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All week the fireworks have been going off. Oh yes they have! I suspect that from Halloween through Guy Fawkes, into Christmas and New Year the sparks are going to be flying for quite a while yet. Every night we are able to look out of almost any window of the house and see fireworks popping off in the distance. On Saturday night we went to a fireworks display at Jenna’s school. It was absolutely fantastic! Fireworks: A symbol of various stages in our life? They start off with a sudden random spark and they fly off at the most incredible speed, glowing and flying through the air to amazing heights, where they reach the potential they were meant to get to, and at that point they are really at their best, then suddenly the brightness is gone and the sparks slowly start to fade away and you know that it is dying out in front of your eyes. Then it’s over and you can remember the loud sound like music in your ears, but ultimately all you have left are the memories.

Last weekend we got notification from the school that Mitchell will be on the trip to France in 2 weeks time and that he would need an EHIC card (European Health Insurance Card). Without this card he would not be allowed to board the bus. They urged anyone without a card to move quickly as these cards can take 3 weeks to arrive. We thought for a moment that we had lost Mitchell the chance to go on the trip as the card could not possibly arrive within the remaining days. It looks just like a plastic credit card, but we needed to send our application to Newcastle (which is almost in Scotland), the card would need to be made, printed with all our details on, and sent back to us… we shuddered to think that this oversight on our part could cost Mitchell the trip to France. We sent off the application last Saturday and started to prepare Mitchell for the fact that he may not make it to France. On Thursday morning (5 days after we posted the application), all 4 of our cards were deposited through our mailbox! Mitchell goes to Lille, in France, on the 20^th November.

On Friday evening Philip drove down to spend the whole weekend with us. He accompanied Mike, Mitchell, and James (nephew) into London on Saturday where they visited the Science Museum and the Imperial war museum. I think it was a real “aviation-boys” day out.

On Sunday morning Philip and Mike took Mitchell to play a hockey match in Sevenoaks for the Tunbridge Wells u/14A team. Mitchell is only 12 so he usually plays for the U/14B team as the A team is mostly made up of boys who are actually 13. There is no u/13 division. He had one corker of a game this morning for the A team! Well done, boy!

Jenna also spent Saturday in London with Mike’s sister and her cousin, Kirstin. She attended the Disney show “Princess Wishes” on ice at the O2 arena. She loved it. She was so excited about showing us the moves when she got home. How the princesses skated, how they were held up and spun around by the princes.

Sunday lunchtime was spent in the kitchen making pancakes and milk tarts. I made 4 milk tarts and then realised that I really didn’t have enough space in the fridge to chill them all before Mike and Jo Bowen arrived to visit in the afternoon, so I made the most of a chilly English weather and simply put them outside in the garden. In no time at all they were set. (Good thing England doesn’t have hadedahs though). Mike and Jo arrived to spend the afternoon with us. It is always fun-tastic to spend time with Mike and Jo – and yes, the ice-skating is a definite! (Thanks for the disks and all the files, Mike. Loving them!)

This week in England I saw the most incredible full moon. I have seen the full moon every month since we have been here (yes, that’s how cloud-free the Kent sky really is). You know those times when you see something really beautiful and you wish you could share it with someone who you know will just “get it”? They will understand what you are actually seeing, why you are seeing it, and just why it matters to you? Well, it rose from the horizon like a giant ball in the sky, I made myself a cup of hot-chocolate, put on my jacket and went and sat outside in the cool crisp autumn air so that I could enjoy the moment. The moon fades away and sometimes you can’t see it anymore, but unlike the fireworks which only last a moment in time, you can live with the anticipation that the moon will come back, that it really isn’t gone, that the light has just faded from its face and once the light hits it at the right angle, you will see it again on a clear cloudless night.

It is Remembrance Day this week. Mrs Peace Bodill in East London, we really are thinking of you!  Happy Birthday.  

October ends, and with it yet another month in the UK. We are now into November and I am pleasantly surprised with the UK weather for this late in the year. A lot of people are telling me that this is very unlike a normal October, when it comes to weather, so I am not sure if the cold is holding off just to soften our move to the UK or if it is just going to pop up one morning and issues us with a rude awakening. We are now deeply into autumn and the colours have just been astounding. The belief that autumn colours are orange and brown is just a fallacy. True autumn colours are made up of various pinks and lavender, gold and deep, deep reds.  It’s like a whole colour palette unto its own.

Mitchell and Jenna have been on mid-term break this week, but for Mitchell that simply meant a week of school projects. He was issued with tasks on the last 2 days of term and they have to be handed in tomorrow. One of the projects was to make a model of a volcano. The brief from the teacher said that it should not actually work (yeah, we have all seen those projects), but that it should be a cross-section view of one. I think he has done a fantastic job on it and he declared most boastfully this evening that this is the best project he has ever done. He built it up with layer on layer of polystyrene and then filed and shaped it into the dome that would become the volcano. He even melted down Jenna’s red and orange wax crayons to make the lava flows. This is the second “construction” project that he has had to do and I am so proud of the way he gives attention to detail.

Jenna does not go back to school tomorrow. Her teachers have what they call “an inset day” so she is quite delighted that she gets to stay at home, while Mitchell gets to go to school.

I know that I mentioned this in last week’s blog, but I can’t help but try to explain to all of you who read this, just how beautiful I think it is to wake up in the morning and look out the window to see the world covered in a blanket of grey fog. For me it’s still like that feeling I get when I walk outside on a clear evening and I get to look up at the stars or at the full moon. It’s just something so simple, given to us by the natural world, but I just don’t want to wake up one morning and not appreciate how amazing it is.

This week certainly ended on a high for me. Growing up in Montgomery Drive in East London, I lived across the road from Mr and Mrs Heggie and their family. I went to high school with 3 of their children, Steven, Chris, and Lisa, and the family have always played a big part of my life. I was always invited to 21^st birthday parties and weddings in their family and I have remained in close contact with them over the years. Steven lives here in the UK now and he was a source of so much useful information when I had questions about moving to the UK. He has always helped me to see both of sides of every concern or question that I raised. Mr and Mrs Heggie have just spent about 3 weeks in the UK and on Friday we drove to Hampton Court Palace to spend the day with them. What a fantastic day, walking through the halls and gardens of a beautiful palace, with people who have been so much a part of my life. There are tapestries that adorn the walls of Hampton Court Palace. They are the biggest most opulent tapestries you could ever imagine, and when you stand there and think of the threads woven together, the various colours and different textures that make up an image so beautiful, you have to think about the design of your life. Who are the threads in your tapestry? Who makes up the image of your life? If you pulled one of those threads out of the weave, what would happen? There is an entire department of people employed at the palace to make sure that the tapestries are cared for, that no harm can come to the delicate threads. Do you give that much attention to the threads in your tapestry? I am proud to say that I think I do and that has always made a huge difference in my life. It means that the bonds I had with people 20-odd years ago are held together across the miles and throughout the years. Whether it is Mr and Mrs Heggie in East London or my best friend Linda Marzano in the USA, I know that every thread in my tapestry is needed, right where it is, and like those people at the palace, I will do all that I can to hold them together because they are the fabric that make the beautiful image that is my life.

