My Blog
My musings about the world, self publishing, living abroad, and my author career.
Me time
I'm now getting used to having a little bit of time at home by myself each week. I try to make sure that most daily tasks (eg food shopping, washing etc) are already done so that I can spend the time on things that I wouldn't normally do during the week. Things like...
Staying in touch
We have a set routine of weekly Skype sessions arranged so that both sets of grandparents can read the children their bedtime story. And they read a book which we also have a copy of, so we can look at it while they are reading. The children seem to really enjoy it...
Language learning
Dutch will be the language of my children's education. They will do exams in Dutch and their proficiency in that, as well as the subject, will determine which secondary school and then university they will go to. I do find this quite intimidating and I switch between...
The language of music…
...is obviously Italian! I am enjoying being a member of a wind band here in the Netherlands, and I've now been playing with them for over a year. And this blog post has been in my mind for nearly that long! I used to play in two orchestras and a wind quintet...
Advent activities 2015
Last year I created a series of activities for the children to do every day of Sinterklaas and advent. And this year we did the same, so here is a list of what we did as I'm trying to catch up with all the things I want to blog about: Sunday Nov 15th - go and see...
annual review 2015
We're settling into life here now - I've joined an orchestra, started doing yoga & go to church every now and again (that's another reason to improve the Dutch). Rocket boy has started school & starry girl is about to start preschool, which means we are in the...
Autumn days…
...when the grass is jewelled. I started writing this a while ago and like the pictures so am publishing it despite it being out of date now 🙂 I don't know if autumn has been particularly stunning this year, or it's just the first in a while when I've been able to...
(Mis)adventures with coffee
I'm not a coffee drinker now living in a country of coffee drinkers. This has caused a few amusing moments! At our house-warming party last year the coffee I made was described as "coffee-ish"! We had a small building project done earlier in the year and two sets of...
growing up
It's funny the little things that make you realise the children are growing up. I've just had a clear out of plastic spoons, sippy cups, and poppered vests as we don't need them any more. So it's not just rocket boy going to school that's passing milestones! She's...
Language learning
Learning any new language is intimidating, especially learning it as an adult. What I want to say in conversation is much more complicated than what my son chatters away to himself. Different tenses, sub-clauses, conditional etc are rarely part of his standard...
starting school
Now we've moved to the Netherlands we are learning about how a new school system starts. The first big change to how we're used to it working in the UK is that you start school the day after your fourth birthday - so there are new students all through the year. (Oh,...
Things we do differently
I'm sure everyone changes their routine when they move house; and even more so when they move country. But I've noticed that some of the things that have changed in how we do things don't seem to have all that much to do with being in the Netherlands, except that...