A Mother's Ramblings

Our May Family Day saw us heading to Grand Designs Live show, at the ExCel London. We had my Mum with us (because what's a family day without extra family?!) and because we were showing off a little we decided to pack a lot in... We drove to Westfield Stratford City and walked through an almost deserted shopping centre, although the boys did see some men washing their socks in the toilet and the "children" sat in a boat outside the toilets. And this was all before hopping on a tube to Greenwich (home of the O2 arena) and walking towards the Emirates Air-Line London where of course Top Ender and Dan Jon had sworn they would never set foot again...

Each month, we are trying to spend one day together as a family. It can be as simple as Orienteering, a whole day out at the seaside, an act of service as a family or as complicated as organising a whole itinerary of a day for us to follow! April, saw us visiting the " We the Curious ", a science centre in Bristol. The whole place was AMAZING. Everyone else had been before (back when it was called @Bristol), but this was my first time and I couldn't get over how interactive it was, how accessible it was and how everyone young or old learnt something or was able to join in with the fun.

When I was first called to be the Primary President, a friend from another Stake who had held the calling a few times in her life asked if I knew about the secret. A confused look from me confirmed that I had no clue what she was on about, And so she explained a well-known phenomenon witnessed amongst those with this precious calling that I will share with you. The secret is, that as soon as you are set apart in this calling all children will be attracted to you. I, of course, laughed when she told me this, but she insisted that this was serious and if I remember correctly she said something along the lines of: "It's like someone turns on your child gravitational pull."

Aww, the magical time of year where the children realise that it's nearly the Summer Holidays. That this half term will be the last of the School year for them. That in just a few weeks, Dan Jon will be a Year Six, Top Ender will be a Year Ten and me? Well, I'll be me doing what I need to do and panicking that Dan Jon will be in year six and Top Ender will be in year ten and I'm not ready for my Baby to be about to leave Primary School. Well, enough melancholy, on with the food. Oh, and this week we're going to have Sandwiches for lunch (probably ham, occasionally cheese) and it'll be accompanied by some snack like Crisps, or Crackers and some fruit or veg... it's going to be great!

Flyfour is one of those ridiculously romantic husbands, that according to my friends mean I'm a lucky lady because men like that actually only exist in romance novels, rom-com films, or catfish profiles on the internet. I have been accused several times of making him up and yet, they all seem to want to steal him off of me because of his romantic gestures. Whenever we (my friends and I) get together for lunch or we meet up for a not coffee coffee, (well they have coffee, I have a Hot Chocolate or maybe some Fruit Tea) one of them will inevitably bring up something that they have read on Facebook, or seen pictured on Instagram or even something that was mentioned in our WhatsApp group and then they, mostly politely, request that I give them the details. All the details.

Last week came and went so quickly! Sometimes I love that life seems to speed by as it makes me think I have things under control if I've done most of the jobs I need to do by the time I've sat down to make the meal plan for the following week. This week, despite being really productive, I'm also at a bit of a loss but I'm not here to bore you with my existential crisis, I'm here to bore you with what we're eating this week!

I let my children play with knives. Well I say play, I mean use but trust me Baby Boy thinks this is a game and at almost three I am pretty sure that this isn't something that should be taken lightly. The thing is though when you are teaching children to cook and to do things for themselves they want to do things for themselves and you have to let them. How are they going to learn if they never get any hands on experience? So when Baby Boy was making dinner with me last night I let him grate the cheese with the sharp metal grater. I let him use the Knife to cut up the  pizza spiral in to circles. And I let him hold the tray up for me to take a picture without worrying that it would fall to the floor, leaving us starving. It's important that Baby Boy learns that not only do I trust him, but that the things in the kitchen whilst dangerous are also tools that he has to learn to master. It would be no good wrapping him up in cotton wool to prevent accidents as o...

I went to a funeral recently. It sounds horribly crass of me to say that it was the nicest funeral I've ever been too, but it honestly was a beautiful service, full of love and life and although I didn't know the man who died as well as some who were there, I found solace in the words that were spoken and I believe his other friends and his family did too. I think what made it different, was it wasn't a morbid mourning, it was a tender adulation in celebration of life. And it made me think. It made me think about what I want for my funeral, or rather what I want for the Celebration of my Earthly life.

