life as a "non-working accompanying expat wife"

A non-working accompanying expat wife...What's in a name!?

Non-working; I am not having a job for which I get paid and for which I need to go to an office

Accompanying; I accompany my spouse who's the lead bread winner in this arrangement

Expat; according to Wikipedia an expatriate (commonly abbreviated expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing 

Wife; well, you all know what that means.

In our expat-family of 5, we employ a 2 wonderful people. We have V, our nanny and D, our housekeeper. 

Why employ 2 people if you don't work yourself, I can hear you wondering. 

We employed these people in the time that both T and I were working full time and were traveling frequently for work. Then my contract came to an end so we should just let them go? No. We made a commitment to V and D. They both have (extended) families that depend on their income and we make sure that income is sufficient and assured. 

V and D are extended family to us and are even more so for the girls. 

And I won't lie, it's great to have the house help. 

So what do I do with all that free time? ALL that free time is relative. Jara and Lisa are attending a school about 15 min drive away. It's a great little school but the hours are crazy. Add the after-school activities and playdates and I do an average of 4-6 (school) runs a day. 

And of course there's still Siri who's only 6,5 months old. And then there are the errands to do which take so much more time and energy as they would in our home country (electricity, water, internet and telephone all need to be paid in cash at their respective office, but that's another story). So my free time is pretty scattered throughout the day: 1 hour here, 30 min there etc.

But I don't complain. It's great to have V and D around and it's thanks to them that I can spend a lot of my free time on my new hobby. 

I bought a sewing machine a while ago and am really enjoying making things from scratch. The abundance of cheap fabric (9-10 Euro for 5,50m) gives room for a lot of trial and error ;-) and results often in pretty little things.