hope you feel better soon! ❤️‍🩹

When we were living overseas I homeschooled my boys until they were 10 so parent teacher conferences were easy! 😉 After that the boys went to international schools. There was a subtle difference between the US and UK school system but nothing major. My ex-husband is Italian, and I definitely did see differences in how his family raised and educated their children and what they prioritized. They thought I was a weirdo! 😂

@Maria White I have so many examples of how they thought I was a weird parent. The funniest one (to me) is that they had this thing that their children weren't allowed to be cold. After a session in a place centre during winter, all the mums used to get hairdryers out of their bags to dry the sweat off the children before they bundled them up in a million layers to get to the car. (To be fair, I thought THAT was weird! 😂) So I just used to tell my boys to "RUUUN" to the car all sweaty!! It was literally a 3 second dash! They used to say that my boys would get pneumonia!! 😂 Different cultures (includign our own) are funny sometimes aren't they?

I'm feeling it.... but in a good way. I'm trying to keep up with my work as much as possible because that's the only thing that gives me structure these days! I've cut back on a lot of the Christmas prep this year, which feels soooooo good. But I have grown up children, so that's much easier to pass on! I hope you're able to take some time out for some self-care in your chaos and can slow down enough to fully enjoy some of the activities.

@Marianne Arienzale Christmas movies? I love The Santa Clause!

Ahh yes, Christmas with children is the BEST! Mine are all grown up now and it's just not the same! Expat Christmas's are bitter sweet 😢 we made up our own traditions, some of which we still keep!

@Marianne Arienzale How old is your daughter, Marianne?

@Maria White Unfortunately, we lived too far away from i nonni to really benefit. In my expat life, I never lived close to family, so if the children were unwell, it was all on me. That was always one of the hardest parts of being an expat who moves a lot. We moved, on average, every two and a half years, so we were constantly arriving in a new village and having to build a support network as best we could each time. 😫