This weekend was also Halloween and the first time that Mitchell and Jenna have ever had the chance to go trick-or-treating. Now say what you like about Halloween, you are always going to get those people who argue that it is taboo for Christians to participate in it, that it has its roots in pagan festivals, but the truth is that anything you do in this world is only done in the spirit in which you see it. Anything that we do in this world is done according to our own belief system. The roots of Halloween can be traced back to the Christian feast of All Saints day, so before you cast a stone at me, please read up on the origins of Halloween, read up on how it has changed over the years, read up on how it is celebrated in different parts of the world. To Mitchell and Jenna it was simply a time to run around in the dark, to pretend that the night was scarier than it really was and mostly to collect way too much sugar that could be unleashed on the rest of us the next day.

This evening we went to dinner with another South African family that we know in Tonbridge. We knew that they had invited some other South African families, but we were surprised when 20 of us ended up tucking into dinner together… It was nice to spend an evening in a room entirely filled with people speaking in a South African accent and it is always comforting (even after 17 weeks here) to hear other peoples stories, to be reassured about life in the UK.

To end off this reflection of our week, I need to add what must be one of the top highlights…. We got tickets to the Bon Jovi Concert at the 02 arena! I don’t think I need to say anything else about this topic. If you have any idea at all about how much I love the music of Bon Jovi, then you will know that no more needs to be said.

16 weeks have passed by. I don’t know how and I don’t know where they have gone to? We have celebrated birthdays, taken trips; we have found friends and made a life in a different country. Who would have believed that you could re-create your entire life in such a short space of time? One thing that I will say is that we planned and prepared for this move properly before we committed ourselves to it – and this may very well have made all the difference. You can’t do something like this on a whim and then wonder why it all doesn’t turn out the way you had hoped.

I must always add at least a paragraph into this blog about what happens to the children at school, because I know that many of their friends back in SA read it and it keeps them up to date on the happenings in Mitchell and Jenna’s lives. So to all the school friends back home:  Mitchell and Jenna are on half-term break this week. They have 1 week off school and then they go back for term-2 until the 18^th of December. Jenna’s school had a real fire alert this week, where the alarms sounded and all the children had to go and line up on the netball courts. The fire department was called and the source of the fire was somewhere in the kitchen. In Mitchells last week of the term they had a “Humanities Day” where they were put in their house groups and they “travelled around the world” on the school property, going to various countries, learning about the culture, sampling the food and discovering facts about each country.

The weather has still not got cold enough for us to start to complain about. I don’t know if we are just not realising it (ignorance is bliss, and all), or if we are just a bit thick-skinned, but we have not had any frost on the car in the mornings, we have not used the central heating to any great deal and Jenna still tries to get away without wearing shoes and a jersey.

One of the things I really enjoyed the most this week was waking up to mornings of thick fog. If we ever got fog in SA it would burn off before 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning and you would be left with a beautiful hot sunny day, but this week we woke up to mornings under a thick blanket of fog and the longer the day went on the thicker the fog got. It just seemed to roll in and envelope us. There is something so mysterious about it. It left the air with a beautiful, cool, damp feeling. I only ever remember seeing scenes like when we used to visit Hogsback and Katberg but here we were this week, in the middle of suburbia, blanketed in fog. It does make driving a little trickier, but the sight of the tree-tops disappearing into a smokey covering makes it all worthwhile.

This weekend we travelled through to Surrey and/or Hampshire (depending on exactly where we crossed the county borders). Philip invited us to come and visit. Philip works for the Amery veterinary practice with clinics in Alton, Borden and Greyshott. He has been over here for almost 18 months and it is really good to have someone so close to us, so close by.[superemotions file="icon_wink.gif" title="Wink"] We took Mitchell and Jenna on the Watercress Line which runs from Alton to Alresford and back. Its is a beautiful old rickety steam-train. You can buy a ticket and stay on the train as long as you like. It is like a hop-on-hop-off service where you can get on and off the train at whichever stations you like and then just hop back onto the next one coming through. This week on the Watercress line was “Wizard Week” as Halloween approaches this weekend. There were Harry Potter characters on the train, all the stations along the way had Halloween displays, the children could enter a fancy-dress competition, the train was decorated in pumpkins, ghosts, bats and witches, the ticket conductor was dressed up like a witch and the characters from Harry Potter came around and handed out goodie-bags for the children. The scenery from the train window was absolutely beautiful. Rolling green fields (you would never have looked at those green fields and imagined that winter is approaching) framed by lines of Autumn coloured trees, stretched out in every direction. We passed fields with horses and quaint little farms, lakes and ducks. It was a beautiful trip. Before we left the station for our return journey to Alton, I took a photo of the station from the pedestrian bridge over the train. In this one photo I saw the whole of what England is becoming to mean to me. The photo is so quintessential England. There was an old steam train standing next to modern cars, an old coin-operated telephone booth standing next to people on modern mobile phones, there was a beautiful monochrome grey sky covering bright Autumn colours, there was a quaint little station building with its chimney pots, there were neat little flower pots standing next to bright green benches, the station platforms were wet from the rain we had had earlier and there was just a wonderful atmosphere of excitement from the kids about all the activities taking place on the trains and stations.

We popped in to visit Donna and Mark Scott (Philips boss) in Alton. They are a fantastic, energetic ex-South African family who I met when I visited the UK a year ago. It is always wonderful to spend time to people who are both positive about South Africa, but who still love the UK and have settled here. Thanks for the chat and the tea and we’ll see you guys soon.

On the way back to Philips apartment in Greyshott we stopped at an oasis called Waggoners Well. It is just a stone’s throw away from Philips apartment, but you enter the forest and you soon forget that the rest of the world exists. When you can stand still and hear the water trickle over the rocks under a pretty little wooden bridge, listen to the birds and wild animals in the forests, and smell the natural earthy smells from the fallen leaves and trees, then you know that you can find peace within your soul. That some of the stuff in this world really doesn’t matter. There are always places you can go to where you can just sit and be.

