No place like home

Its been a while hasn't it? The dongle situation was unfortunate in our last week which made blogging a challenge, and I've been making the most of enjoying the Motherland this past week which is my excuse for the lack of India closure!

The last week was lovely, on Wednesday we took the children for a picnic in the park which was one of the best days of the trip. They absolutely loved it, some like Nitesh in the picture below hadn't been to a park before & didn't know what to make of it at first. In fact the first time we put Nitesh down the slide he cried his eyes out & put out his arms and legs to slow him down so he looked like a starfish haha, but after that he loved it & he'd wave at me with a massive grin on his face as he whizzed down it.

We also made them all biscuits again for pudding, I got my long awaited henna done, then while we waited for half to be dropped to their homes, I played what became the hottest game of It that I have or will ever play.

Then we traveled to Belgaum on Thursday to visit the tailoring centre for the temple prostitutes and to run a children's programme, and while we were there we both bought a couple of saris so the tailoring ladies measured us up, stitched our blouses for us & showed us how to get into them.

On Sunday we decided to try out our saris for church, so our land lady turned up in the morning to get us into them, and everyone was so happy to see us wearing them.

Monday afternoon we had to catch the plane to Bombay, so we went to the day care centre in the morning to say our goodbyes & give them presents, it was very emotional & Lyds and I both ended up bawling our eyes out & unable to speak! They helped us get into our saris too, which we wore on the planes & arrived in England wearing (although mine had to be redone by a cleaning lady in Mumbai!). They went down a treat - we got out of paying for 10 extra kilos of luggage because the lady said we looked pretty in our saris, we barely got checked through security because they were just chatting to us, and the flight attendant wanted to take us home with him - if you're planning on any sort of mischief on the planes, I'd recommend wearing a sari, they'll never say a bad thing about you!

We arrived at Gatwick at 6:30am after 3 exhausting plane journeys & were greeted by Mum, Dad and Josh which was lovely, and came straight home to cook a full English breakfast :)

So far I'm still loving being back in England, plus I can't think of a better time to come back weather/season-wise, its gorgeous! There's lots of wedding planning to be done now (notice the jam jars below which Mum is helping me sort for the reception), and our mortgage was accepted today so its all systems go on the house front too.

Its going to be such an exciting year. So exciting that I felt compelled to take an arty picture of myself looking happy.

Anyway that's all for now. For my avid fans, don't worry this is not the end (although Laura & Lib I expect you to start your own blog now)

Amy x