A Mother's Ramblings

Today is the start of the "last" day of my summer holidays. I go back to work this Thursday, and this time will see all my friends. I honestly can't wait, as I've been missing them during the lockdown and summer holidays and can't wait to catch each other up on all our gossip and news! I'm after making sure that these last few days are special. I want to do all the things I promised myself, finish off my projects, catch up on TV shows and just... you know enjoy the time, which basically means a few celebratory meals this week!

I swear I just blinked and the last week passed before I'd reopened my eyes. Still, with the speed time is going it must mean it is nearly Christmas right? What? It's too early to mention the C-word? Are you sure you and I are friends?! Here's what we are eating this week!

When Flyfour and I started working on our garden, around the start of lockdown, I came to understand that gardening is a long old job and realised that rather like losing weight, a little each week makes it easier in the long term and more likely that I'd keep up with the chores. So I've been weeding a little bit every day, I've been snipping bits here and there and mostly remembering to water the plants, especially on the hot days. This last weekend though, I had a plan. I asked Flyfour to go to a local garden centre with me so that I could buy some plants to fill the bed beneath our plum and pear tree. I really wanted to buy the same plants so that I could recreate the bed between the apple and pear tree as I love the way it looks. Only, the plants I wanted weren't available at a price I wanted to pay.

This last week whilst the children have been on Virtual Camp, they have focussed on three areas of Service and because I was sort of involved in the camp (I ran a couple of lessons on social media) and of course because the children got me involved in their service projects during the week (because I'm their main mode of transport!) I've been focusing on Service too. The three areas that the children were to focus on were Service for Family, Service for the Community and Service for the Ward (parish). Top Ender and Dan Jon were full of ideas, mainly because they are both doing some form of service every week, and the lockdown hasn't stopped that, and of course, because service is something we discuss a lot at home. That quote above is one of my favourite quotes, it reminds me that when I'm serving others, lifting them, that it's me who is being lifted really.

I've been feeling super organised recently, I've managed to get some blog posts out of my head and into writing (you can see that by looking over the most recent posts!), I've managed to get my podcast launched (Yay!) and even been reading, crafting and creating at home. I'm back to work for a few days this week, but excited because I've kinda missed it! Here's what we are eating this week.

A few weeks back, the General Young Women Presidency of the Chuch I am a part of asked the Young Women to participate in a unique way to celebrate that the Young Women's organisation is 150 years old this coming November, by taking part in an activity related to the number 150. I'll post in the next week or so about the 150 acts of service that I undertook (150 compliments were given, it was fun!), but today I'm posting about part of the 150 activity our Stake Young Women's Presidency undertook and how they may have accidentally given me the greatest way to describe myself ever! The Stake Young Women's Presidency decided for their 150 acts to write to each young woman in the Stake and send them some chocolate. I would have shown you a picture of what Top Ender received, but she ate it before I'd even got home from work so I have no idea what it looked like, only that it was tasty and she didn't share with anyone, not even Flyfour. I can share a photo of my b...

For a couple of years now I've been wanting to start a Podcast. I've had ideas of what it could be about, what I would chat about, what I would call it, what I would ask guests that I would have join me and I even recorded a pilot episode or two, ready to get my friends and family to listen to and give some feedback. The last time that I was really serious, roughly a year ago, and had almost everything in place I then foolishly went and got a job and that put an end to that version of the dream. A weekly hour-long podcast wasn't something that I had the time for along with my calling, my volunteering, my job, my family and the other hundred or so things I seem to squeeze into a week. Then over lockdown, I was bitten by the bug again, but it wasn't until someone unconnected to me said something that I realised I had to do this.

Just before the Summer holidays started, I sat down and wrote a list of things that I wanted to do whilst I was off work. In the end, I had sixteen different things on my list, some were small daily things, some were big summer projects, some exercised my brain, some were to relax me, some were to make things better in my home, some were to allow me to be creative... basically they were all about me and in no way am I going to apologise for that! The only problem was, the first day I had off I couldn't concentrate at home on relaxing and taking time out for me because I knew there was a massive project at work that needed to be completed before September and I didn't think I would have enough time to do it on the few days I'd be in work over the Summer.

As with most things, Church camp was cancelled for this Summer because of Covid-19. The powers that be worked hard, however, to create an online camp for our area where the main focus will be on the youth performing acts of service in their local area and after a little bribery (I suggested if they tried hard to enjoy themselves, I'd pay them to participate) my children agreed to take part. So, when Bishop emailed to say he had a huge delivery of t-shirts and was hoping we'd be able to pick them up before camp started, I emailed back with a time I hoped was suitable for me to collect shirts for my children and offered to collect the t-shirts for the youth aged children of a couple of friends who live nearby. Somehow, when I got to Bishop's home, this had snowballed into me taking all the t-shirts for the youth that live my side of the town and a thirty-minute errand, was suddenly a two-hour errand. It was an act of service to deliver them to those around me, one which I was...

I love to play Pikmin 3 on our Wii U and can often be found sitting in the den trying to reach the Platinum level on the various levels found in the Collect Treasure mode. I'm not going to say I'm the world's best player, in fact probably quite far away from it, but I'm good enough and I try to improve as much as I can by testing out different orders of collecting the fruit and killing and collecting the creatures that try to eat the Pikmin. The way I like to play is to get good at a level, like really good at the level, knowing little things and the orders to do things that mean I shave a second or two off my time and then once I think I've got the fastest possible route, I check attempts on Youtube and sometimes I see something that they have done that means I can shave another second or two off my time all in the pursuit of my ultimate goal, getting the platinum award. It's these small marginal gains that improve my performance and for me, it increases my enj...

Another week is gone, and yet we have another week of meal plans and another week of feeling like this year is speeding by at twice the normal speed but also taking four times as long to move through. It's almost like the entire world is walking through Treacle, but at the same time skiing downhill. Luckily we can make life feel a little longer, by taking the time to stop and smell the roses, to be mindful of the little moments that make the week special, to take time out to do something special and most importantly with all the alarms turned off!