Caravan Diary — Day 148

Silence from the play pen is always a reason for suspicion: someone's cracked open the biscuit tin!

Camping mit Schweinen und Werder gewinnt mal wieder - Camping with Pigs and Werder finally winning again!

Schwein um 6 Uhr morgens, das wenig später die Campingküche unserer Freunde verwüstet hat.

Da Thea im Juli zurück zur Arbeit musste und ein gemeinsamer, richtiger Familienurlaub dieses Jahr durch Hauskauf und Renovierung unmöglich war, haben wir zumindest ein langes Wochenende Campingkurzurlaub genossen und das vor einem Jahr für £31 auf ebay erstandene Zelt endlich ausprobiert. Dazu ging es an die Südküste vor die Tore von Weymouth, auf eine Farm, die jedes Jahr im August ihre Felder mit Plumpsklos und Solarduschen ausstaffiert und aus der dann eine grosse Campingkolonie direkt an der Kanalküste wird. Der besondere Charme des Zeltplates ist einerseits die etwas alternative Grundstimmung, aber auch, dass man einfach Lagerfeuer auf der Wiese machen kann und das allerlei Getier auf dem Gelände unterwegs ist. Während man beim Camping in Kanadas Wäldern auf die Bären acht geben muss, musste man hier seine Vorräte vor den umherstreunenden Schweinen sichern.

Mum and Mats on Weymouth beach

Von Weymouth haben wir Chesil Beach und die Südküste bis Lyme Regis erkundet, und auf unserem Heimweg am Montag sind wir dann noch nach Studland gefahren, wo es einen herrlichen Sandstrand gibt der Mücki dafür entschädigt hat, dass die anderen Strände hauptsächlich aus Kieseln bestanden.

Chesil Beach, obwohl kein Sandstrand fand Willem es dort doch amüsant

Ein paar Tage später bin ich dann mit Mücki alleine nach Bremen aufgebrochen, um eine Woche Heimaturlaub einzuschieben, während Mats und Thea zu Hause geblieben sind. In Bremen haben wir die meiste Zeit damit verbracht Familie und Freunde zu sehen. Ein Highlight war, dass Willem und ich mit Frauke und Anton zum Werder Spiel gegen Augsburg ins Stadion gegangen sind. Anton hat Willem ein altes, inzwischen zu klein gewordenes Werder Trikot geschenkt, das auch in England jetzt schon mehrmals im Kindergarten angezogen worden ist.

Vielleicht muessten wir öfter ins Stadion gehen, Werder hat 1:0 gewonnen!

Caravan Diary - Day 94

Bath day @ Vicky's: Having fun in the mirror

Wow! WOW!!! I did think I hadn't blogged for a long time, but THIS long?...

Those of you who don't like long posts look away now! I have so much to catch up on...

Since the last post, such a lot has happened:

• I have gone back to work (full time. Eurghhhh!) 
• We have a nearly new roof. 
• We have nearly got a bathroom (still lacking a toilet and a few tiles, but very usable and on the verge of beautiful!). 
• And - most excitingly - we don't sleep in the caravan anymore! Haven't for a while, in fact. As of Saturday, the boys are even sleeping in their very own bedroom. Willem is very excited - as are we! 

The boys and I had been out for the day while Hendrik got a chance to get on with the decorating, and as we got home Willem stormed upstairs and shouted down "Mummy, Mummy, you've GOT to come and look!!!! It's nearly FINISHED!!! And it looks so GOOD!!" Awhhhh, bless! How long have we waited for this? If I had a pound for every time Willem has said in his weepy voice "I want our old house back!" in the last few months, I'd be a very rich woman. Let's hope we've now finally laid to rest the ghosts of houses past!...

Between us moving into the house and the boys moving into their bedroom we all slept together in our smallest bedroom. The one that is going to be YOURS if you come for a visit. I don't think I will ever forget the day we moved out of the caravan. We sat on our sofa bed for a long, long time, just enjoying the fact that we had four walls around us that were not made of cardboard. And we were lying on a genuine mattress. We had broad smiles on our faces for hours.



We have really learned to be incredibly grateful for the small things. For example for a day that starts with a shower and the boiler doesn't play up. Or for no longer sleeping on 40-year-old caravan cushions. Or for finding a favourite Playmobil police car in one of the boxes at the very bottom of a pile. Or for a sunny day in our new garden (or, in fact, for a rainy day in our new garden - especially when shared with good friends over a BBQ...)

