The days are passing very happily in a sunny haze of early morning smiling faces, meals together in the garden, cuddling baby Joe, swimming in the pool and going to the beach.

Then balmy evenings under the stars when the adults can relax over a meal and a drink.


Andrew arrived with us a week ago. He had a fraught time at Heathrow, going through all the heightened check-in procedures. Despite him being at the airport 4 hours prior to his flight he only just caught the plane by running from the final check-in to the plane doors. We were so thankful that it hadn't all happened a week earlier!

The boys were delighted to have their Daddy here to show off their swimming skills to him (and learn some new tricks from him too).
The heat (38 degrees) and humidity (83%) have made the pool an even more attractive place to be. Everyone is coping with it pretty well but I am happy to tell you that today the humidity has dropped to a more manageable 60%. Debi and Joe have had the greatest struggle. Dear little Joe wants his cuddles but we are all too hot and sticky to do it for long. Debi almost melts into a puddle whenever she is feeding him through the day. He spends a lot of time under the air-conditioner and is thriving well despite it all. He is the star attraction whenever we go out - the Cypriots in particular cooing over him.

Andy has been making himself useful by helping Jeff with those jobs he had been somewhat reluctant to tackle before (fitting an outside light and drilling a hole for some cabling).
However, the big project is to create a shady area just outside our rear door, but discussions on this are on-going.




Joshua and Tom play great games together and when it comes to time to be quiet they are content to watch a DVD on my laptop. We have a rule that because of the intense heat everyone has a quiet time between 2 to 4pm. It took some persuading at first but now that we have persevered there is no trouble about them all going to bed in the afternoon and they are much better for it later on. However, Ross is all noise, action and often mischief from the moment he gets up until he goes back to bed. He's great fun that we will definitely miss when they all go home.

We've managed to get Andy and Debi out for a couple of hours in the evening (provided they take Joe with them) and we took them for a nice "grown up" meal to The Veranda restaurant last week. Friends of ours, Jo and Les agreed to babysit and Joe slept in his carrycot across 2 chairs in the restaurant. The premises are located right by the shore and we had an excellent table in the courtyard overlooking the clear sea, lit by the moonlight.

I have been taking Debi and Joe with me on a Thursday to meet with my "Ladies from church". It has been a nice for her to have a break from 75% of her boys! Jeff and Andy went to the Quiz night last week, but didn't win. We have had a few trips out in the late afternoon to cool down and benefit from the air-con in the car. One such trip was to Bellapais Abbey where the boys had a great adventure, saying it looked like Hogwarts! We also took a trip out along the coast towards the "pan-handle" and visited The Eagle's Nest for a drink.















The highlight of last week was the start of the well-drilling. Permission had been obtained from the relevant Government Department and on Wednesday Torgaug arrived with a team of men and removed part of our garden wall to make access for the drilling machinery.

There was no progress on the well on Thursday and on Friday we took the children to Sunset Beach Club which has swimming pools and other things to amuse them. On the way back, we called to see Torgaug to ask when drilling was to start, to be told it had been going on for some hours.

When we got home, a huge drilling machine was there (along with our neighbours who had come over to watch the proceedings).

The noisy drilling went on all afternoon yet the children still managed to have their afternoon nap. Mid afternoon another vehicle arrived carrying the concrete liner sections.

These were unloaded and stacked in the front garden.

By evening a hole 70ft deep and 3ft wide had been drilled, but no water yet as they had struck rock!


The whole proceedings had been observed by the Water Diviner, who sat looking very confident throughout. Although Jeff frequently went to talk to him for assurance that the water was definitely there.

According to the Diviner, they need to drill through 10ft of rock and there will be a plentiful supply of water underneath. We will see.

The proceedings came to a standstill at 7pm and everyone knocked off for the weekend.

During the weekend we were a source of interest for many passers by. Several of the locals enquiring whether we had obtained permission to sink the well. This rather dumbfounded me, as if we could hope to secretly employ a huge machine like this with all the accompanying noise without being noticed.