The kids are back in school after the half term holiday and it definitely feels very weird. I have come a long way from dreading these half terms to being in a state where I love, enjoy and look forward to them. Working from home and growing up kids do take the edge off a lot of things.
Rewinding to the day Pumpki came back from her residential, we had quite a bit upheavals. We are getting a bathroom renovated in our house. This means, a lot of mess, a lot of people coming and going, things being noisy and everything topsy turvy. Pumpki missed 2 days of all this since she was away. The day she came back, she was drenched and in need of a good clean. She went to take a shower and there was no hot water! After 2.5 days of messing about in mud and generally having unsupervised standards of hygiene I wanted to reinstate my authority. That started with a bath. But no hot water meant not a good bath. We called the plumber and he said he was bit tied up and would be able to come in the morning. So there was no other go but go old school. Out came a bucket, 2 big kettles of boiling water and the frigid water from the taps. It was not a bath worthy of my exacting standards, but well! Something we had not anticipated, but had to deal with.
There were 2 more days of torrential rain before we could forget school runs. Saturday evening I got a message out of the blue from an old family friend. We were quite close while starting out our UK journey. Since then life happened and we moved on. We have managed to keep in touch. The usual wishes over birthdays and New Years. They were in the vicinity and said would pop over in the evening the next day. It was something we had not planned for, and we definitely do not host people often in our house. I invited them over for dinner. It was quite a different experience planning and hosting a family over. There was a lot of work, cooking, cleaning, ferrying Pumpki for swimming and getting her back and ready. But once they arrived it was pure joy having them over. We reminisced the days past and it was a veritable trip down the memory lane. The evening had seemed daunting at first, but it was such a pleasant end to a Sunday and what a way to kick start the one week of holidays. Since there was food leftover, the load of cooking was way reduced. Kids enjoyed their time on video games and I was busy tackling some code bugs which was not fun :(
Tuesday K had plans to get some Chinese takeaway and we had a blast gorging on some delicious food. It was pure coincidence that it happened to be the start of Chinese New year! There were no plans for Wednesday but Thursday Chiyaa had some outing plans to the city centre with her friends. All grown up in making those plans but still a baby when it comes to executing them :D Since the weather was going to be a bit rubbish K decided to provide taxi service. Because they were going all the way to city centre, I decided to take the afternoon off and take Pumpki to my sister's house which is in the area. This was a sudden plan but it was a lovely plan. I was going mad with all sorts of issues in code and was finding it very difficult to switch off. Many evenings I would be up staring at the code and trying to get to the bottom of an issue. But taking that half day off and having the Friday off was a real boost to my happiness. I felt glad just hanging out with the kids in the living room not thinking about failing tests.
February is Chiyaa's birth month. So we spend quite some time and effort scouring for gifts for her. Chiyaa is also a pasta fanatic. So Friday we had the day off to enjoy a pre-birthday lunch at an Italian restaurant. The lunch was a huge success with everyone enjoying their meals. After having the lunch we strolled around the city centre, notched a few steps in our kitty and made out home. When we reached home there was an unwanted surprise :( As I had mentioned we have the renovation work going on. The tiler was in and he was working when we left home. He would lock the house and go once he was done since we had another set of keys with us. But on reaching home we realised that we had forgotten to grab the keys! It was the worst possible outcome at the end of a fruitful but tiring day. We called the plumber and asked if he had the tiler's contact to give the keys. Luckily he mentioned that he was home and gave us the address. After a few fumbles with the address we reached the right home and collected the keys. Phew!
So we had quite a happening half term. The coming term is a shorter one. And at the end of it we have the trip to India!
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