We ended the day off with dinner at “The Fox and Pelican” in Greyshott. If you are ever passing through, stop and get a bite to eat.

And then finally, today the clocks changed from daylight saving to normal time. We moved from a 1-hour, to a 2-hour separation between the UK and South Africa. This means we win a few extra minutes of daylight for a week or two, but as we slip excitedly closer to the depths of winter, those few extra stolen minutes of sunlight will soon be swamped up into the darkness of a UK winter. We look forward, waiting for the cold to arrive and usher in whole new experiences.

PS: We have booked tickets to see the Springboks play at Wembley Stadium on the 17^th November – I can’t wait to blog on that in a few weeks time.

What is the difference between the friends you meet today and the ones you have known for longer? When do new friends become old friends? Is there a time-frame to it, or is it more about how you feel in each other’s company? This week has been about friends, but I will say more about that further on in the blog, so read on and tell me what you think.

On Monday Mitchell travelled to Hastings for a football match. This match was part of the Nation’s Schools Cup. It is the first time he has travelled away with the school. They won the match but more than anything, he had a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the trip and the game.

Jenna, thanks for going balloon spotting with me this week, sweetie. You are getting really good with the camera, I love to share those moments with you and I can’t wait for us to take a ride with you in one of these, either.

“Friends” part 1: For Jenna, Monday was a crafty day. Her and her two friends at school (Rosie and Grace) got together and conspired to get all 3 of their moms to take them to the park in Tonbridge after school. Each of them wrote an invitation to one of the others saying that the other 2 girls and their moms were meeting at the park. None of us had planned to go to the park, but when we all got the invitations we believed that the other moms were going… It didn’t take long for us, chatting in the park to realise that none of us had planned to be there and that the girls had manipulated us into this. It was worth a laugh and ended up being a fun sunset run-around in the kiddie park.

On Wednesday morning Jenna went off to school absolutely fine. When I fetched her in the afternoon, she had developed a nasty cough. I suspect that part of the problem may be coming from the fact that we have been testing and running the central heating for short periods each day and she is not used to it. Reluctantly, I sent her to school on Thursday morning, but it didn’t take long before the school phoned to ask me to fetch her. She was running a high fever, and was coughing terribly. Thursday night she coughed and her high fever only fluctuated once she was given doses of Paracetamol. On Friday morning she woke up very ill and there were moments where she panicked because she felt like she couldn’t breathe. We took her to the doctor. Now, say what you like about NHS systems around the world, but there is something to be said for rushing your sick child into the doctor, getting 1^st world treatment, a script for medication, and not having to worry about paying 1penny for any of it. For us, who probably could afford to pay, it is a strange concept, but I imagine that for families who are in poor financial situations, it must be a wonderful peace of mind. By Saturday afternoon Jenna had begun to feel better and by this afternoon she was out riding her bike again. I am sure she should have got more rest, but after being locked up in the house for 2 straight days, I am sure she was just delighted to be out and about again.

On Friday Mitchell’s class travelled to Hastings (yes, he went there twice in 1 week). They have been studying The Battle of Hastings in history this term and the trip took them to the battle fields and Battle Abbey. Try to imagine learning about something that happened in 1066 and then being able to run up the hill on the actual battlefield and almost re-enact what the soldiers did, stand on the place where they stood, stand at the place where King Harold lost his life.

We met with Mitchells form teacher on Thursday evening at the school. The form teachers are what we would know as home-room teachers. His name is Mr Carey, a most charming Irishman. In his own words he said to us that Mitchell had struck a chord with him from day 1. He is so impressed with Mitchell, with his conduct, his respect, and his manners and commented that he can only imagine what a good school he had come from in SA. He said that if Mitchell happened to stay at the school long enough, he saw; with no doubt, that Mitchell could be head boy material one day. Things like that shouldn’t matter at this stage, but it sure makes us feel more relaxed to hear that kind of feedback, than if we had sat down and found out that there were some issues going on.

“Friends” Part 2: On Saturday afternoon Mitchell spent the afternoon with AJ. AJ is Mitchell’s friend who travels on the same bus as him to school and back each day. They played football, Wii, jumped on the trampoline and Mitchell came home quite exhausted.

“Friends” Part 3: On Friday night I was invited to join 13 other moms from Jenna’s school for a surprise birthday party for one of the moms. The party was held at the house of another South African family who have been living in Tonbridge for more than 6 years. It was a wonderful night out and it still amazes me how much people want to ask and know about South Africa when they find out where we are from. [I did quickly silence one political-activist of a mom who wanted to get into a “discussion” with me about Apartheid. There is a time and place to discuss political issues, if you really want to, but a dinner party for someone’s birthday is not the time or the place. I ended some of her misconceptions and promised to set her straight on some of the others the next time we had a chat]. I will admit that to meet 13 new ladies at a dinner party in one night is not something one does every day. When last did you meet 13 new potential friends in 1 night? Kids make new friends at the drop of a hat. They meet another child on a swing in a park and they will come running over to tell you that they have “a new friend”. In most cases they even know “the new friends” name. But for us as adults it’s not always that easy. We are jaded, we are set in our ways, and we tend to view  people with scepticism before we see them as friends. Why is that? It was a wonderful evening and a few of the moms asked me to join them for a few activities related to things that are going to be happening at the school soon, so I look forward to the weeks ahead and finding common ground with some of them.

“Friends” Part 4: Today our South African friend and veterinarian, Philip, travelled from Greyshott in Surrey to spend the day with us. Philip came to the UK one year before we arrived. He went with Mike to watch Mitchell play hockey at the Astro turf really early this morning. We all went and had lunch at the pub run by my sister-in-law and her husband in Bidborough, then Philip and I took Jenna and Mitchell for a walk/cycle in the late afternoon. I think that seeing Philip today was just what we all needed. Today was one of those moments when so much seems new and then all of a sudden you have something familiar to hold onto. Think of getting new trainers. They look really good on your feet and you know that they are probably going to improve your personal best running time, but then you get home and slip your feet into the old trainers, the ones that are moulded to the shape of your foot, they have become older and worn out, but they are just comfortably familiar.    

