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| The view from our apartment on Christmas Day |
It was a tiring semester and it took time to recuperate. Getting my brain to slow down from the million mile an hour swirl had been necessary if a little melancholy. Half of me wanted to be with the grandkids in their various locations - not that this was actually possible (see below) and half of me just wanted peace and quiet and rest. I got the peace and quiet and my brain feels a lot less frazzled. The downside or upside to a less frazzled brain is actually time to think. I'm not sure that is always a good thing, you should ask Ian. "I've had an idea" is not his most favourite phrase.
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| The boys! There is a hint of spring in the air. Over winter they are very placid - well most of the time. As spring starts to arrive, they start to jostle each other a bit, with some major disagreements from time to time. |
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| Karla, you are supposed to eat the hay, not wear it |
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| Yes Freddie, it looked like someone stole the snow |
We are living our dreams and yet our dreams are not quite how we imagined them would be. I dreamed I would have a new project, a new baby and I would be called Doctor. That all happened and being in the right place at the right time with the right skill set needed (or at least some of them anyway) I ended up getting promoted to Head of the Masters Programmes for our department. It is all a bit bewildering at times if I actually stop to think of what has happened over the last few years. It's hard to believe that this is actually the first "proper" full-time job I've ever had.
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| After all the snow we had in December, this was a bit unexpected for the 1st January. It didn't last though and our snow came back. |
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| Don't blame you Freddie. It will be nice and warm by the side of the alpaca house in the sun. |
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| Brencis is a handsome chap, very curious and very greedy. Love him anyway! |
That's not to say I haven't done stuff, that's how I ended up with most of the skills I've needed. I've done leadership training, counselling training, home educated my kids, tutored kids online, headed up Sunday Schools, moved countries and dealt with taxes (try sitting down to a 100 page form to update a tax consultant on the current state of finances going back over 20 years if I remember rightly - that's the land of the free for you). I've organised craft projects to keep 1500 kids entertained and educated over a three week period and craft workshops for about a dozen adults on a weekly basis. I've taken creative embroidery classes to expand on what I had learnt from my mother and grandmothers. I've done flower arrangements for my daughter's and my sister's weddings. That's a fairly random list of things I've done, but in all that time, I've never had a full-time job. Actually not sure I had the time for one.
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| Hard to think of Venessa here, squinting in the bright winter sunshine, is Brencis' half sister. She was one of the earliest of Veronica's offspring and Brencis was her last. Veronica is no longer with us, but she would have been 19 this year. |
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| Has someone been eating the snow, Norman? |
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| We had to look back to see if Chanel had such tight curls when we got her - apparently not. She had slightly curlier hair than her daughter but not much, but over the years the curls have got tighter and tighter. No idea who the hairdresser is. |
What else didn't I expect about living the dream? It's hard! I wonder if I thought once I got there it would all be plain sailing and not the start of another epic journey. I never thought that being called a doctor would involve me working in another country to the one I live in. I suppose it didn't even cross my mind that I would be leaving Ian for a week at a time once a month to do that either. Thank goodness for the internet though and online conference software.
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| Our cats have a job to do catching moles. Ian saw GT sat by a big molehill today, so there's hope. Meanwhile they continue to act as our drainage managers and have intentions of an extensive network this year. Absolute pain.
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| Marvin out for a stroll with his mum, with Aggie following behind. |
When I was a stay-at-home mum, honing my negotiating skills - sorry kids you were the guinea pigs but I did learn a lot from you - I tried to live by the phrase of "the best ability is availability". Now I have to think in terms of my availability to who? How do I divide up that time? How do we make this work without it dissolving into a nightmare where no one wins. How do I prioritise my time when I have a full-time job, we have a farm and I need to learn Latvian. Why am I doing a blog anyway when I have so many other things I could be doing?
