperated even though it was really windy and a bit chilly for the end of June. The week before the party, Bucky and I had spent time putting together a scavenger hunt for the girls to do throughout the village. I remember doing scavenger hunts when I was a little girl and it was always fun to go to different people’s houses and ask for random things. Since Eygalieres is such a little town, it is a perfectly safe place for this kind of event.

We separated the girls into two teams, Team Blue (Lucie’s friends) and Team Green (Kathleen’s friends). Each team had ten things they needed to bring back (i.e. a paperclip, an empty milk carton), ten things they needed to take pictures of (i.e. a person with a dog, graffiti), and ten things they had to discover (i.e. when the town fountain was made or who the church at the top of the hill was named after). They had an hour to accomplish the entire hunt so after I explained the game and warned them to be polite and to work together, the girls were off! The clues were written in English and in French and it was fun to watch the groups discussing their strategies and ideas as Bucky, Veronique (Salome’s mom) and I wandered the streets in case anyone had any questions or problems. The girls ran through the village, laughing and having a great time! After an hour of traipsing through town, everyone gathered at our house to go through their treasures. It was fun to see what was collected and hear the stories of the most difficult things to find (i.e. a paperclip and graffiti!).

The girls deserved a treat so they made themselves ice cream sundaes with every type of ice cream one can imagine plus whipped cream, chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, raspberries, blueberries and lots and lots of candy. They enjoyed their ice cream outside and then headed to the back yard to play badminton and basically goof off. When the parents came to pick up their girls, Lucie and Kathleen gave their friends a party favor…a Wall family tradition of a homemade CD with their current favorite songs. With kisses all around, the girls bid their friends au revoir….great party!