Wow, this week has to be “The week of weather”. Yes, it’s true what they say… The English really do like to talk about the weather, but when you live here, you can see why. It is the most changeable thing you can ever imagine and when it rains it does a pretty good job of it. We can have beautiful clear days with no clouds, foggy nights that look eerie in the orange glow of the street lights, a deluge of rain where the water runs deep in the gutters, and like today we had a soft, misty rain. We have had the most incredible weather since we have been living here. This week things started to change a little, but with some good waterproof jackets, some comfy boots and a brolly, there is no reason why anything has to change. (This week we tested the central- heating in the house for the first time. We didn’t need to leave it on, but we needed to figure out how it all worked. Yes, after 14 weeks over here, some things are still new to us).

On Monday evening Mitchell presented a speech at his school. It was open evening for prospective parents who are assessing schools in the area for their boys for next year. Mitchell was chosen from more than 210 boys in the year-7 group to do a speech. Apart from the headmaster, only the head boy of the school and Mitchell delivered speeches. He had to do the speech 3 times in the one evening, and in each group the school hall was packed to capacity. Mitchell has grabbed the move over here with both hands. He is making a name for himself as a hockey player, as a cricketer and as a leader in his year group at school. Yesterday he spent the afternoon with 2 of his friends at the Tonbridge Sports grounds, playing tennis, baseball, and football. He has become more independent in such a short space of time. He was a little put out with Mike and I yesterday as we would not let him walk off into town with his friends after the sport was finished. He came home with a bit of a sulk and him and I ended up having a little talk about flying kites. I tried to explain to him how we have to let the string go a little bit at a time to keep the kite in the air. I told him that I could quite easily just cut the string, but that the kite would just drift off wherever the wind took it and in a very short space of time it would just crash into a heap on the ground or get tangled up in the branches of a tree. I tried to get him to understand that if we kept letting the string out and reining it back in, just a little bit at a time, then the kite would fly higher and higher. The view for the kite would be better and it would last to fly another day. He looked at me, smiled, and winked and nothing else needed to be said.

Mike passed one of his most crucial exams this week. This particular one had given him the most stress and frustration and now he can focus on the last one (next Monday). These are the exams for the Charted Insurance Institute of the UK. He does have some other online exams that he needs to complete, but they are specific to the company and he is allowed to complete them in his own time.

Mitchell played his first UK football match this weekend. They played against Brentwood School of Essex. Frank Lampard (Chelsea football player) is a past pupil of Brentwood. Tunbridge Wells lost the game 2-1. It was a beautiful cool, crisp autumn morning next to the field. Tomorrow he travels to Hastings for a match in the Nations Schools Cup challenge.

Jenna has grown so confident at school. I just drop her off at the gate now and with a swift wave of the hand she runs off down the driveway. On Wednesday morning the school had an open morning where the parents of the children were allowed to attend any classes; we had free-range of the school to see how it all works to attend classes with our children. This was a good opportunity for me to see what work is being covered, to see how Jenna was interacting with her classmates and teachers, and to generally get a better feel for the school. There are still a few things that I am not comfortable with, but they are not things that I cannot deal with or that cannot be overcome.

This morning Mitchell played another hockey match, this time in Tunbridge Wells. He scored 2 goals in the one match.

This afternoon we took a walk through Knole Park in Sevenoaks with Mikes sister, her friend Sue and all the children. Sevenoaks is only 12km’s from us, but it is one of the towns we seldom go to.

I found this write-up about Knole Park on the web: “Created in the 15th Century for the Archbishops of Canterbury to have somewhere away from court for hunting and other recreational activities, these 1000 acres of beautiful parkland is the only remaining medieval deer park in the county. Visitors to the park, which is owned by the current Lord Sackville, are frequently amazed by how close one can get to the herds of wild deer that the park is home to. Knole Park also provides access to Sevenoaks Environmental Park which features a mixture of wetlands, wild flower meadows and woodland.”

Please read up more on Knole Park from the internet. It is a beautiful place with a fascinating history. Knole Park has the most beautiful golf course in part of the estate. We walked through the park in the drizzling rain and stopped for tea and scones in the tea-room.

I was astonished at the number of deer in the Park and just how close you can get to them.

The Manor House has 365 rooms inside. I can’t wait to go back on a sunny day and spend time taking more photos. I would also love to go back in the snow. I imagine that in the depths of winter it could be the place of dreams. I will show you!

This weekend marks exactly 3 months since we arrived in the UK. A very special friend of mine back in SA, Craig, said to me before we left, that if we could make it through the first 3 months without completely falling apart then he thought we’d be just fine. So, if I could mark it off with a pen on a board, I would tick the box that says “I would do it all the same if I had to do it all again”. Of course there are things that we have had to adjust to. For instance, I hate ironing! Whoever invented the iron was not thinking when he made that fatal discovery. The good thing though is that Mitchell and Jenna are learning to do all their chores more efficiently. You just learn to work as a team.

One of the highlights of this week, for me anyway, must be when Mitchell lost his PE bag on the bus to school. He got off the bus and left his bag behind. Inside the bag were his new PE kit, and his takkies (the Poms love that word for some reason). He phoned us from school in a panic to tell us that he had lost his kit. We started phoning the bus company and were battling to get through. It was within 2 hrs since he had left it on the bus, so we thought that at best it might still be on the bus somewhere doing the rounds through Tunbridge Wells. Mike was on his way to Tunbridge Wells so he just stopped in at the bus depot to report it missing and leave our details, in case it was handed in. When he got to the office the bag was already there with all the contents in place. I know it’s not always the case and we were probably lucky, but after I lost my wallet here last year and got it back with all my money in, this outcome didn’t surprise me too much.

Jenna had a wonderful week of spending time with her friends from school, after hours. I have realised that this is not something that she did all that regularly when we were back home in SA. Why is that? Why did it always seem like an effort to organise a play date, whereas over here it is just done. I think that it has something to do with the awesome sense of community that I find over here. People in villages get together, school friends meet after school and on weekends, groups organise get-togethers. I like it.

I too have made a new friend here in Tonbridge. Her name is Stephanie and she is a fantastic source of useful information. The nice thing is that she has a wonderful knowledge and understanding of South Africa and we can end up talking for ages about things that a lot of other British people just wouldn’t understand. We have promised to cook samp and beans for her, and in that vibrant spirit of hers, she says that she’d look forward to it.

Jenna also had a really good week at school. Her teacher writes the most wonderful compliments in her homework book. I am very proud of Jenna. She is working so hard to catch up to the other children in her grade. She writes and reads more than is required of her. She even brought home extra Maths exercises to do this week. Her cursive handwriting is developing so fast and she is just impressed that she can write as fast as the other children in her class now. Every day is a victory for her and her teachers are always full of compliments about her.

