Awake and Dreaming

Morning calls but we are oblivious to the rising of the sun until small bellies crawl towards their plates.

Before long droplets of sweat bead consistently around our brows as the temperature moves closer to the almost unbearable mid day. In the relative cool of the early morning legs pump cylindrically as we hurtle down gravel pathways.
 I watch as her hair blows in the wind and his eyes shine as the speed requires extra pull on the handlebars.

Wheels give way under sliding gravel and we stop to recover. I am in awe of these bodies. All of them, growing browner, stronger and freer as our souls have space to explore and ponder.

Ripe fields of wheat which loosely waved short days ago, now succumb to the motorised scythe and we watch day after day as the landscape is cut in glorious patterns of yellow. Soon the neigbouring fields of green will erupt with sunflowers and we wait somewhat impatiently for the display.
Deer tread gently on the edges of the woods at dusk we're told. This raucous crowd is yet to see one but is that any wonder given the speed these children of ours move at. The quiet comes only when young heads are tucked in books. If not electronic there would be oceans of them, slowly drowning the free space about us. Instead it is their imaginations afloat, full of fancy, mystery and delight as sleuths uncover the truth and animals have voice. What a gift it is to love the written word. That mere marks on a page could weave a world in their minds brings me great joy.

There are other worlds here that unfold. Worlds where this daughter of mine experiments with reigning surpreme. She has nutured, taking over where mother nature fell short.
Her gentle hands have cradled these gangly bodies of too big wings and beaks surrounded by down and tiny pin feathers. With such tender care and love invested in the starving trio, the river of tears was long and wide when the nearby feline stole her prize.
All I could do was hold her and it hurt this mama's heart too. With divine display, just one day later three new baby beaks appeared, high in the rock wall of our courtyard, this time still tended by their mother bird, allowing us the joy again without the weight of attempting the care.

This is the ebb and flow of life in this quiet place. We are lead beside the figurative pools of still water and we are finding restoration. It is well.

After dropping Emma off at Gatwick where she was leaving to holiday in Croatia and Rome with friends we drove closer to the heart of London.

It was possibly the worst time to be without a nanny given that we now had books full of tradeshow leads to follow up but we had five to six days to fill in London for the sake of our Schengen visa time limits before we went back to Spain and her tickets had already been booked. Rounding a corner near to our next apartment we saw caution tape authoratively stuck across a doorway and questioned our online booking skills. Still, where we were staying was the street behind the crime scene and as it was late in the afternoon we decided to check it out and arrange new accomodation the next day if we felt the area was too dicey. I forgot however that I had to drop the rental car up the road and given that I hadn't set myself up with an oyster card yet for the buses and it was getting on towards dinner time, I walked the 20 minutes down Old Kent Road back to our London house. Turns out it really wasn't too bad a little neighbourhood and we spent the next week there happily in close proximity to the bus routes and Tescos.

While Mr Evans caught up on some more urgent tasks I took the kids for the day to Horniman Museum and Gardens.
We travelled via the big red double deckers which was an adventure in itself and traipsed about the beautiful property, stopping to admire llamas in the petting zoo, where you couldn't actually pet anything. It was lovely to go at the kids pace and I put the piles of work out of my mind, until the evening time that is, and we explored various parts of London over the week.

It was time to farewell Paris and shoot over the channel to London. We picked up our rental car after a fair amount of phaffing about at the airport getting mobile phones sorted, rewired our brains to switch sides of the road again and hit the M1 towards Nottingham. Nottingham was all about our friends Sam and Amy and it was such a treat to see familiar kiwi faces. They are the kind of friends that you can pick up with after a year of separation and it feels like yesterday.
We had pub dinners and lunches.

With a full week ahead at a spanish tradeshow and meetings with clients, we decided that we would spend an adventuring day here, and with no wifi, despite assurances from our host that we would have it, our fate was set. To the castle!.
Peniscola is a large fortified castle, built by the Knights Templar between 1294 and 1307.

Have I mentioned I have champion flyers? These darlings of mine take every flight in their stride. They would rather fly than drive. It is a great relief to know when you're looking down the barrel of another 12hrs in the air.

This is very different to our last trip.

The Cowan Team 2015

The bustling streets of Manilla echo in our minds. The heat that wrapped around us still warms our hearts. Here in Nashville the streets are wide and space is ample. Cool weather outside is countered by the efficiency of internal heating at the apartment and seat warmers on the pimped out Chrysler we roll in each day.

All this is a little hard to reconcile. America is the land of 'bigger and better'. I remind myself that purpose has many faces. Currently, this is the time for building our businesses, which works to fund our vision, and this is the place we need to be to do that for now. So, I am set towards this task and all the adventure it brings.

I felt strangely calm last week about leaving all that we know.

The part that stung most was leaving our family and the beautiful network of good friends we have.

G's true love, Aunty Hannah.

But the wind of support from them all has filled our sails and we are moved forward into the dream with hope and expectancy.

Our champion travellers flew well. 12 hrs from Auckland to LA, a 4 hour transfer time, 1 hour to Vegas and enough time to grab a nasty airport meal, then another 3.5 hrs on to Nashville for a midnight arrival. Mr Evan made friends with a gentleman on the plane and in a show of typical southern hospitality he offered us a ride to our accommodation. He lived just down the road and despite my initial reservations I trusted my darling husbands instinct (and the knowledge that both of us and our already indispensable nanny Emma, had the skills to put up a good fight if absolutely necessary) and we were rewarded with a quick transfer from airport to apartment.

The first few days have been full of setup and sleep at odd hours.
We had a refresh driving lesson to get us into the flow of driving on the right hand side and after a nervous start and puzzled faces over a couple of odd road rules we are now checking the correct direction before we pull out onto the highway. Honestly though, who thought up the idea that you can take a right turn, even on a red light, so long as the road is clear. Aaahhh'mericans.

A little trip to the very big Target for a few essentials and some late night revelry at Wholefoods supermarket got us off to a grand start.

Yes, this blurry late night shot is all bags full of Wholefoods groceries. My kind of food heaven.