2019: Our Year

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 ❤️

Home education. This is the year we officially began to home educate, as N reached school age and we could no longer attend preschool play groups. Those had been my go-to activity each weekday, where the kids could play and make as much mess as they liked while I chilled with a cup of tea. No more! Some of our activities were able to continue (Bible Study) but we quickly found other regular activities to get us out of the house. We now attend a weekly forest school for home ed kids, which is pretty much a whole day spent in the forest learning things like making fires and building dams - very much out of my comfort zone but the kids love it! The kids also spend a full day and night at the grandparents, which always includes a trip to the swimming pool, an essential life skill in my book. And then we also visit our local old people's home every week, where the kids have made good friends with some of the residents.

At the old people's home.

Kenya. Travel again! At the beginning of the year, our small local estate church took on a big vision project: to fund the building of a school in rural Kenya. The connections were through a Kenyan family in our church, and the idea came after this family visited our house for a meal and saw the plans for our extension. They asked Mr, did you draw this? Mr: yes. Then they asked, do you think you could draw a school building? Mr was willing to try, and subsequently did - and as the church was raising the funds needed, we felt very much that this was an opportunity of a lifetime to go and meet the people we were helping. So we joined a team from our church who were going out to help with the building works. It absolutely was an adventure - not all going to plan, as N had to spend four days in hospital with pneumonia - and beautiful friendships came of it. Particularly N still speaks almost daily of her friend Shawn, whom she really longs to see again - he was our greatest rock of support particularly during her illness. I blogged most days of the journey, if you'd like to read about it in the archive it's in October 2019.

Notetaking qualification. Last year I qualified as a hairdresser, and I spent a year doing that mobile and finding that actually I wasn't making much money at all - I couldn't work with the children around and with the grandparents only taking them for a few hours at a time, I'd only be able to travel to one or at most two clients per week. As I've been a volunteer notetaker for Open Ears since 2009, and had subtitled big events like Westpoint and Spring Harvest, I was finally able to gain the qualification paperwork so I can do this commercially. This should be much more lucrative, and there is no shortage of available work. Unfortunately I haven't yet been able to register with the relevant agencies as I need to get a criminal records check sorted first, but hopefully that'll all get done early in the new year.

Friendships. This year saw not only a deepening of precious friendships, but particularly through the home ed community we've made some wonderful family friends - friends not only for us adults but also the kids. Bristol is a brilliant place for home educators!

An amazing camping weekend with
fellow home edders

It's been fantastic to celebrate Christmas
with family friends we've come to love

So this was our 2019. I feel like we haven't stopped, it's just been go go go! Life at the moment is a brilliant, breathless, curious, thrilling ride and we love all of it. Here's to 2020: a year of much less travel (because we're broke now....) but, God willing, continuing growth and much adventure. Bring it on!