See, that didn’t take so long. I said soon, right? OK, I kinda cheated – I got these two albums together while we were in Zeeland for the weekend with Ivo’s parents for our first relaxing vacation type thing since Germany. And, no, that wasn’t the weekend that’s just finished, it was the one before that – yes, more than a week ago. That’s sort of how time and brain cells are going for me – it takes that long to find the time to write these posts. So, well I will try to get the rest of the catching up done fairly soon, I’m not guaranteeing anything.
As for what happened this summer, it was mostly work on the house. We started camping there on May 24th, and stayed there until June 16th when we were lucky enough to be able to house and cat sit for a friend in Amersfoort. We used our time camping in the house to make decisions on what to do to it and to start the ordering for things like a kitchen (which has a four month lead time). And then, once we were safely ensconced elsewhere, we started the destruction, aided by contractors who did some of the heavy destruction and rebuilding.
We were lucky, and our housesitters were able to find a place of their own for July, so we moved back to our old house on July 7, which made life a lot simpler. And our old house was really close to the DIY stores, so that was handy. I know the layout of them all pretty well by now.
We found a sitter for Liam, and he also spent a few periods of time with Oma and Opa, including a week by the sea which looks to have been wonderful. Kaya started going to the sitter as well later in the summer. And Ivo and I worked on the house, taking out what needed to come out and redoing the electric wiring and such, with the goal of getting it all done before Ivo had to go back to work at the beginning of August. We didn’t quite make that, but by working up to the absolute last minute (including running ethernet wire at 2 am the night my mum arrived) we were able to get ready for the plasterers to come in and make it all pretty again while my mum visited from August 9th to 19th.
I had a great time with her (though of course more came up with to deal with the house than I would have liked) and she enjoyed spending time with her other two grandkids (and meeting Kaya for the first time). After she left it was time to finish off the electrics (which all work!), paint, put in floors and in general get ready to move in by the 28th of September.
Thanks to more help from Ivo’s parents we managed to get mostly done in time to move in. I should also mention the great help from several of our friends during the summer who either watched kids, fed us, worked on the house with us or more than one of these. I feel really lucky that we know such great people here.
Anyway enjoy the photos (and commentary) from our summer by clicking here or on the photo below.
