Pilgrims' Progress

We are struggling with each other.
She’s an Aussie, but I won’t hold *that* against her!
She duly noted I’m a kiwi, but that wasn’t the issue for her either.

She can’t get her head round eight kids. Having kids is OK. Travelling is fine. Travelling with kids is even acceptable in her books (though she does point out the parents she’s observed on the road have trouble – eek!)
Her problem is EIGHT kids.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Yep, that’s right.
Eight.

Anyway, my problem is a simple outright case of jealousy. Her website looks just like I wanted mine to look. If anyone saw my paper mock-ups, you’d be surprised at the similarities. Ah well. I suspect too-too-ing around with my eight kids may have prevented me from devoting more hours to being able to learn what she did to get what I wanted.

I’ll keep the kids And you ought to go have a look at her website.

Romantic-Mama and a strapping six year old on one of these

    

with a three year old on the back in one of these

and the five year old helping push from behind on one of these

Then the dadda, 13yo and 14yo could be the main powers on three remaining bikes just like the first one, and pull a trailer behind, as per yesterday’s plan. Second power would be the eight to twelve year olds.

On the flat they could all swap and change positions – because all those second powers *will* want their turn on the tag-along, won’t they? (and I won’t mind a bigger stoker giving me a hand occasionally!)

Main advantages: 1) a child seat and tag-along is six hundred dollars cheaper than the child trailer and 2) the five year old would be able to contribute some power instead of just being a dead weight pulled along.
But I doubt it would be as comfortable for them, and two kids sitting side by side would probably make the miles go much more quickly than one sitting on her own behind her mother.

Not that it really matters, because the idea has not met with much favour with Anyone Who Makes Decisions anyway.

(But it’s nice to have a record of some of the crazy plans we hatch along the way)

Remember how we can't tow a caravan around England? Remember how we can't even fit our whole family in a vehicle at one time *legally*? Remember we were thinking of picking up a couple of campervans second hand in ... [Continue reading this entry]

Most of us were lucky enough to have the intradermal rabies jabs - lucky I say, because they were "only" $60 as opposed to $180 a pop for intramuscular ones (and we needed three each - yeah, ... [Continue reading this entry]

With six weeks to go, The List is keeping my head from spinning out. Here's this week's:

• *house sale documents to solicitor (not at office today - try again tomorrow)
• *blood tests
• *purchase underwear
• *burn lots of candles so they don't need to be packed away
• *drop off ... [Continue reading this entry]

the pictures are off the wall we've started to pack our stuff away a little each day and every time we walk up the hall we're surprised to not see our younger selves smiling down at our now older current ... [Continue reading this entry]

Just in case we lose the bag containing our on-road-medical-supplies and need to replace everything, here's the list. Our lovely doctor definitely errs on the side of caution and would happily have sent us off ... [Continue reading this entry]

Had our very first plans for this trip come off, we would have been in China by now. Along with most every other tourist in the world. But I suspect we've seen more of the Olympic ... [Continue reading this entry]

It's altogether possible that for the first six months, a dozen chopsticks is all we'll need. So we by-passed the fancy-schmancy ultra-light with inversely-proportioned-pricetag cutlery sets at Kathmandu, and opted instead to pick up a knife-n-fork ... [Continue reading this entry]

we've been crossing off the TO DO list...... add neck flap to son's cap.....take daughter's skirt in.....purchase presents for family in Malaysia (and then spontaneously make gift bags out of funky NZ fabric)....work out time line for ... [Continue reading this entry]