8 weeks

Its been almost 5 weeks since I last wrote a blog. We had just past the 100 days left at that point and now its already only 56 days left:-(. There have been many moments the past weeks that I wanted to write a blog but every time there was a reason not to go sit down and do it. The main reason that was part of it every time though is that I get sad when I write about leaving, And also I don't want to repeat myself the whole time. There have been moments that I finally thought I was gonna sit down and write and than life happened and the days just flew by.

As everything gets a bit more normal with the kids in school and myself being able to help out more at school with lunches, time is going so fast. Also a lot more was possible lately with my work, so that really picked up too. Add to that all the moving stuff and all the things that we still want to do while here and you have a recipe of getting up in the morning, running around like a crazy person during the day, putting the kids to bed and falling asleep myself. That is....if I am lucky, because with the leaving date coming closer, there is also stress added, which does not help with my sleep unfortunately.

Everywhere I go people ask how we are doing, if we are excited to go back and telling us that they are so excited for us. Everyone is so sweet, but maybe it is good to tell here what the situation is exactly. Because to be really honest, we are excited to see everyone in Holland again, but at this moment we are not always excited to go back. Someone said it perfectly a bit ago. "When the leaving date is still far away, you are excited about the future. But when the time of leaving comes closer, you are focused more at what you will leave behind."

Some people have asked if it is bittersweet and it really is, mixed feelings all the time. And the hard part is to explain that both feelings can be present beside each other. What I mean is that we are very excited that we will go see our family and friends in Holland again, especially as it has been 2 years by now that we've seen them, some even longer ago. But, with us leaving Raynham, this chapter in our Van Egmond book, will officially end. Our life here will be over forever and that is hard, unimaginable hard. Many people that we see on a daily basis we will not see anymore or talk to anymore and that makes us really sad. We are and have been very happy in Raynham over the past 4 years. We all did great socially, in school, at work and we loved meeting each and everyone in Raynham as pretty much everyone has been so very welcoming to us from the very beginning that we arrived.

We are gonna say good bye to our life as we know it here and especially for the kids it is hard to imagine how life will be for them in Holland. They were still so little, especially Pim.

Will we be ok? Of course we will! We are absolutely certain that we will be. We are gonna make the best out of the situation, live through the heartaches and then build ourselves a fine life back in Holland. We don't doubt for a second that everything will work out. I mean, when we came here we didn't know anyone or anything and the kids didn't speak a word English and look how we did! So no doubts there, but it will be different. And mostly, wé are different from when we left. Erik and I changed. We are happy that we live in 2021 with all the technology, being able to connect with the other side of the world as if they would be on the other side of town. We were able to still be a part of peoples lives in Holland and our family and friends there have been a big part of our lives while living here. So they know we are not the same anymore. But they are not either...so we will for sure have to figure ourselves out there again and that will take some time, but we will get there. And then, thank goodness, technology makes it possible to stay connected with our friends here in Raynham! Redefining relationships, from a distance. Definitely always challenging, but also a beautiful process as we have experienced before.

Oh boy...heavy topic today. But than again, this is right now how our life feels. We can barely imagine that we will up in the air in only 8 weeks. Especially as we have so many things planned still in the coming weeks, even a week vacation. I'm almost thinking: how is that even possible in 8 weeks?

Time will fly by but we are enjoying every single minute of our last weeks here!

Maybe next time I will tell you more about the fun things we are doing and that we have planned!

XO