I won’t bore you with details of our car ride. As usual it was a mix of gorgeous views, grumpy babies and very expensive tolls. We had to pay 46 euro (about 70nzd) to travel a princely 11kms through the Mount Blanc tunnel. It apparently saved us an hour of driving but it is by far our most expensive toll so far. Several nap stops were required today as our little Evie was teething and didn’t want to sleep in the car.

We finally arrived in Morillon about 4.30pm. Our chalet was just charming and I was happy to note only a 2 minute walk from the local patisserie! We had 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a very very steep set of stairs.

After such a busy time it was inevitable that we’d succumb to illness and Morillon was the place it happened. Evie had an absolutely shocking night of sleep, up every 2 hours or more and wouldn’t sleep unless on me. I was full of a blocked nose and sinus headache and felt like I’d been hit over the head with a hammer.

It wasn’t a happy Friday morning. Thea and Craig were mostly well, if a little tired. They decided to head put skiing. The snow base looked ok but once again there hadn’t been any fresh snow in Morillon for 20 or so days. The ski track that ran down outside our house was closed. It didn’t stop Craig and Thea trying it anyway.

Evie and I spent a lazy and relaxing day mostly at home. We ventured out to check out the local patisserie and to grab a coffee for me. It was raining for the first time since we left NZ! And it was cold. We met up with Thea and Craig at the bottom of the ski run. They’d had an ok morning of skiing but Thea had been falling over quite a bit and was hungry and tired.

Fresh bread and Camembert cheese was for lunch. It was decidedly french. Despite the rain the two skiers headed back out after lunch for another ski run. They came back around 4pm absolutely saturated from the rain. Apparently the ski run was closed for good reason and they’d had to walk across roads and exposed areas of grass on their way down the hill.

We’d left our toothbrushes in Brusson, so a quick trip to the supermarket was requited before we had dinner. Praying for a better night sleep we put Evie to bed. It was passable.

The next morning Craig, Evie and I were all sick and exhausted. Thea was tired but otherwise her normal energetic self. Coffee and fast was in order. The patisserie was open and the cabinet was very inviting. After filling our tummies we headed home to rest.

To be honest the next few days weren’t particularly eventful. We’d hit a wall, far from home, sick and without anyone around to take our hugely energetic 3 year old off our hands. In bed at 9pm or earlier every night we were just surviving.

When we had the energy, we went for small walks around the village, wrote postcards with Thea or on really energetic afternoons I took Thea sledding next to our house. That was fun and gave Craig some downtime while Evie was asleep.

In France the selection of sweet treats was to die for! The desserts we could get for after the kids had gone to bed were particularly good, Craig liked the rum cake (with real rum) and I enjoyed trying a creme pistachio mousse that they had.

As we were staying in a collection of chalets was that there was a British family next door. One day we noticed them building a snow man and Thea loved popping out and building a snow man with their young daughter!

One morning we headed into Samoëns which is the next village over and were super excited to discover an old fashioned merry-go-round there. Thea got on and had fun riding a tea cup as the merry-go-round spun around.

Although all we felt like was chilling and watching Netflix, our sojourns out of the house meant we weren’t driven too insane.