On Wednesday evening I went to a ladies quiz evening at the pub run and managed by my sister-in-law and her husband. I met so many new people, and it was my first introduction to a quiz night in the UK. Of course I realised just how bad my general knowledge is, although I think my “British knowledge” was more the problem than my “general knowledge”. 

The weather is changing rapidly now. (Steve, autumn over here is not a gradual thing at all! There is no process in it.) You go to bed one night and its summer and you wake up the next morning and its autumn. The trees are absolutely beautiful. Everywhere you drive it is like looking at the background for a jigsaw puzzle. Leaves of every shape and colour cascade to the ground like confetti.  There are creepers here that grow on the side of the houses and in summer they are a brilliant green. Within a few weeks they are now the most intense red. I think my family are getting tired of hearing me say “Look at the colours of the leaves” every time we drive anywhere. We park the car in a parking lot and they have to get out and admire the trees with me, we drive along the freeway and they have to ooohh and aaaahh with me as I marvel at the beautiful colours. I think they are wishing winter will come soon so that all the leaves will be gone, but that’s ok, because then I am going to get them to appreciate the beauty in the starkness of winter.

This weekend we went shopping for jackets, scarves, beanies, gloves, and boots. The temperatures here are already reaching what we would experience in the depths of winter in EL. We have some mornings where the temperatures are reaching single digits and some days it is only getting up to about 19 or 20 degrees. If the wind doesn’t blow and the sun shines (like it so often does in Kent) then it really doesn’t seem cold at all. It is so strange to try and imagine the kids going to school in the snow in a few months time and it’s so scary to think that we are going to have to drive on the icy roads.  Whoo! Every day brings a new experience!

Mitchell played his first hockey match this morning on the Astro turf here in Tonbridge. His school does not play hockey, so he plays for the private club. Most of the boys are from other schools and it is an awesome way for Mitchell to get to know other boys, from other schools, who may live near us.

Mike writes yet another exam this week. It seems like a never ending trek through hours of learning and hopefully it will all be over really soon. He writes another one on the 19^th October. The learning takes him away from putting in hours of work, but he must get these certifications behind his name.

This afternoon I made crumpets for tea. Look at the corresponding photo. Jenna set up a shop in the kitchen and sold the crumpets to Mitchell, Mike, and I. Note the price change… (from £2 to 20p). She is raising money so that she can buy some more plasticine to make her little world of plasticine characters.

 Late this afternoon, as the sun was setting, we took a drive through to the next village up the road from us. Hadlow! Hadlow is a beautiful, quaint little village that you could drive through in the blink of an eye, but I have been longing to go and take a stroll through the little streets. We walked to the Hadlow castle, through the grounds of a church that was built in the year 975. The door of the church still has the date 1037 carved in the door. We walked through fields with bunnies running around. In the town there was a distinct smell of log fires. You know that smell you associate with Hogsback or Katberg or a log cabin in the winter time. It was really beautiful.

Last week I blogged from South Africa at what was almost the end of one of the most incredible weeks I have ever lived through. On Monday I flew from EL to JHB on my way back to the UK where saying goodbye to Jon again was terribly difficult, but I know that it will only be a few weeks until he is over here with us, celebrating Christmas and New Year. I flew to JHB seated next to my best friend, Linda, on the plane. In that 1½ flight we spoke more and caught up more on so many things we hadn’t spoken about in ages. At JHB international airport we had at least 5 hours before Linda left on her flight to Washington, so we found a little corner of the airport, and poured our hearts out to each other about everything from our 34 year-old friendship, to growing up across the valley from each other, laughing about our old high-school crushes, the joy we get from our families now and finally to holiday plans stacked up for the next 2 years. I left JHB at about 21:00 on my way back to the UK, flying again on Virgin Atlantic (still very highly recommended, BTW).

Leaving South Africa this time around was more difficult for me. When I left 10 weeks ago, I already had it in my mind that with a 99% chance I was going to be back for my school reunion, but when I left this time there were no plans for a return date, this time I was leaving without the comfort of knowing that soon I would return. Being back in the UK this week has therefore been a very emotional week for me and although I know better than to call it “homesick”, I cannot deny that it has been a very difficult week for me, filled with emotion.  An ex-boss of mine once said to me that “the higher you are the harder you fall” and it felt to me like the fall this week was pretty hard, but here I am at the start of a new week with a renewed hope that the emotional roller-coaster of the past week can be overcome.

I did get great joy this past week out of helping Jon to put together his visa application, book his flights and set up some plans for his visit over here in December. Now comes the fun part of deciding what we are going to do, and which places we will visit.

On Wednesday Mitchell came home to tell us that he has been selected out more than 210 boys in his Year-7 group to do a speech at the parents evening in October. The evening is for parents who potentially want to send their boys to the school next year. What better way to make a name for himself in front of parents, teachers, the head teacher, and his fellow boys. I am so proud of Mitchell and Jenna for the way that they have settled in over here. When I think that they were the roots of my worst fears in coming to live here and now they are the ones who have settled in the best, it still leaves me in awe of the resilience of children. Jenna also had a wonderful week. She has been so well accepted at her school and has made a wonderful group of little friends. When I went to fetch her at school on Tuesday, after arriving back in the UK, I was surprised to see how the other children call her name and wave when she walks past.

Yesterday Jenna spent the day with her little friend, Rosie at Hever Castle.   (http://www.hevercastle.co.uk/) Hever Castle has fantastic activities for children including a water maze. It was the first time that she has been out with complete strangers here in the UK. All the other times have been with family. She came home so excited about her day, about her adventures and about her new best friend, Rosie.

No matter hard we try to not only make South African friends over here, we cannot seem to escape the network. I don’t know if it is because of the vast number of South Africans living in Kent, and in Tonbridge in particular, but now we have discovered another SA family that live just a street away from us. They also have young children. We drove down the high street the other day and the sports shop had changed the display in the window. All you can see when you drive past and look into the window now is green and gold. The whole display is South African sports shirts.

Yesterday afternoon Mitchell had gone to my nephew’s birthday party, Jen was at Hever Castle and Mike was studying for exams this coming week, so I decided to take a cycle to Poult Wood which is not very far from us. I set off with no particular destination in mind, so I just turned left and right down little lanes whenever I felt like it. Sometimes I was deep in the forest and at another time I found myself cycling through a little village I had never seen before. By the time I realised that I probably wasn’t going to be able to find my way back along the maze of little streets and lanes, I popped out in Hadlow, the village slightly NE of where we live. I had somehow managed to do a complete loop through the farm lands and forests. Getting lost on your bike sure is a fun way to see parts of your neighbourhood that you never knew existed before.

