Phew, have just caught up on all your chat, mes amis! Had to put head between knees at one point - not sure which was worse, Ruby's tooth nightmare, Crem's boil or CV's hot salad 
. Although am still rofling about hot salad which reminded me of some dire meals made by my Canadian mother which were basically an assemblage of things that remained edible during a prairie winter. Still, am glad tooth and boil are better.
So, one week of school hols down and still standing here, just about, mainly by using chocolate as a bargaining and bribery tool. Dcs being quite nice, but that may be because I have just finally learned to tune them out. 
Dd has a viking ship to make for school, sigh, and ds1 is supposed to do a bit of revision for summer exams but has conveniently left all his books at school, double sigh. No surprise that his recent parents evening involved nice words being said about his classwork and less nice words being said about his homework.
Am going to brave Hampton Court Palace on Thurs, I think, as even when it's rammed, it's lovely, and we have tickets to Pompeii at Brit Museum too, so that's my culture for the hols. I do want to go to MoL soon though, to see the new stuff.
MI - we stayed at this nice place in the Ardeche a couple of years back. A bit off the beaten track but amazing views, gorgeous countryside and the nearby biggish town, Aubenas, was very lovely. We are not planning a summer hol so I am 
at any sunshine chat, but excitingly we did get our planning permission through this week. Eek. We are miles away from being able to start work, but at least we know now what we can do when we scrape together the cash.