The announcement

Another half term gone, only one more (long – 7½ weeks) half term left and then it’s the summer holidays! I can’t believe how quickly this year has flown by! Having been so ill over Easter (you may remember I had chickenpox), I started back at work still exhausted – and spent the entire half term feeling tired. At first I thought it was just PVS (post-viral syndrome), which I know I’m prone to getting. Then I discovered that actually it was because I’m pregnant!

Needless to say, we’re thrilled, and suitably terrified – well, this part of ‘we’ is suitably terrified. I don’t think the reality has set in fully yet for Graeme. I’ve had mild morning sickness – for which I’m grateful – but I’ve been following all the tricks to avoid it, and they seem to have worked to some degree. We didn’t really want to tell people (apart from immediate family and one or two close friends) until we’d passed the first trimester, but I’ve just got so sick and tired of being vague with people and not being able to tell them why I’ve been feeling so tired and ill that we’ve given up on that idea.

Officially the baby is due in early January (see the ticker below), but I’m hoping for a late birth so that I can keep working till the Christmas break. My mom has already booked her ticket out to stay with us from late Jan for a few weeks to help with the baby, and I’m so pleased about that!! We’ll be home during April anyway for Graeme’s sister’s wedding, but I definitely want my Mommy around in the early days!

This obviously has HUGE implications for our future, and we’re now thinking very seriously about moving back to SA at the end of 2006. (While we’re happy to have our baby here, we’re not so happy about raising it here.) The fact that we’ve achieved our goal of getting British citizenship and passports means there’s nothing really keeping us here – unless, of course, God decides otherwise – which He’s had a habit of doing a lot recently.

It’s been tough trying to keep up with our hectic social and church life while I’ve been feeling so ill and tired, but we’ve coped by simply saying no to a lot of stuff – which has been so freeing in many respects. Other than that, life goes on. We’ve finished our short course, which was very good, and now are looking forward to getting back to a more normal pattern during the week.

Over this half term break we went camping near Wales, which was lovely! Cold at night! We did some lovely walks around the Wye River Valley and Forest of Dean, and if I have my way we’ll be heading back that way shortly. It’s STUNNING there…. Before long it will be summer, and then we’ll be off on our annual camping holiday at New Wine. Sadly, because we had such a long Easter break, the summer break is only 5 weeks long, which isn’t really long enough to recover from the year’s teaching. We’ll probably be moving over the summer as well (need to find our own place with 2 beds – room for baby and stuff), which means it won’t really be a holiday for either of us, but I suppose 5 weeks is better than nothing!

We’re hoping to do a number of weekend breaks to Europe over the next little while, now that we have our British passports. Sadly, these will be in lieu of the ski-ing holiday we had planned for Christmas. I’m really disappointed about not being able to ski again, but when weighed up against the joy of a new life, it’s hardly comparable!

So, that’s our news for the time being – thank you for reading it all. Please remember the three of us in your prayers, especially baby who, at just two centimetres long already has a heartbeat, all his/her internal organs and fingers and toes. Isn’t Life Marvellous!!