Mitchell has joined the Tunbridge Wells Hockey club and plays on Sunday mornings. This week he may play his first match for the club. They play on the Astro turf at the Tonbridge Private School here in our high street. The coach is impressed with his hockey skills and Mitchell seems to be enjoying the group that he is with.

Today we went cycling around Bewl Water Lake, just outside Tunbridge Wells (Look for it on Google Earth). We have done this ride before, but on bikes that we had rented at the lake. At that stage our container had not arrived so we didn’t have our own bikes. This time we took our own bikes and set off for a beautiful ride through the forests. The complete route around the lake is about 12.5miles (roughly 20km’s), but Jenna is still not quite able to do that distance, so we rode out for a little more than an hour and then turned back. A good 2 hour cycle for Jen’s little legs, and the less said about her ride into the stinging nettles, the better!

The one thing that has been noticeable for me this week has been the fantastic weather that we are having. The days are still long and sunny with temperatures effortlessly reaching 23 degrees. No humidity, no wind, no clouds, just beautiful clear days. The nights have started to get rather crisp and if we are planning to stand around a braai fire we certainly would take along a jacket.

We arrived in the UK just a few days after the Summer Solstice here and today it is a week after the Equinox. This means that we have already been here for one quarter of the year! Who would believe it? Time really does fly when you are having fun.  

Well, true to form, here I am on blog night, writing from South Africa. Mike, Mitchell and Jenna stayed back in the UK as the kids are well into the school term now. I have been back in SA for the Cambridge High School reunion weekend. This year marks my 20th year out of high school. I contemplated this trip for many weeks and I didn’t take the decision to come over very lightly. However, as I fly back to the UK tomorrow, I look back on this week knowing that if I had to make the decision again, I would do it all over again in a heart-beat. I would pay double the price of a plane ticket if I had to. You cannot put a price on human relationships, be they family or friends.  Someone said to me today that we must be earning lots of pounds to be able to jet-set around the world for a school reunion. The truth is, life is not about money. In my life, growing up in EL, life was never about money and it sure isn’t now. I have a friend, Linda, who lives in the USA who has been a part of my life for more than 33 years and despite the fact that we live a half a world apart, we are still the same close friends we were years ago as 2 carefree little neighbourhood girls. If you wonder how a friendship survives that long, it is because we put in the effort to grow it each moment that we can.

Coming back to South Africa on Wednesday was a strange and surreal moment. I don’t think I have been away long enough (10 weeks) to feel like a visitor, but I have been away long enough to  accept that this is no longer my permanent day-to-day home, so driving through the streets felt strange. I sometimes felt like I did belong here and then at other times it felt strangely like I was visiting. Going into the stores and seeing so many familiar things was wonderful and let me remind you all to never underestimate  the value of free parking! Yes, I know I drum on this issue a lot in my blogs, but somewhere someone has to hear me and every revolution was started by one small voice.

My flight over here on Virgin Atlantic (highly recommended, BTW) was fantastic, despite the fact that my luggage was temporarily “misplaced” and had been checked right through to EL, which is wrong as I should have cleared customs with it in Johannesburg. Long-haul flights are not my favourite things in life, but with the plane only half full we were all able to stretch out and get comfortable. Searching for my “misplaced” luggage in Johannesburg, filling out the lost-luggage forms and getting into an argument with one very cheeky security guy almost got me to miss my flight to EL.

On Thursday morning I went to Hudson Park Primary and what a wonderful moment it was to be back. So many people make for a lot of positive energy and no matter how tired I was, every moment that I spent chatting to the kids and to my ex-colleagues was a treat for me. Mr Kevin Whitehead, the head of the academy where I taught at Hudson, had the most impressive reaction to seeing me. Kevin, I don’t know when I will see you again, but thanks for the time that we spent together on Thursday morning and I am glad you are enjoying the blog. 

Friday was the assembly and formal part of the reunion weekend. I had no idea how many people would be there from our Matric year, so the anticipation of waiting to see who arrived through the foyer doors was palpable. Each familiar face that appeared through those doors brought with it shrieks of laughter, 20 year-old stories and moments to fill a memory bank. Standing together, next to one another after 20 years, and singing the school song, whose closing verse has the words, “Wherever we go in years to come, whatever our task may be….” was such a poignant moment for me.

On Friday night more of our class members gathered for the evening dinner dance. There was a powerpoint presentation running on a big white screen on the stage (ha ha, now there was a memory all on it’s own for me) showing images of our school days, photos from the archives of the school and interspersed in the presentation were images of things that were the order of the day in the 1980′s. We danced the night away and by midnight all the other reunion groups had left, but the ’89′ers were nowhere near ready to put the party away. We headed off to the Highlander Pub in Beacon Bay to carry the celebrations well into the following day… (which for some unknown reason had much brighter sunlight, and louder noises than usual, for most of us) [superemotions file="icon_cool.gif" title="Cool"] .

On Saturday, yet more of our Matric class who had not made it to the other 2 functions arrived for our lunch at Grazia’s on the EL beachfront. It was just incredible to tally up at the end of the celebrations, just how many people had the made the effort to get together. Some people had flown into EL in the morning, just to have lunch and then left on the next flight out. When people can make that type of effort to get together with people that they shared a common uniform with 20 years before, it has to say something awesome about the power of human relationships. This lunch ended our get-togethers, but email addresses, phone numbers, contact details of all sorts were exchanged and I suspect that many people who had drifted apart may have found one another after this weekend. I will personally never forget this weekend and I will always be thankful that I made the choice, and had the means, to be here. To Linda, Michelle, Nadine, Charl, Sam, Cheryl, Relda, Tony, Lee, Murray, Donald, Ian, Sandra, Elaine, Shelly, Evan, Neil, Bronwyn dV, Bronwyn B, Juanita, Debbie, Glenham, Genelle, Lee-Anne and Barry… thanks for the memories and see you guys at the 30th!  

Saturday evening I had the chance to go and relax around a real SA’n braai with my brother and his family as the Southern Cross winked down on us from above a clear Southern Hemisphere sky.  

I spent my week in EL with my friend, Jon. Not often in life do people like Jon come along! On Sunday we spent the morning at Nahoon Beach and enjoyed a brunch at the Footprint Cafe. Soft, pale, warm sea sand beneath my bare feet, a flawless blue sky above my head, seagulls soaring along the cliff face and a whale frolicking just beyond the breakers, made for a perfect ending to my time back in EL. (Thanks, Jon).

