Everyone is here

Hello my friends...

Bullet points till I will find some more mojo to get back to writing!

• Where has the summer gone? Children were in Italy for 6 weeks, we joined them for the last 2 weeks and I took them back with me to Nottingham. Let me tell you, it has not been easy. No childcare to speak of, I was facing 3 weeks of juggling the children and the work on my own. Thankfully I found a summer camp on campus which I used to the last available hour for Oliver and I dragged along Martina when she didn't have her induction time in the day care (also on campus). The weather has been very kind to us, and the house with the garden, and the trampoline (bless whoever invented the trampoline) helped massively to burn energies (the children) and keep the sanity (mine).
• Mike has moved over last friday and as he is now officially in charge of the children and the house while I take a break and go to the office...no seriously, I am in owe of single moms with young children and no help who seem to manage so gracefully. Kudos to you all out there.
• Mike has no job yet but now that he is here it should be a bit easier. Meanwhile he is doing a lot of things that otherwise I would have to do. He has been great help and somehow filled his days with a number of tasks which is brilliant. 
• Oliver started his new school on tuesday. It's a brilliant school, 7 minutes walk from home and Mike collects him in the afternoon. Both enjoy so much the time together, it's fantastic to see the bond growing.
• Martina is in full time day care on campus, they have their own private woodland and she LOVES it. Every friday they will do this "Forest school", no matter the weather, where they will learn about respect for nature but also building shelters,  tracking games, camp fire cooking....I want to go to!! Its concept originates in Denmark and it sounds amazing.
• Me. I'm doing ok. Now I have a bit more balance and I managed to catch up on a few things in work. We have been quite successful recently with our research and securing grants so I am more relaxed. My lab is still not ready and the group will relocate in 3 weeks. I'm told "there is plenty of time..." I suspect we will be playing cards for a while.

I will try and be back soon, I am reading though!

Move complete

Oh why is it so difficult for me to blog these days? I love to see what you have been up to and I think it's the same for you and yet I just seem to have nothing to say.

So after Brexit here nothing has changed. We all think it will change for the worse but nobody knows when it will happen. And we all just go along as normal. But one thing did happen, Mike had an interview with a company after Brexit, they went ahead with the interview, they didn't offer him the job but said he was great and everyone felt he would have been a great fit and to please apply again. I never heard such a thing. You either fit their profile or you don't. Yet it seems they didn't hire him because they decided to stay with the skill set they already had within  the company. We will see.

I moved over the car and now the house has relocated, I have all my things (albeit in boxes!) and Mike is the one who is roaming. The children are in Italy and my parents have been minding them for almost a month. The plan was for them to stay there till the end of August by my parents had enough, so we go for two weeks and then we taken them back....or I take them back to Nottingham. Which will be interesting because I don't know exactly what I can do with them till their school/daycare start. I have booked Oliver into a summer camps here on the University grounds and Martina will start her transition into the day care also on campus. The fact that the children are coming back with me in mid August means I have to have the house in much better shape and much quicker than I thought I had to. Their room was used much as the storage room while I was sorting out the wardrobes (which had to be built and Mike built two out of three already) and now every evening I'm shifting stuff in the attic or into a different room....not fun!!

Of course after months of intense travelling, plus the move etc I came down with the worse flu in years...all last week I had very high temp and a cough. On friday I started feeling a bit better, I still have a cough and very low energy but I'm no longer homebound.

Oh and I got my first UK grant!! So I feel a little less under pressure. Lets hope I continue to do well.