Will Dig Life

I love that this blog is now old enough to look back at life in previous years - this is really my vision for this, here I can think out loud but it's also a real record of life for my kids to see when they're old enough. It's been great fun to look back on reflections in December of  2018 ,  2017  and 2015 ... But here's to 2019. Austria . The year began with a long trip to Vienna, just me and the kids. This was to get out of the way of messy building works, carried out mostly by Mr. himself - he knocked through two internal walls, while our hired builders knocked through an external wall after building the extension. Because my family has a flat in Vienna that we could use (my late grandmother's) we were able to stay in the city on our own and have lots of adventures. While Mr. worked hard on the house. On our way Fiaker Underground, our mode of transport Much loved Opa Helmut Snow! With our new friend, Frank Family ❤️ ...

Today is the first of December, the first Advent Sunday. I have been looking forward to this time so much! And then D(3) got ill. His first temperature in his life, to be fair 3.5 years is good going... but for two days he was quite poorly, and today he woke up not quite right yet so he wasn't able to go to church. And I woke up from a sleepless night of back pain that the TENS machine didn't remotely touch - so as we stayed home together, he got progressively better and more energetic, while all I could do was hobble around and try (unsuccessfully) to find a comfortable position on the sofa. But, the date is the date and the show must go on. We had put the advent calendars up last night, and Mary, Joseph and the donkey had started their journey... Today's activity from the advent calendar was making a gingerbread house. So, after lunch, we got going with that - painkillers enabling me - and it was actually great fun!

Christmas is a big deal. Especially for kids, who will take what they understand as "normal" or "traditional" from their childhood memories! As a couple, Mr and I are from different cultural backgrounds so our family traditions around Christmas are different - hence, from the time my big girl was born, it was clear that we were going to make our own family traditions: traditions with intentions. Our most important intention was and is to instill in the kids an understanding of why we celebrate this holiday (it's Jesus' birthday!), but we also want to give the children that magical joy and pass on (only) those of our cultural traditions which support the main aim. So, here are a few of our family ways at Christmas, and, importantly, advent - that month of preparation for the big day! Advent: the month of December Advent as defined by the church is the month starting four Sundays before the 25th of December. So it can start in November. At the start of a...

We're home now - firstly, more Kenya photos! Here is the presentation we showed at church on Sunday, lots of photos from our Kenya adventure... Much as we loved our time in Kenya - and we did: looking back now I would say it was a time of extreme high times and some pretty low times, certainly never boring! - it is lovely to be back home. Our cases are unpacked, Fred the dog is back home, and tomorrow we start our regular weekly activities again. And today we were back at church again for the first time. Sadly I didn't take pictures of us all in our splendid African attire! While we were away, autumn really arrived - the trees are losing colourful leaves and the air is decidedly crisp. After church, because we hadn't seen Jim for way too long [...] we went over to his house for the afternoon. Lots of food and fun was had!

Our return journey day started with a 3.30am wake-up call - that's 12.30am UK time - which would have been ok if we'd had an early night, but if course we didn't... so, leaving the house at 5am we arrived in very good time for our flight and even found time for a spot of breakfast at the airport. The flight this time was a daytime one, which I was a bit apprehensive about because the kids wouldn't be sleeping, but they did have a bit of a kip and the rest of the time they kept reasonably occupied with the inflight movies. And Emmanuel showed D(3) some Greek islands and boats on the water when we were above those, which D found fascinating! Coming home to a clean and tidy house, left so by our German house sitting guest, was the best - but we were absolutely finished and went straight to bed. It is nice to be back in our own beds!