And we're back!

Yes, after a couple of busy months, we're back home, settling in all right. Thorsten has started work, Jara has started kindergarden, Lisa has started walking (holding on to 2 hands of course) and I, I've started going through our pictures and realised there are too many!

We'll start with the beginning. Click on the pictures to enlarge them!
Beginning of June, Rhoddy, Thorsten's colleague from BD came for a fieldvisit. As BD is working on an exit strategy in the next couple of years, they had to visit all partners in the country to officially announce the not-so-good news. It was 2 weeks of solid travelling, visiting 16 projects in the Extreme North, North West, Centre and South of Cameroon.


As soon as Rhoddy left, my (Griet's) father arrived for a blitz visit. As he would otherwise have to wait till Christmas to see the kids, he decided to cross the continent for a week.
The weather wasn't great, but we still had a nice time catching up at home and in Limbe. After opa Frans left, Jara kept repeating 'opa partie' for quite a while.


Then it was time for the real holidays. This year, we decided to go to Italy in stead of only visiting our friends and family. We started with the 60th anniverary of Griet's grandparents before heading of to Germany where we stayed a few days.
In Belgium:


In Germany:


In Italy we were lucky to stay in the apartement of Sofie and Sven who are living in Parma. They have 2 small boys, hence everything was on hand (push chairs, toys, baby carrier, trycicle, plastic plates etc) and they are living in town centre with 3 playgrounds on a 5 minute walk! We devided our time between a stay-at-home-and-do-playgrounds-day for the children and an away-day for the adults. It worked out great and everybody was happy.
Jara was especially happy when she managed to convince her parents to have at least one ice cream a day... That is one word she learned very well. Everybody warned us about the hot weather in Parma in the summer, but apart from the first couple of days, it was all right. In addition, we went to the mountains a couple of times and even went to the coast. Obviously had to get some real balsamico vinegar in Modena and have spaghetti bolognaise in Bolonga. Not to mention Parmasan and Parmaham... Did you know there's a town called Gorgonzola? Wonder what that is famous for.
The playground-home-days went like this:


The away-days went like this:


While we were in Parma, oma Doris and opa Heinz came for a couple of days, as did Elaine and Andrea, 2 friends from the UK. It was very nice to have this little reunion and we decided they should next come to Cameroon...