The countdown begins....

Well there has been a slight gap in the blogging.  I think a holiday in Croatia managed to get in the way.  Croatia was lovely. For the first time in 4 years we had decided 'let's go away, let's have guaranteed sunshine, no more of this rain'.

What happened?  Longest heatwave in the UK since 2006.....

Mmh.


Kids loved it and we loved.  For all the warm weather in the UK, being able to step outside and jump into crystal clear water was worth every penny of that flight with dodgy jet.  It was perhaps the most relaxing holiday we've had in years! Same thing every day - up, breakfast, beach, home, lunch, sleep, up, swim, dinner, pass out.  Sometimes there was even an ice cream to break up the routine!

Anyway, the return from Croatia meant one thing (well two actually) - more jabs for the kids and the countdown really beginning.  The kids are now well and truely jabbed up.  The last one was the worst - BCG for TB.  Arty was NOT happy. And boy did he make that known.  Luckily I escaped and took Isobel for a walk leaving Peter to struggle on with the wriggler.

But they are all done.  You need a lot of jabs for the Desh - TB, Hep A and B, Typhoid, Rabies and so on.  That's the least of their worries though - the next major challenge is trying to get Arty to stop drinking the bath water...or in fact to understand that he can't drink any water which comes out of the tap!  Ha ha.  Good luck with that one many people have said.

So, the countdown.  I think it's 6 weeks today that we fly.  We have put the house on the market - something which saw me hoovering at midnight the other night and vaguely trying to hide all the bits of plastic the kids accumulate in various cupboards, hoping no one would open them!  Peter has given up work - that's quite a major step.  Not only does it mean that for the first time since we met he isn't working for the same organisation, he is unemployed effectively and will mainly be spending his days painting and preparing the dinner (well, I'm hoping for the latter!).

It also means I'm the breadwinner! Scary.  I suddenly feel this massive responsibility to be extra cautious with money to ensure we have enough on my 3.5 day a week salary.  I'm hoping the lottery tickets might have come up trumps but I've not checked yet!

And finally it means attacking the task list.  It seems like a never ending task list and it's not a particularly interesting one:

(1) Go to tip
(2) Paint walls
(3) Spill paint on carpet
(4) Clear up paint on carpet
(5) Go back to tip
(6) Sell car
(7) Rent car
(8) Go to tip
(9) Attempt to chuck out really old toys while the kids aren't looking
(10) Fail in (9)

And so on.

Yesterday I distracted myself fully from this venture and went on a bread baking course.  It was a Christmas gift from all the family - and it was such fun!  It was held at the Lighthouse Bakery in Sussex and I had plumped for European Breads.  Ooh, the poolishes, the bigas, the other fermenty things I'd never heard of.  But the best bit was the bread!!! We now have a freezer full of it.  Which will basically add a few tasks to the list:

(11) Eat contents of freezer
(12) Keep eating contents of freezer
(13) Try not to add anything else to freezer.

Anyway, for some reason I am off to Tanzania this evening.  Not ideal timing as it means leaving Peter and the kids with the chaos of the overflowing bread filled freezer but an opportunity to see some overflowing pit latrines I suppose (just what you wanted to read I'm sure!).

So on that note I will leave you with some pictures of some lovely bread I made yesterday and a picture of the Dhaka skyline which awaits us in 6 weeks time.

Here we have a Limpa at the back, Pan Gallego on the right, Pain de Campagne in the middle and Pane Pugliese on the left