Mike and the kids have survived a week without me. Truthfully, they probably survived better without me. (To you 3, who are a half a world away from me tonight… you made it possible for me to come back home and make some truly wonderful memories, that I will treasure for the rest of my life.)

Mike tells me that Mitchell played mini hockey at the Tonbridge Astro turf this weekend for the first time and I cannot wait to get back home and hear from him all about how it went. The coach apparently tried to convince Mike to join as a coach and when they couldn’t twist his arm they tried to convince him to come and play for the adult team… I think Mike may be going underground, undercover or at least into hiding now. Mitchell also played his first football match in the UK this weekend so I suspect there will be lots to tell me on my return. Jenna has begged me every day on the phone to bring her dogs back to the UK with me. I only wish I could grant her that one wish. 

I return HOME to the UK tomorrow, filled with excitement to be back with my family, filled with school-days memories I had long forgotten, filled with a sense of intrepidation for the winter that is slowly edging its way to the north, and filled with a reminder that South Africa is a uniquely wonderful place.

This is Kerry Wright (Homeward Bound)!

You know those days when something goes wrong and just as you turn around the rest of everything else seems to follow the same pattern… Well, this is my first week of blogging with a slightly negative tone, but hang in there and read on, it does end off well. I can’t only tell you about the good times every week. Nobody has a life that is made up of endless good weeks stacked one after the other. On the other hand, with a ratio of 10:1 for good weeks vs. bad weeks, I suppose we have nothing to complain about.

On Monday morning I took Mitchell through to school in Tunbridge Wells. Mike had gone to London on the train and it was the first day that ALL the schools were back for the start of the new school year. The traffic was a disaster! I had to drop Mitchell off at about 07:50 and get Jenna back to school in Tonbridge by 08:50, but then I hit the traffic-jam in Southborough. At one stage we never moved forward for 35 minutes. The guy in the car in front of me eventually just switched off his engine. So, my Monday started off with me getting Jenna to school very late.

I was incredibly frustrated as I had wanted to talk to her teachers urgently. Jenna was very reluctant to go to school on that Monday morning. It was a terrible shock for me as she has thoroughly loved school, ever since she started at “Little Blessings” at the age of 2. So to have her wake up (after crying herself to sleep the night before) and not want to go to school was a heart-breaking moment for me. Jenna’s in-class academic time is 15 months behind the kids over here as back in SA we start school a whole year and 3 months later. Coupled with this, she is one of the youngest children in her class. In SA she was in Grade-1 and over here she is Year-3. This meant that her reading and numeracy would potentially not be as good as some of the children in her class. The children here also write in cursive right from the beginning. So, after 3 days of school I think the realisation of how much catch-up she was facing set in and the idea was terribly daunting for her.

After getting her to school late, I still went to discuss it with her class teacher and the head teacher of the school and I was surprised to find out from them that she is certainly not anywhere near being the weakest little member of the class. As a matter of fact they felt that she was coping extremely well under the circumstances. I left the school still very reluctant to believe them, and it was the first time that I sat down and really started to question if I had done the right thing for Jenna. I have no doubts with Mitchell, but then again, he has already had the grounding of the literacy and the numeracy and he is also the oldest child in his grade.

When I went to fetch Jenna at school in the afternoon, her teachers had organised an impromptu meeting for me and they had all the books out that they use for lessons, they showed me the books of some of the other children in the class, and questioned me about what work Jenna was doing in class in SA. This was now the first time that I felt reassured. I know that she will have some catching up to do, but I also know that she is a confident little girl and in very good hands. The rest of the school week went off just fine for her. She made some new friends and is looking forward to the coming week.

Then came Monday evening. The whole day so far had been a disaster so what more could go wrong? Right? Well, the immobilizer/central locking on our car “gave up the ghost”. It was strange though, as the car would start, the engine would turn and then within a few seconds it would cut out. It was about 20:30pm and we had no plan of how we would get the kids to school the next morning. We called out the AA and after at least an hour Mike and the AA technician figured out what it was. The central locking was blowing out a fuse and this in turn was cutting off the fuel pump. We replaced the fuse and figured out a way to circumvent the central locking until we could get it fixed. When we did finally take it in to be repaired, the cost of the parts (a new wire) was £5.25 and the labour charge was almost £230! We had been meaning to get a second car since we got here, but we were not in any particular rush. This episode with the car got us moving and we now have our second car. This also meant that Mitchell took his first trip to school on the bus. For me this means that I don’t have to do the morning traffic run through Southborough anymore.

The rest of the week went off well. Mitchell comes home from school every day filled with excitement about what he has learned for the day. He is so excited about science, the experiments they have been doing, and the lab equipment. He also scored 19/20 for his first ever French test.

Mike passed another one of his crucial exams (CFP3) this week, and I got a mail from a company over here, that I have had some previous dealings with, asking me to send my CV to them. It was a surprise and has given me a few alternatives to think about.

I still can’t believe how beautiful the weather is here. It has started to get a little nippy on the odd days and we do need to go out with jerseys (jumpers) now, but the skies are still predominantly blue, the wind seldom blows and we have seen very little rain in the 10 weeks that we have been here. The clear night skies are the best though. I still haven’t managed to identify any celestial bodies, but I still love to stand outside and gaze up at what is out there. So whether you have a ticket to the moon, or hope to be a man on the moon someday, take a moment to discover how wonderful the crisp night sky really is.

We ended off this nightmarish week with a lovely weekend!  There was a Medieval Fair at the Castle in Tonbridge yesterday and today. The Castle was open to the public for free and the grounds were transformed into a community fairground. There were people in period costume, a hog on a spit, weapons, knights in shining armour, a mock battle, maidens, and princesses, giants and jesters. There was a falconry display and archery lessons, the flea-market sold all sorts of old pottery, costumes for the children, steel beer mugs, beautiful woven rugs, and old fashioned jewellery. Bagpipes sounded out beautiful music as little boys ran around with wooden shields and swords. Jenna got the chance to make a “Roman mosaic”, although it was bright in colour as opposed to the muted brown hues that I suspect they had at that time. As we walked around and discussed with the kids why things were the way they were in those days, I realised just what a learning experience this one outing was for Mitchell and Jenna.

