knifed...

... or should that be knived? Anyway, someone slashed one of our tyres! The car was sitting innocently in the carpark behind my parents-in-law's house ... and I don't even think it was a racist attack as the car next to it had been attacked too.

Oh well, Marc was able to put his Basic Car Maintenance training into practice and change the wheel, and the car was in fact already booked in at the garage the next morning. (We had to get our dipstick changed because the bottom of it had dropped off into the oil tank!)

But it does annoy me when we have to pay for someone else's random violence.

no work and all play means we're on holiday!

After a year of deadlines and busy-ness, it feels odd to be able to relax ... but we're getting used to it! Simon is enjoying meeting the local "wildlife" - he's a real animal-lover! - and trying out the local playgrounds.

en France

I'm glad to say that we have made it to France safely, despite the slight hassles of trying to pack when we hadn't unpacked properly from our move yet! Also the move wiped me out, so I couldn't even find much motivation for unpacking.

On the positive side, I am definitely feeling less and less sick and finally feel like I'm actually getting some rest and finding a bit more energy. I know that theoretically I'm in the second trimester of this pregnancy, but I'm looking forward to actually feeling that glowing, all's-right-with-the-world feeling again.

It is good to be here, lovely to have sunshine, great to see family! Simon is loving the box of toys his French grandparents have, especially all the cars, buses and tractors!

No recent photos, as we ran the batteries down and didn't get round to recharging them until just before we left!

where all is revealed ...

... as Hilary admits that the reason she has been feeling sick and not blogging so much is because of this tiny being inside her:

We are of course very happy ... though I will be able to rejoice more when I stop feeling so sick. I've been back on medication which does help, but it's been eight or nine weeks now, and it really is miserable! Anyway, I'm not here to complain but to share good news!

Assuming all goes well with the pregnancy, and our support-raising, we will still leave for Benin in November, and I will give birth out there. Which is a slightly daunting thought, but not as much as it would have been for a first child.

on the move

We are Packing - definitely with a capital "P"! With a little letter it's the kind of packing we do to go away for a weekend/fortnight/month, but now we're actually moving out of our flat. So it's a big deal, but I just keep reminding myself that it's a much smaller job than when we moved out of our French flat a year ago. Then we had several years of accumulated junk to sort through, whereas now - because we did a good job last year - we have a LOT less stuff! And even what we brought over then, we've been gradually whittling down over the year.

Still, I suspect that come Friday it will still look quite a lot all boxed up!

The End (of the school year)

It's hard to talk about the end of our year at college without falling into clichés. So I will try to avoid them, but apologise in advance for any that crop up despite my efforts.

Spending a year living and studying with fellow students from countries all around the world leaves us with the inevitable feeling that things can never be the same again. We've got so used to being together, yet this particular group of people will never all be together again before we get to heaven. The moment that sticks with me is our Commissioning Service on Friday morning when we all stood and sang about the Gospel being proclaimed throughout the nations, and I suddenly realised that that is literally what we will all be doing in the months and years to come. It has been such a privilege to be here, to get to know these brothers and sisters, and to be trained side by side.

But for now, parting is such sweet sorrow, goodbye seems to be the hardest word (er?!) and so on and so forth.

We're sticking around on campus for another 10 days to get our stuff sorted and flat packed up. I can't decide whether that makes things better or worse!

And here's a photo from the masked ball on our final evening of term:

all gone!

The above is one of Simon's favourite expressions at the moment. Along with "more!" (meaning "I want ...."), "please!" (thanks to nursery!), "down", "up", "book" ... and names of various people, which he shouts out apparently randomly, though perhaps he suddenly thought of them for some reason.

Anyway, I originally started this post to say that I had my last Hebrew exam last Monday, and Marc and I managed to get all our assignments in by Friday's deadline ... so now we are free as birds! Or at least free to go to our last two weeks of lectures, feeling sorry for our poor lecturers who have to carry on lecturing while also trying to get all our assignments marked and second-marked by the end of term.

We even went out on Saturday afternoon, to a garden centre near here which has a mini-zoo (mainly farmyard animals) and a miniature railway. At the zoo Simon saw his first turkey - these being his favourite creatures in his farm book - and rode on his first steam engine. He is quite a fan of Thomas the Tank Engine, and it's nice to think that he now knows that steam engines do exist outside books! Here are a couple of photos: