Belize to England

Yes, there obviously has been a lack of blogging on my behalf recently, but this is because we suddenly and quite expectantly have flown off to England earlier in the week. Andy's nan passed away and his mum is due for triple surgery next week, so we decided that we needed to be with the family.

Right now we're in his nan's old house, getting everything ready for the funeral & in a few days we'll head up to Norfolk to be nearer his mum & dad's house.

The kids have been amazing through this whole upheaval. They were as good as gold on the flight over, which is always a worry, as you never know how your children will behave when they are forced to sit down and share a confined space with tons of other people for such a long time. Lucas was actually trying to figure out which cloud was heaven & was expecting to see his great-grandmother fly by when we were up the air.

Anyway, I'm going to keep it short. Just wanted to let you all know where we were.

Enjoy your family and friends! They are precious!

So what's new?

Well, it's still hot here. There was meant to be a cold front coming in now, but apart from it being pleasantly cool last night, nothing much has changed in the temperature during the day. Maybe it's a tat cooler than it was, but that's it.

Some good news: the house is getting closer and closer to getting finished. Yeeha! There are so many people working in there today, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, builders...it's quite a sight. I think that in another week or so we'll be able to take out the partition wall and live in the whole building.

Lucas is back in school (another 'Yeeha!') and little Aidan is still fighting off a cold, the second one he's had in a row now. He's still happy as anything and he doesn't act sick during the day, apart from the fact that he's gone off solids almost completely now (how on earth can I start weaning him, when he keeps getting flu's and colds?) But at night he has such coughing fits that he ends up vomiting the phlegm all over the place. It's hard to figure out what to do. Are these just viruses he picks up, is it something else? Am I worrying too much? Am I worrying too little? Oh, the predicaments of being a mother...

And then there's the Jungle Dome, of course. Well, we're still very busy, with a lot of families staying with us (which Lucas is very happy about). But starting next week it will be a bit more quiet again, so we can look at going away for a weekend soon.

And that's all really.

Mini-heat wave in Belize

Boy, it's been hot the last few days. Apparently it was 105 degrees F. (about 40 C.) yesterday?

That's pretty hot in my books. And our house has no AC (Andy and I are not crazy about AC most of the time)

Anyway, even when it gets real hot in Belize, it usually cools down at night. And that's the main thing for me...that I'm able to sleep comfortably at night with just a fan on the ceiling.

Oh, and that's not me in that fridge. I just found this picture online and found it quite funny...

Is our house ready yet?

No, it still isn't finished. But we're getting there now. Our kitchen is coming along nicely as you can see. It's going to be finished with lots of Mexican tiles.

Anyway, in another month we should be done. And, even tough the end result will be great, I don't think I'll ever build a house again. It will have taken us more than a year (about 14 months in total, I expect)

Still, we will be living in our dream house & that can't be too bad. We may even forget about the whole process once we're in.

A day at the San Ignacio Easter fair

Andy, John, Lucas and (barely visible in the cart) Aidan. Behind them is the scariest ferris wheel in the world. It goes incredibly fast and there are no rails around it, so if you don't watch out you'll walk straight into it. I also noticed an overall lack of safety features on most the rides, with little kids flying up in the air on all kinds of machines, without even a basic safety belt or bar. It's all so Central American.


Check out Lucas and Andy in some sort of go-cart/buggy thing...


Plus some rather fun live music. The woman dancing with the MC is a person from the audience, hoping to get a free CD. Oh, and isn't the little girl dancing at the side cute? By the way, I'm sorry for the awful sound quality

Flu, etc.

Little Aidan has had the flu again this week. He has been struck down with it several times in the last 6 months or so. It's weird, Aidan seems like a much sturdier baby than Lucas was, yet Lucas never seemed to be ill & Aidan has been sick a lot. I guess the difference is that when Lucas was a baby we weren't running a resort yet. Nowadays we receive visitors from all over the world & I guess people bring us the occasional foreign viruses too. I assume that's what's happening. I have heard that this kind of stuff is meant to strengthen an immune system. So let's at least hope that that's true.

Anyway, he's getting better. So if we're lucky we may even get a decent night's sleep again tonight.

A bit of work, lots of chilling....

Andy, the kids and I just went on a rather fun adventure. We spent the week at a San Pedro recording studio, where the English music producer Norman Cook (better known as Fatboy Slim) was doing jamming sessions with several Belizean artists (Andy Palacio, the Grandmaster and the Garifuna collective). It's a thing I had set up with my friend Caroline, so we went along to see how it all went.

It was so much fun. Andy and I really got to relax as well, as we brought a babysitter out with us to help with Aidan & Lucas made friends with another little boy, so he didn't need us to entertain him constantly.

Anyway, Norman Cook is just the nicest guy ever. He is totally down to earth. I knew him from back in my MTV days and he does not seem to have changed at all. I mean, we've all grown up since then, but as far as him being an ordinary guy, he's still the same old person.And then there was Nathan, who runs Norman's record label Southern Fried Records. I never met Nathan before, but he was just the easiest person to get on with. The guy is crazy. He grew up in London, but is able to climb coconut trees the way the locals here do, he manages to do back flips on the beach like Lucas' 6-year-old friend Justin did and, to top it all off, has incredible speed when chasing after nurse sharks. The guy is just full of surprises.

We all got on so well. And watching Andy and Nathan row off into the horizon in a kayak loaded with beer made me laugh, as Andy never does anything like that anymore these days. He's always so focused on his work and our family, so to see him like that, without a care in the world, was just wonderful. I, obviously, loved hanging out on the beach with my dear old friend Caroline Prothero. We shared a house in London many, many years ago and have stayed friends through all our ups and downs in life.

Caroline, Aidan and I soaking up the last bit of sun on our final day in Ambegris Caye.

Miss Prothero and the nurse sharks...

Snorkeling on the reef.

Norman and Lucas checking out the sharks. To swim or not to swim?

Every afternoon, the boys tried to catch dinner. But this crab was sadly enough the catch of the day.

Lucas' friend Justin was at the studio with his mother, who was one of the singers of the Garifuna collective. They were meant to be leaving on our second day there, but we so enjoyed the way the two boys got on, that we asked his mum if little Justin could stay behind with us. We told her that we'd drop him off in Belize City at the end of the week. And, surprisingly enough, she said yes.


Now, to ask a mother to just leave her child behind with us is something I would have never dared to ask anywhere else, but things in Belize are just so chilled. Also, the woman's boss and other her other colleagues were still there at the resort/studio with us, so it wasn't like she was totally abandoning her child. Still, it was a bit of a crazy set-up, as I didn't know the mother's name, I only had a phone number of one of her band members (she had just lost her cell phone) & some rather confusing instructions on where to find her house. It all worked out perfectly though. Justin actually flew back with the woman's boss in the end, so we didn't even have to try and find our way around Belize City, looking for the woman's house.

Everyone had such a great time that even Lucas, who is always the first to want to go home, was wondering out loud on the final day 'Mum, why do we have to go back to the Jungle Dome?'

Oh well, all we are doing is move from one piece of paradise to the next, so I guess we can't really complain.

Caroline, Andy and Lucas on the boat on our way home. We'll be back soon!