142 days until we will come back and do the beginnings of setting up house and paperwork and all that fuss.
The road trip was 167 days and we were so done with that. To the best of my knowledge we will only be separated from Noah for a 3 week stretch and a 4 day stretch. So 25 days alone with the kids in that 142 days. That’s not so bad.
Looks like the former owners are not up for the fuss of renting temporarily from us. They have a lot going on and that makes a lot of sense. They want 8-10 months in one rental without more issues. I totally understand.
That means that we will try to have our stuff shipped directly to the UK from California because we will take possession of the keys (our solicitor will at least) and when we have to come to the UK to handle paperwork in October we will spend a month starting to set up house. I won’t cry about this. (Really 3.5 weeks.)
207 days until we get to move into our house permanently and we won’t be traveling for quite some time.
We will get to go see Pam and her family in Taiwan for a month at the end of traveling there.
So many things keep changing. I feel like keeping track of the plan is hard. That’s because the plan keeps changing.
Luckily, when we go to Taiwan we will only need to bring the bare minimum of stuff we need for a month in warm weather. Golly that sounds so restful and light.
The plan has changed a lot as we have had to look at the realities of dealing with laws and visas and processes we don’t control. I’m a bit sad that we aren’t going to be traveling for the 18-24ish months I had hoped for.
I AM NOT THE TINIEST BIT SAD MY CHILDREN WILL BE ENTERING SCHOOL A LITTLE EARLIER THAN PLANNED.
I mean, things have gone ok for the past couple of weeks. And we have set up a summer full of Outschool classes that will mean I don’t feel like I need to do almost anything for their academics for a solid two months. I won’t be on vacation but I will have a reduced load. Ahhhhhh.
They have a bunch of classes set up in Minecraft where they will be doing a variety of learning activities through the game (it’s actually incredibly well done, we have tried such classes before and they learn a lot) as well as classes on healthy boundaries in relationships, being savvy consumers and ad aware, how to socialize with new people (kiddo said he really wanted this class–ok), and cyber safety. The kids will keep up with their Duolingo too because they like it and that’s on the list of chores they earn money for and they really like that part.
Middle Child never has more than one class scheduled in a day and Eldest Child only has two classes scheduled on a day for a couple of the weeks. I told them that I want them writing notes for the classes as their academic writing for the summer. What do you plan to do, then after the class write up how it went, what you changed, and what you think you might like to change in the future. Then get up and try again with the next day.
Plan, do, reflect.
And they have unlimited time on their kindles so they will hopefully go through a lot of books. I bet I could do some sort of reading challenge to encourage them to each be reading more. (EC doesn’t really need the push, but MC might benefit. He’s a fairly standard little boy–he’d much rather be doing than reading.)
MC will be receiving a pedometer watch when we get to Portland. It’s already arrived.
I think our summer challenges will be: whoever has the highest step count for the week gets to pick a family movie over the weekend. And for reading…. maybe for every 10 books you read I will add… £20 to your start of room budget? (I was going to give each kid £500 to start with for furnishing their rooms.)
We’ll talk about it at lunch.