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| Norm enjoying a Christmas tree. Plenty of vitamins there. |
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| More sunbathing! This time it's Karla |
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| There seems to be a lot of sunbathing going on here. You wouldn't think it was in the minuses. Having said that, it can be glorious at -10C when the sun is out in January/February. |
Well the last one is easy. I do like to write. I do like to create with words too. It helps us remember, it helps us to leave a trail of where we've been and what we've done that I hope our grandkids can read some day. A friend of mine had a wise friend of hers who said, "Never move to be near to the kids" - did she not like them or something? No! She went on to say, "They'll move anyway" and it's probably true. I would have to find a job nearby, we both would actually in order to afford to live there. My skills might still be useful, but not necessarily in the right place at the right time and that could be more difficult to get employment somewhere else. We would settle down and then the kids might move.
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| Last year, Marv needed a neck brace, now he's wearing his own fluffy neck warmer. |
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| Only rolling in the snow mum. Honest! |
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| The view from the summerhouse over the garden. The bumps are not huge moles but where Ian has been dumping the alpaca manure over winter, ready for the potatoes in spring. Fortunately it is not as strong as cow and horse manure. |
So we try to adjust to this new reality that has only been a reality for the last few years. We try to find a new rhythm - even though the rhythm feels a little out of kilter at the moment as we adjust. Changes still need to happen, family needs to be connected to, new global realities need to be adjusted to as well. New friendships, new patterns of learning and a sense of trying to release the next generation to be who they need to be and given the space in which to do that.
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| We don't need those fancy Christmas lights, we have the real thing - real icicles. |
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| Chanel's daughter, Ilvija - not rocking a perm. |
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| Arrrh! The signs of spring! Evidence that the electric company are going to work on new electric lines. Yey! |
The reason we, or should I say I, couldn't join the kids was because it took so long for my passport to get to the UK. I knew I would have to get it renewed early so that it didn't affect my residency. I needed at least three months on it, prior to the ten year term. I sent it off mid-November but it only arrived just before Christmas at the passport office and fortunately was processed pretty quickly just after Christmas - it took 6 weeks and 2 days from posting it to getting it back. Good job I hadn't booked to go at Christmas time. We hope to go later on this year for a family reunion though.
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| Yes boys! It's just a little pussycat |
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| See! Only Rocket Ron. |
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| Yes the snow is cold on the paws, but it's your choice to be out in it. |
January wasn't as relaxed as I thought it would be with staff development days, preparations for the new semester and assessing work from the last semester. I also marked the last set of exams for an organisation I've been with since the late 90s in various capacities, first as a home educating mum, then a net nanny moderating their student cafe and finally a sociology tutor. The extra workload I have now has meant it wasn't feasible to continue and I let them know last year that I would be leaving once the current students had finished - I couldn't leave them mid-course. So that chapter closes, but I'm grateful for all it taught me. I often roll my eyes when people get on about the problems of online learning when I've taught students in countries as far as Brazil, Bangladesh and even the UK, from my little caravan in the middle of a field in Latvia. It taught me how to work online too and that's how I got my Masters. So I know that while online learning has its challenges, it is also full of possibilities. So when a student finally emails me to tell me they are actually not around because she is studying and travelling somewhere sunny, who am I to complain! I merely told her thanks for letting me know and gave her tasks she could do and still travel. It worked!
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| Oh right! So now you are sunbathing in it! |
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| Lolly in the snow. Looks like one of those 3D pics |
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| Our little summer house. Ian uses the small bedroom so he doesn't use as much energy to heat the whole house. Since he's only there during the day, that works. |
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| GT and Betty practising for the next winter olympics |
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| Jumping about because she has decided the snow is not so nice to be in after all |
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| We had some serious ice rain this year and the trees were covered in thick ice, here it's not so thick. |
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| Ilvija with her son, Norman. |
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| Either looks like someone's been playing or lots of little snow Buddha's |
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| The skies are often dramatic at this time of the year |
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| Well there had been some pumpkin seeds drying, but we apparently had a mouse. It must have succumbed to something, as we have had no evidence of one since. |
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| Wintry skies from our apartment |
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| No I'm not going across that to my car. I'd be flat on my back. I'm not really good on ice. Fortunately, I haven't had to resort to the ice grips often this winter. |
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