Will Dig Life

This week we took a deep dive into the Stone Age. I got a few formal resources, but we also created our own and explored a place right on our doorstep! The UK has very interesting ancient history remains, and some of them aren't far from us at all - we took a trip out to Stanton Drew stone circles, three large stone circles in a field second only in size to Avebury. Stonehenge isn't that far from us either, but you can't go up to the stones there whereas these were touchable, we walked the circles and talked about how and why people in the stone age worked so hard to transport these huge rocks and arrange them like this. After getting up close and personal with the rocks, we decided to draw them - N(8) drew just one rock, whereas D(7) decided to create a diagram of the way the rocks were arranged in a circle. After visiting the field, we took a walk into the village of Stanton Drew and looked around the small church - not quite stone age, but historic and interesting noneth

Towards the end of August this year, Mr. and I suddenly faced a very different future to the one we had envisioned: at 42 years old - and he's 55 - I found myself pregnant again. Camping after our summer trip - and I've just found out I'm pregnant As it's been seven years since D(7) was born, we really didn't expect that. We would have loved more kids soon after D, but I just never got pregnant. Seven years on, we were pretty convinced that this was our lot. Two beautiful children, we really can't complain! So we needed a bit of time to digest that. A new baby, with siblings 8 and nearly 10 years older! And Mr. would be 75 when that child was 20... the maths was mind boggling. But hey - if that was our new reality, we were going to run with it! The kids certainly were excited about it, they're old enough to understand and yes, we told them; this is a family matter. I knew there was a chance this pregnancy wouldn't work out, but we felt they had a right t

Travel for 2023: finished. I have to say, this past week in Sweden has made me grateful to finally return to 'normal' life. We love to travel, but man, it does wear you down eventually! The reason we went to Sweden was my work with IVSS Churchear , the European charity for hard of hearing people. So for me, it was mostly about business - but, as I've written before, as a family we think it's important that the kids see us in the act of serving because that's a value we want to pass on. So when I serve - at IVSS, at Open Ears , at Spring Harvest - the kids come along. They see me serve, they meet people who are different and who face challenges that my kids don't face, and they learn that everyone should be equally loved and valued. This kind of learning doesn't translate to academics, but is actually way more important. The conference wasn't in Stockholm, it was in the countryside - so with a very long train ride from Stockholm Airport, we got to see so