A few weeks before my birthday, I was doing my usual Pinterest pinning and reading of blog posts searching for ideas for my not bullet journal, bullet journal (I'll tell you about that another day). When I found a few references to something which caught my interest. The references were about living a Level Ten Life and at first glance, I was pretty certain, that this was something I wanted to learn more about. So I started searching and I found a book called " Miracle Morning " by Hal Elrod and knowing my love of self-help and motivational books (the latter is what I think this is classified as) I decided to order it for my birthday. And then I tried to forget about it so that I wouldn't be tempted to open it before my birthday. And I was so successful at forgetting about it, I didn't pick it up until the 8th of May, almost a full week after my birthday! And as soon as I was halfway through it (I spent a couple of hours reading it at Church whilst Tops was a...

Today my baby turns ten... that's Double Digits Baby! So I thought I'd share a few pictures of some of our recent adventures whilst sharing tales of this boy who steals my heart every day. Seriously, every morning when I go to wake him up and every evening when I go to tuck him in, He is all snuggly and warm and he tries to steal my heart so I'll hug him a little longer. It only works 100% of the time! Dan Jon is always up for a giggle, a bit like me I suppose. So when we saw this display of Gnomes in Asda, we knew Dan Jon had to pose in front of it. I guess Asda will say it's a complete coincidence that their cheeky gnomes look just like my little lad eh?! I guess they just saw someone who was as handsome as DJ and knew that they had to capture his likeness.

On Bank Holiday Monday, we were having another Family Fun Day, or as the children have started to call them "A Holiday in a Day", which I think is more to do with how much we squeeze into one day rather than the fact it's a relaxing day out with the family! One of the activities we had planned was to go to Grand Designs Live and we had invited my Mum along. We had managed to get some free tickets and all was good, apart from well, we prefer the Ideal Home Show as there just seems to be more to see and do. Okay, I mean there is more free food samples at the Ideal Home Show. Don't judge me you know you love free samples as much as I do!

For the last few weeks, a young lady has been going to Church and has become friendly with Top Ender and several of the other young women. This young lady is rather fabulous, which is obvious even to me as I've not had much to do with her seeing as how I'm in Primary, but I've spoken to her a few times on Tuesday nights at Mutual and this young lady ALWAYS has a bow in her hair. It's like her trademark. When Top Ender was asked to give a talk at the Baptism, on the subject of Baptism she knew she had to use these bows as the starting point and came up with the following talk, that I thought I'd share with you (and in the process saving so I might be able to use it myself in the future!) on this Sabbath day. The rest of this blog post is written by Top Ender!

I'm currently sitting in my living room awaiting a delivery of some fitness equipment and pondering that if I make a cake now and eat it before the aforementioned fitness equipment arrives, will it count calorie wise? I don't think it will... This week is Dan Jon's birthday on Tuesday and so he's had more input into what we eat this week and has picked a few of his favourite meals, but has also been quite kind and thrown in a couple of meals that his Daddy and Sister would love. Luckily for me, I sort of don't care what we eat as long as we do eat!

Compared to some, I've not really had that much experience with grief and loss. I mean, yes my grandparents have died and so have a few other relatives, and a few friends but it wasn't the same as when my Dad died. The others who died were old. They had lived a long life. They had been ill and them dying was an expected end to the illness. My Dad was young. My Dad hadn't lived a long life. He hadn't been ill and his death wasn't expected. I keep thinking that I've seen him. Driving a car out of Tesco's Petrol station. Crossing the road as I've driven past a Pedestrian Crossing. Sitting in the audience of the Snooker match Flyfour is watching. Walking past the Cafe I'm sitting in. And that's when the thoughts start.

I may have told an accidental lie to Flyfour this week, that as most of the food we are eating this week is from our own storage that the shopping bill would be lower... however it's wasn't true. The shopping bill was roughly the same as always because we purchased a few "extra" supplies to stock up the snack and drinks cupboard! This whole not buying things for the month (apart from the weekly food shop and Petrol) is killing my snack cravings!

During the Easter Break, I had a Doctors appointment planned. It was just because of an earache (which I've had since before Christmas) but I didn't really want to take the children with me because Doctors Surgery + Children + Germs = Me being a Sick Nurse. So I asked if they would mind staying at home and looking after each other, which of course they readily agreed to as unsupervised time is a rare treat for them. After my very short Dr's appointment, I decided to pop into a local supermarket and pick up some lettuce to jazz up some wraps for lunch and some doughnuts too, because who doesn't like doughnuts?

It's my Birthday today. Despite what I may have said in the past, at Midnight my age ticked over to 39. Mentally I feel no different to I did yesterday. I don't feel any wiser, but then again I don't feel my synapses degrading with each second ticking by. Physically I feel a little more tired than I did yesterday, but that's more to do with the fact I had a disturbed nights sleep and the lack of sunshine than anything to do with my age! And yet, there has been a change within me.