Don't be tempted to think it's all roses in the Schäfer household, though. Our life on a building site comes with it's regular lows as well as with the highs. Both Hendrik and I have found coping harder the longer this project has been going on. We are both utterly exhausted. And I have been surprised to learn which issues stress me the most. If anyone had asked me at the beginning of the build what I would find hardest to cope with, I might have mentioned "deadlines slipping", "building materials not turning up on time", "not having a bathroom", "not having my things" etc. What I would certainly never ever had thought of was "having no flooring". And that, of all things, turns out to be the single biggest annoyance, which is making my life hell. Because it means that I can't leave the kids to get on with anything, EVER. The second I put Mats down, he will be off, crawling to the edge of whatever rug or play mat he is on. And because all our floor boards are caked in plaster (and other) dust, if no one intercepts him before he's got off he has a 20cm wide and 40cm long brown-gray streak all over his front and needs a change before being taken out in public. It's so frustrating I could scream. And Willem keeps coming up to us with cupped hands (which, by now, already sets alarm bells going in my brain) and goes  "look mummy/daddy (delete as appropriate), I have found some NAILS and a BLADE!" Aaaaaarghhh! And then the fight ensues, as we try to take his loot off him: "Noooooooooooo, but I want to use them for HAMMERING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And if you think the garden might be any better/safer: Mats has an obsession with eating grass and moss. Which would be fine in my book, if he then didn't reliably start projectile vomiting. So, yes, folks, life is STILL hard, albeit peppered with lots of glimmers of hope and a silver lining firmly in sight. When it's done we'll fondly look back and think it was all worth it.

In the meantime, I will probably have to find a new name for my blog posts, as the days of the caravan chronicles are well and truly numbered. I mean, we still have the caravan. Occasionally, like yesterday, we even use it as a lounge/playroom. But it doesn't nearly play the huge role in our life anymore, that it did in the beginning. Who knows, come stage 3 of the build with the kitchen extension we might gladly retreat to it again... If anyone can come up with a catchy new name for the build-your-own-house posts, please tell me!

And that's me for tonight. The matchsticks aren't strong enough for my eyelids...
I'll try to not leave another such long gap between posts.

Caravan Diary, Day 45

Getting on with the decorating is a lot easier now that Mats has started going to nursery full time. I would have made even more progress had I not spent most of Sunday and Monday up to my shoulder in crap trying to unblock our main drain again (eurghhh!!!!). The amount of rubbish I found in its depths beggars belief: stones, broken bits of metal grate, blood sugar test strips... Well, anyway, after many hours of scooping out liquid and ladling out junk it is now flowing again (for the moment), but thank goodness its days are numbered due to our impending kitchen extension! Keep your fingers crossed that it'll not give me any more grief until the work on the kitchen starts in autumn.

But the weekend had much better moments as well: We had a visit from Vicky, Megan, Oliver and Rowan who stayed for lunch and a walk and extended afternoon tea complete with Kidlington-made scones. It was lovely to see everyone, especially Roo who has grown so much since we saw him last!

Many of you will remember how I whined about 2013 getting off to such a rubbish start. Well, turns out it could have been A LOT WORSE! For reasons too complicated to explain here I happened to end up in our old house on Saturday evening. As it happens, our buyer hasn't even moved in, yet, because he started a new job in Manchester three weeks ago. Phiuhh! In fact: mega-phiuhhh!!!!! Had our sale taken even a couple of weeks longer to go through it would most certainly have collapsed, because this guy would not have bought Princes Street after all!!!!!!!!! And it gets worse: last week there was yet another fire in the derelict pub next door, so nobody else would have bought it, either. At least not for the foreseeable future. I simply cannot put into words just how grateful this all makes me feel. We HAVE sold and we HAVE moved. And we're loving being in this wreck of a place and doing it up. Yes, it's stressful, and yes, it's cramped, but hey, it's only a matter of time. Even if it is months until we get rid of the chaos and the dust. What is that in comparison to what could have been?...

Caravan Diary, Day 39 (is it?? I've lost count!)

Today I picked my first ever lock. Am feeling quite smug now, as it was rather easier than I had assumed. Just needed a set of feeler gauges and a "how to" video on YouTube. Now which lock to pick next?

In other news I watched my dad paint our garage wall while I was trying to console an eight-month-old who was desperately tired but refused to sleep. The roof is nearly done now, more skirting boards have been fitted and the last of the hideous doors are resting against a tree on our front lawn waiting for a new home (ELSEWHERE!). The last lot of doors took all of two hours to disappear. Let's see how long these will take to go.

Now, how long is this current spot of rainy weather meant to last? 'Cause it cramps my style. Big time!