Before and after

Today I borrowed a set of clippers from our friends the Cousleys (if you've had a MAF News you'll have read about them). This is the result! Joshua is also much-cropped, and my beard is now much more civilised. It was about time, I was starting to look like the wild man of the West.

In case you were wondering why Caleb is so transfixed in these pictures, he is watching The Wiggles on my laptop - which is always guaranteed to keep him still for extended periods of time.

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This has been quite an interesting week, at least for me. It has been my second week in the office, and I have spent most of it trying to get a grip on the procedures that are in place (or aren't as the case may be) and trying to work out what I am going to do to sort them out. Unfortunate side-effect of this *and maybe the Larium) is that I've spent most of the nights this week wide awake thinking about work-stuff. I'm planning to miss out the pill this weekend, and see if that makes a difference. Our language training starts on Monday, so I'll have something else to think about all night!

One of the models they used on our 'Facts & Friction' orientation course to explain the 'transition process' was the image of a house built of of lots of smaller blocks - each block representing an aspect of life (e.g. house, friends, church, job, car, family etc). Making the kind of move we have involves laying down each of these in turn and then 'rebuilding' at the other end. The process of transition takes up to two years, so it is useful to have the model in your mind, so you can mentally slot each block into place as and when it arrives.

I've inserted two blocks recently - working again (after a four and half month 'break'); and yesterday, taking possession of our new car. I say car, it's more of a tank. (I'll see if I can find a picture to post below). We feel a bit guilty having such a big car, but then you only have to drive about half a mile out of town (as we did this morning, just to road test it) before the nice tarmac road peters out and you're left with bone-shaking dust tracks. At least in our car your bones don't get so shaken! 4x4's are about the only thing that can take that kind of beating.

Anyway, I'll leave you with another before and after...



























{P.S. For those of you who are supporting us financially, we didn't have to pay from this out of our support. MAF provides the vehicles from central funding!}