74: WOOHOO!! Our Carte de Sejour Approved

Welcome to the 74th weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog.

We are into our 46th week in France 6/14-6/20/26 having spent 3 months in Duras and then roughly a month and a half in St Germaine de Confolens before settling in Chabanais.

We have been in our home in the village of Chabanais in the Charente department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region of France since the middle of December 2025. We are still loving it.

This week,

Handyman, work on chicken coop (Cocktail Coop) Golf, Lunch, EB volunteers at the charity shop, veggie patch harvest and good news from the French bureaucracy.

Our home in Chabanais, France

Things on the agenda this week:

• Dechetterie run
• Cocktail Coop
• Handyman
• French class
• Lunch at Lauryvan

Weather forecast:

Hot and no rain forecasted, It is what is called a canicule.

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are “Baby Boomers” that have moved from Venice, Florida to the beautiful French countryside as retirees. After a little over a year of planning and fretting we sold everything in Venice and made the move on 1 August 2025.

We publish a brief update of our adventures every Sunday to share our experiences, tips and mistakes.

If you are wondering what got into our head and inspired us to make the move, check out some of our earlier posts. Again, if you have questions about our adventure, drop your questions in the comment section below.

This Weeks Daily Update

Sunday

Nice quiet day

We started our defense against flies and mosquitoes. EB had purchased a screen for our back door and of course it said it could be installed in like 20 minutes. As usual I managed to string it out to 2 hours, or was it 3? It works well and another project done. Now for the one in the summer house.

Monday: Simon here most of the day and work on the chicken coop commences

I’m sure that I mentioned that we had a long list of projects lined up for the handyman. Simon arived on time to get started.

1st priority: stair handrail. Done! I had attempted to drill a hole in the wall and struck granite, and my drill bit went skittering off of the mark. I decided to leave the handrail to the expert. Simon is the husband of one of Elizabeth’s cancer shop coworkers and had the handrail installed with no issues and it looks and feels good. EB is happy. Simon addressed a couple of other tasks and called it a day at around 3:00. He will be back on Friday to finish up a couple of other items.

Cocktail Coop

EB and I concentrated on the Cocktail Coop renovation. This project is going to take a lot of work, and we want it to be done by the time family arrives. I’m not sure that goal will be accomplished, but you gotta have goals. Here is the list of our Cocktail Coop tasks.

• Open up the wall of the little room which must have been the roost.
• Relocate the electrical outlet
• Remove the roof tile siding from the wall we are removing
• Remove the water collection barrel
• Repurpose the wood siding and move the wood siding to the area where the rainwater collection barrel had been
• Relocate the rainwater downspout
• Reno/replace the rain gutter sections
• Figure out how to route the overflow pipes
• Paint

I’m sure that I have missed something, but the list is long enough that you get the idea.

We did make progress on Monday though. We removed the little door from the roost, took off all of the “roof tile” siding and then the wood planks on the wall from the roost. What a difference this modification makes.

Once this was done, I relocated the electrical outlet that had been on the wall to one of the wooden support columns and tested it out. That was all for the day and a darn good start. We took our showers and walked over to the Cafe des Sport for a well-earned beer from northern France, Pelforth. Rosie got to have a little walk and came with us.

I love EB’s new hat.

Tuesday: We woke up to a nice morning

Back to work on the Cocktail Coop.

With all of the water removed from the rainwater collection barrel we managed to wrestle it off of its supports and dumped all of the sludge out into the garden. EB brought the hose up and we washed it out. Yikes at least a hundred snails were hidden behind the barrel.

The barrel was supported on these big cement platforms. They are pretty heavy, so EB helped me get them out of the way. We moved them onto the little terraced area just outside of the coop by the fig tree. By the way, we found out that our figs are not edible.

There was a bunch of chicken wire fencing that needed to be removed before I could get to the rain gutter. With the chicken wire removed EB convinced me to call it a day. Our garden is looking like a junk yard right now.

The weather is turning hotter so the outside workday is getting shorter. The shower couldn’t have felt better.

EB harvested some beans, green onions and rosemary from her veggie patch and roasted them with some store-bought peppers and we had a feast. I grilled some beef from the farm on the BBQ. OMG! Delicious!

Wednesday:

We decided to repurpose the wood planks from the chicken roost door and will use them to cover the wall behind where the rainwater barrel had been.

First I have to get the rain gutter figured out. More on that to come.

Ron and Michelle dropped by. Michelle made the phone call to help us set up our Bilan appointment. This is the comprehensive health checkup that France gives you at no cost (you get one free evert 5 years). We got an appointment for June 24. More on this to follow. Michelle must have some kind of magic touch because we didn’t expect to get an appointment so quickly.

French class was well attended this week

We are never a 100% sure of who all will be in attendance. This week we had the mainstay members; Ron, EB and I. We also had Brian and Diane in attendance. As I have mentioned before the format of the class is conversational so our teacher, Patricia asks us, “Quoi de neuf” (what’s new) and each of us relates something that we did during the past week. We try to relate our activities in French. It is great fun and we “learn” something new every week. Brian is a little reluctant to speak in French but eventually with Patricia’s help we get his comment. He is a retired sports journalist and still keeps up with sports and has some good stories. Ron is an avid fan of Football (soccer) and has been watching the world cup with great interest. I mentioned that I don’t understand the rules (Je ne comprends pas les regles) and that I like football americain (American football). Ron joked that he doesn’t understand the rules.

By the way, the Chabanais football club has a match next Sunday. It might be time for me to get to know the rules and take in the match.

