Clever codes and visitors

In some ways it has been a busy week as we got some things sorted out that would ordinarily be fairly routine but can present a challenge in a different country with a different language. First of all we took the car for its annual inspection, even though it is only a one year old car it still has to pass its technical. In England you do not have to take the car for its MOT (english technical inspection) until it is 3 years old. We had heard some horror stories about them not being keen on foreigners and being pedantic with the inspection so we were a little worried but we decided to try on our own anyway. We managed to sort out the payments first for the years tax and the fee for the inspection with a little english from the cashier and then we went for the inspection - they turned out to be very nice and friendly even tried to fix our headlight which is off by a centimetre but it passed anyway as everything else is fine. It was quite a relief to get through with no hassles on that one.

Our next trip was to get our tax paid here in Latvia.  I do like our accountants here, it is so nice to have accountants who you feel care about you and not stuck in some far off office who are much to busy dealing with very important people with much bigger incomes than you. Funny thing is that for the first time in our married life I had to pay tax and Ian didn't. 

Mark, our middle child and eldest son, is here in Latvia this week, now we will find out how many times Mark signs on to my blog and looks at my little cluster map that you can see in the top right hand corner. Hehe. So how many of those UK visits on the map are his? We shall see! Talking of Mark his prayers are now known to reduce children to tears. We took a visit to see some friends of ours Steve and Natalija and they have two young sons, the oldest is just 2 years old. We were sat around the table about to eat our evening meal and Mark took a bite forgetting that our friends usually pray before meals (we usually pray before our main meal too but not every meal) so we jokingly told him he could pray and Steve agreed, at which point the little guy started complaining that he wanted his daddy to pray and not Mark. Steve patiently explained that Mark was going to pray and so Mark began at which point the little guy started wailing, we all fell about laughing until Natalija reminded us we were not helping and for the rest of the meal we had to eat whilst barely concealing our giggles. It was one of those situations when you can't help but laugh and the need as adults to remain composed is a near impossibility but has to be done. I wonder if that will go down as one of those treasured moments as he grows? It certainly be one of ours as we have been teasing Mark ever since.

Ian was trying to write an excel code to do clever things with graphs this week, I was revising but it struck me we seem to be having similar problems. Ian runs his code and then gets stuck part way through and the code won't run. I think I have sorted a problem out with my understanding of part of my course and then try to answer a question and realise that I have not understood something else and it is kind of like where Ian's code gets stuck, the ideas just won't run. We both end up having to go back through to try and find the bit we are getting stuck on. A blog I follow explains it far more pictorially

"As I climb over a fence into a new field there is a feeling of space for a while until the next fence comes into view."

That phrase really hit me when I read it, and I really think yeah that is exactly how I feel at the moment. I have enjoyed the year of Jubilee we have had coming to Latvia, yes it has had it's challenging moments like having hubby around 24/7 when I am used to time and space on my own but coming out of that year and realising that there has to be some serious planting ahead in order to get a harvest - whatever that means - feels a bit like coming up against that fence. I am not really sure what kind of a fence it is but I have a feeling I need to work that out so I can climb over it, you don't go climbing electric fences without turning the electric off first. 

This week is Passover and according to one Jewish site it isn't only about the freedom from their Egyptian masters, it's also about liberation from their internal Egypt, which still holds them hostage. That is kind of like coming up against those fences too- kind of our own internal Egypts! I guess we all have those barriers from time to time and some take a long time to get over, or through or round but one thing I have learnt it is worth the effort to get to a place where you can feel the freedom of a new space where God intends you to be and I am looking forward to getting there and Spring and Easter sure seems like as good a time as any to embark on new adventures. 

Spring has finally begun to show itself this week and we are watching with amazement as things reappear out of the snow and as the grass begins to turn green, it is as if Spring is in a rush to get here now that it has started. You can see from the pictures how much snow has disappeared compared to last week. The first picture is looking in the same direction as the deer was feeding last week and the seats around the sandpit in the second picture were invisible until earlier on this week and the grass only showed 

through 

where the heating pipe runs underground. Even the taller seats near the table were only just poking through for much of the Winter. As you can imagine though the whole place is absolutely saturated definitely wellie weather (wellies =rubber boots). 

One last thing, my books arrived for the next unit of my course this week and I nearly didn't get them at all. Ian has a habit of ringing the doorbell every time he comes home and so does Mark now he is here, quality control he keeps telling me; they had gone for a drive to see if they could get the car stuck errr I mean drive in some remaining snow, when the doorbell went and I assumed it was them returning, and after leaving the guy hanging around at the door for a while I thought I had better investigate as no one seemed to have come in, and sure enough there was a delivery man. One of these days we are going to have an important delivery and I am going to ignore them totally.