The next blog in this series will be written from South Africa. I am going back to SA this coming week for my 20 year high school reunion. I am not looking forward to 2 long-haul flights in one week, but I am looking forward to seeing Linda who is flying over from the USA. Linda and I have been friends for more than 33 years and if I missed this moment in my life to go back and share with her the place we grew up, the school we shared so many happy moments in, then I suspect I will have missed out on something very special.

This is Kerry Wright!

2 Months! Imagine that! We have been here for 2 months already. When I think of all the things we have done and all the things we have achieved, I can’t imagine how we have squeezed it into just 8 short weeks.

This week started off a little miserable for me. I returned from Saunderton and Oxford on Monday with a nasty dose of flu. It was one of those cases where you just want to lie in bed, with the blankets pulled up to your ears, but a mom’s work is never done. Mike was nagging me to go to the doctor but I believe that the human body must get a fair shot at trying to heal itself before it is pumped full of medication and that’s just what happened. A few glasses of hot med-lemon and a box of tissues later, and by the end of the week I was well on the road to recovery.

We celebrated another family birthday in the UK this week. Mitchell turned 12! We gave him the option of going to Portsmouth to see the navy ships or to go to the Ice Bowl in Gillingham for a morning of skating. So we ended up having a blast of a time ice-skating. Mitchell and I can skate pretty well, Jenna is learning fast and Mike is our comic-relief on the ice. Jenna went from holding onto the walls with all her might to skating across the floor unassisted about an hour later. There is a skating shop inside the Ice Bowl and Jenna spent quite some time picking out her glitz and glamour outfit. Those pretty sparkly ones that the professional skaters wear. I think it’s going to be a while yet until she reaches that stage, so the outfits all went back on the shelf. After ice-skating we went to Blue Water Retail Park which is only 30min drive from our house. It is a big modern shopping centre with all the top brand-name stores you can think of. These types of shopping centres are not common-place in the UK. Over here the little shops, bakeries, butcheries, sports store are more the order of the day and I prefer it that way.

Our other big victory for this week was the go-live on our broadband internet connection. It has taken the longest time and the worst frustration imaginable. Internet is not just a social medium over here. It is about as important to your survival over here as oxygen and food. Everything is done on the internet here. Shopping, banking, even recording your own readings for gas, electrical and water usage is done online. Mitchell also needs a connection for a lot of his homework. Not just for getting information for assignments and projects. There are maths websites that the school subscribes to and a lot of the homework is done on these websites.  Anyway, it is finally here so Skype us all you like!

This week has really been one of the most important weeks for us. The issue of schooling for the kids was my biggest fear in this move. It was the one issue that cost us a lot of money (to fly Mitchell over here to write the 11+ exams for Grammar School entrance) and a lot of frustration (bouncing between the schools and the Kent County Council). We did all we could to win these battles, because Mitchell and Jenna are the reason why we are over here and what good would it be if we didn’t jump through hoops to get the best we possibly could in terms of schooling. So after all we went through, Mitchell and Jenna started school this week at the best possible schools that we could get for them. Mitch started on Wednesday as the Year-7s had to go in a day earlier. He has taken to school with so much motivation and excitement. He has made a few friends and I think he quite likes being “the different boy”, the one from South Africa. His class teacher asked him the other day if football was big in SA and Mitchell responded by asking him if he had ever heard of Bafana Bafana… With a laugh the teacher said: “I am just going to hope that you didn’t just swear at me”. He is dreading learning French this year. I am going to have to try and get him past the negative mindset that he has about it. He loves the science labs and can’t believe that right in front of him are all the chemicals, burners and little glass tubes. The cafeteria food on his first day was not a highlight for him, but then he is pretty fussy about his food so he opted to take a packed lunch the next day but that meant he could not spend lunchtime with his friends as the kids with packed lunches eat in a different area to those having school-dinners. So from tomorrow he is going to give the cafeteria food another go. The school offers a wide range of sport for the boys to do, including clubs like the model aircraft club. He also likes the locker system, but I am going to keep a close eye on that homework excuse of “I left the books in my locker”.  He was also selected as the class captain, which has given him the chance to stand out a bit from the rest of the boys. He is now pressing me to sort out his bus-pass.

Jenna started school on Thursday. We managed to get her into the school just up the road from our place so as soon as Mitch starts travelling to school on the bus we will not have to do the long school-run into Tunbridge Wells. Jenna’s school is a beautiful collection of little white A-framed buildings. It is light and airy and situated right on the edge of town, overlooking a farm. There are big grounds with jungle-gyms for the kids and the classrooms, library, hall, and everything are absolutely fantastic. Jenna also starts learning French this year. I think the biggest jump for her from school in SA is that she starts with content subjects this year like science and geography. She has made some friends too. Sophie is her closest friend so far. Sophie and her family are expats from Zimbabwe. Jenna’s school also offer some nice activities. Sport is not usually offered at many UK schools so we are lucky to have selected two that offer a whole host of activities. Jenna’s school even has aftercare which stays open until 6pm.

I am just glad that as I sit here and write this blog late on a Sunday night, both kids have packed their school bags and left them at the front door, uniforms are all out waiting to just be put on. I think they are both happy and excited about the school year ahead.

We ended off this week with a quiet relaxing weekend at home, lying around reading, watching rugby, painting, cycling and just finally having some time to chill. This morning (Sunday) we went out to find Mitchell a desk for his room. Jenna and I went to the car boot sale while Mike and Mitchell went to the commercial stores.

A £6 desk!

Mike phoned while I was at the car boot sale to say that he couldn’t find a decent sized desk for less than £100, even if he bought the timber and made it himself. At the boot sale we found a perfect desk, big enough for the computer monitor, speakers and keyboard, and still plenty of space for books to do homework. How much you ask? £6! Yes you read that correctly, SIX POUNDS (Oh …and that included a chair …AND the guy delivered it to our house!). The hysterical part was Mike and I trying to get it upstairs and through the doorway into Mitchell’s room. I got into a hysterical giggle and Mike said it was like playing some weird game of Tetris. We finally disassembled the thing to get it through the doorway and got it all set up. We also bought Jenna some more flat-pack-build-it-yourself furniture and spent a hysterical afternoon assembling it. (BTW, in those flat-pack boxes they don’t give you any extra nuts and bolts, so if you have made anything recently and had a handful of unused bits left over in the end… you might not want to stand your grandmothers old antique vase on it. Hahaha).

So, as Autumn sets in with great gusto, and the once brilliant greens are turning to everything from reds and golds, yellows and browns, we look forward to yet another week filled with laughter and adventure as this journey of ours moves forward one fantastic day at a time.

This is Kerry Wright!