French apartment renovations, Day 655: Blown away birthday party

We trekked up to the chateau about a half hour in advance. Eric didn't want to take the car and said Zari would be fine going up on crutches. I really pressed to use the car but to no avail. Then Zari started down our stairs and was really struggling...and she had over 350 more stairs to navigate!

Meanwhile Eric had gone ahead with everyone but me, Zari, and my mom. I was carrying a 6-layer cake (very heavy!) and Zari was quite a bit behind me. She was debating whether to come at all. Eric came back down as I was about halfway up the hill and told him he needed to fetch her in the car. I'm so glad he did because Zari really wanted to come.

I carried that heavy cake all the way to the top of the chateau and got tons of comments from passers-by. "When can I come over?" "Wow, what a beautiful cake." "Can I have some?" (All in French, of course). A tourist took a picture of me halfway up the chateau.

We didn't really have anything organized as far as games...but we didn't need to. The kids all ran around and played in the ruins until we called them together for cake. By that time, the wind had picked up and was gusting so severely that we were getting sand- and dust-storms swirling around us. The cake kept getting dusted with sand!

We huddled under a blanket, sang a quick "Happy Birthday", and ate cake. Then we decided to hurry home. The wind was gusting up to 120 mph in some parts of Nice and the chateau was closing early. So the last half of the party was VERY cosy in our little apartment.

While the kids were playing hide and seek, we took most of the adults down for a tour of the Communist apartment.

Also it changed to daylight saving time last night and we all had a bit of a harder time starting this morning.

Zari has a big oral presentation tomorrow and then the bac blanc (Français) on Tuesday. Lots of pressure right now and on top of it she has this injury.