A quiet week

It’s been a quiet week since we returned on Tuesday, but of course I realise as I say that, that in reality it hasn’t!There was a teachers strike on Thursday (strangely there are multiple teachers unions here, so one union went on strike and the other two didn’t), which meant the kids had to stay home. Then Jasper developed a strange lump in his mouth so we had to take him to the dentist on Saturday. He has this swollen lump on his gum, about twice the size of a pea above his top front teeth, which is full of fluid. His two front teet are loose and coming out. When he was about three, he fell on his face and damaged one of the teeth, hitting it so hard it killed the nerve inside. Now that the tooth is loose, it’s allowing bacteria into the hole left by the dead nerve and so it’s become infected. It doesn’t appear to painful at all, but it makes his lip stick out and look a little strange! He has some anti-biotics, so this should clear it up hopefully. If it doesn’t, we have to go back and get the tooth pulled (although it’s quite loose anyway).Karina has been very under the weather with some kind of flu / headcold / sore throat thing that has really knocked her for six since we returned. The last two days in particular have been pretty tough on her and she’s spent most of her time wrapped up on the couch being waited on, which is most unlike her! Hopefully she gets better soon.Yesterday I took the kids swimming, which was good fun although the English are funny about pools. I was up the deep end (about 1.7 metres) with Jasper and Ella so they could jump in and swim to the edge, and a life guard came over and asked me if we could all swim a length of the pool. I said that of course I could and Ella could too (well mostly), but that Jasper couldn’t. Well, that was it — back to the shallow end. If you can’t swim, you’re not allowed to learn by going out of your depth, even when supervised and you should always wear floaties too! No wonder they are bad at swimming events.Today was good fun (aside from Karina’s illness), we borrowed a Street Car and went out to Heathrow Airport to meet Hans and Lee, Karina’s parents who were passing through to France. They had booked the holiday before we had even left Australia, so weren’t able to change things to stay over, but we still had a great opportunity to see them. We spent a few hours together in Terminal 5, which is an impressive building, and the kids loved seeing their Nanna and Pa.Well, that’s about it for now – 10pm and time to go to bed and read; it’s a relief to finally be all caught up on the blog and our adventures!