Thursday: Great news and EB goes to her lady’s tea “get together” and I’m playing golf

Great news, my application for my Carte de Sejour has been approved. I get to legally stay in France another year. EB didn’t receive her approval yet but I’m sure it will be here within the next week or so. It is pretty cool that Ron and Michelle are essentially on the same schedule as us. Ron got his notification of his Carte de Sejour approval on Thursday also. Then Michelle let us know that her notification arrived too.

Golf was a bit of a struggle this week. Ron and I played 2 new courses (36 holes). The first course had crazy difficult greens and approach shots would land on the green beautifully, stop and then roll off of the green. Really challenging as from the approach distance, it is difficult to see what the greens are doing. The second course had narrow fairways and by the time we were playing the course the temperature was rising and fatigue started to set in. A couple of beers helped stave off the heat. All that said it was fun and we both want to take on the first course again.

Friday: Simon is back to work on projects and we have lunch at Lauryvan. EB gets her good news, visa renewal, and the weather has really turned hot.

As I am typing this it is 6:15 PM temperature reached 95 degrees F outside. We are lucky that the humidity is only 27%. Next week is forecasted to be in the 100 degree range.

Simon came back in the morning to tackle a couple of the handyman tasks on the list. He got everything done except the mechanism to latch the shutters on the salon window. He will be back next week.

We have added to his list to include a water spigot on the upper terrace to make it easier to water the veggie garden.

Lunch at Lauryvan

EB had made reservations for our lunch, so we didn’t want to do a lot of work as we had to leave around 12:30.

The restaurant is in St. Junien in a very pretty neighborhood in a park like setting. We were seated immediately and asked if we wanted an aperitif (voulez vous un aperitif?) I opted for a Kwak beer and EB joined me. I hadn’t had Kwak beer before and can report that it is pretty good.

We ordered different meals so that we could take a couple of bites off of each other’s plate. We ordered from the Chef specials for the week which included a choice of an appetizer, main dish, and dessert. There was a lot of food and EB couldn’t finish her meal. Luckily, she saved room for the dessert because it was really good. Ron and Michelle had recommended this restaurant and we were not disappointed. All was delicious.

EB gets great news

Her application for the Carte de Sejour is officially approved, and she can stay in France for another year with me! There was never a doubt really although it is a little nerve racking waiting for the official ok. So now, we have the notification and a letter that says we are approved and we wait for another couple of weeks for the official card.

With everything that is going on in the world we sometimes wonder if we will be kicked out of our new home in France as retaliation against Trump. I like to think that the French are not so childish, but there are crazies everywhere.

Mark, Cheyenne and the grand kids are moving to Cuba

Earlier in the week I had sent an email to Mark checking in to see how he and Cheyenne and our grand kids are doing. They are all doing fine and Mark finally has his new assignment. They are leaving the Marshall Islands and heading to Cuba.

Mark mentioned that our youngest granddaughter, Aryah, has an interest in seeing the Eiffel Tower so they might make a trip to France in the next year. Fingers crossed.

Our daughter in law Cheyenne in the front seat with Mark. In the back seat from left to right is our youngest granddaughter Aryah, then our grandson Atlas, then the crazy one on the right is Ravyn. I sometimes think she is 10 going on 30, other times she is a cute 10.

Saturday: Rain overnight and EB volunteers at the charity shop

We woke up to a little bit cooler morning. It had rained overnight and cooled things down a bit. We opened all of the windows and let the fresh air flow. By noon it was hot above 90 degrees F so closed the shutters and windows.

EB walked over to the cancer charity shop to volunteer. They had a pretty good morning and sold about 45 euros worth of stuff. EB picked up some good deals too including some books.

After I got my Duolingo French lesson in, I spent the rest of the morning putting the mosquito screen in the door opening of the summer house. The installation instructions are just good enough to get me confused but I didn’t let it defeat me. The result doesn’t look too bad.

EB got home just after 1 o’clock and we went to Super U for groceries.

So that was our week.

Major good news, and good progress on the Cocktail Coop projects and important handyman projects get done.

French Lifestyle and Culture

The French flag

I have been wondering about the French flag origin lately so did a little research. It is all part of my wanting to understand French history and culture a little better. We have decided to live out our lives here so ought to get to know it better. I hope you won’t mind and will indulge my curiosity.

As usual, I turn to Wikipedia to start my research. I find it interesting that for a country that is thousands of years old, the current national flag of France was adopted during the French Revolution (1789 – 1799). The Tricolor of the flag is blue, white and red vertical bands with the blue band on the side where the flagpole is. This is referred to as the host side.

It is not the first tricolor design, but it has become one of the most influential flags in history. This scheme has been adopted by many other nations. This flag has historically stood in symbolic opposition to the autocratic and clericalist royal standards of the past. Right on!!!

The Paris militia wore a red and blue cockade during the storming of the Bastille early in the French revolution, The Marquis de Lafayette added the white noting that white was the ancient French color. This formed the tricolor that became the national cockade of France.

You will remember that the Marquis de Lafayette was the same military officer that was recruited by the American colonist to aid George Washington in the American revolutionary war.

Back to the flag, the flag has some variances used for different applications but always the tricolor. The symbolism of the colors and the order in which they are displayed depends on who you ask. The history is interesting, but I like the idea that the 3 colors represent the three elements of the revolutionary motto, “liberte” (freedom: blue), “egalite” (equality: white) “franternate” (brotherhood, red).

The motto is displayed all over the country on government buildings and monuments and is a great reminder of the revolution and its goals and a high standard of behavior.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

• Back to work on the cocktail coop
• French class
• Meeting with our new finacial adviser
• Lunch at Cafe Lillian or the Barrier?
• EB works at the cancer charity shop
• Golf with Ron on Thursday

Weather forecast for next week

Crazy hot (over 100 degrees F) all week.

Signing off for the week

STAY COOL AND HYDRATED!!

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you all.

Wishing you a good week (Bonne Semaine)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com