Heat recovery

Got quite stressed at church this morning. J sitting behind me with Adam & 3 other boys. I have already got them to sit nearer the front away from the older people who were complaining they were being noisy. Trouble is there's one who is quite young, only 3 or 4 & he sits there to be with his bigger brother & he is noisy! The others make nearly as much noise telling him to be quiet. His parents sit the other side of the church apparently unaware of it all. The only one who wasn't making any noise this morning was J & despite repeatedly turning round & going 'Shhh' I couldn't really get them to behave, in fact Adam was just getting more & more giggly. Several people were staring & the woman sitting next to me, who just happened to be the one who stormed out of the church meeting, was obviously annoyed. But what can I do? If I make too much fuss they might stop coming & none of the noisy ones are from Christian families, it's good they come to church.
Anyway now August has finished Sunday school will start again. Hooray!
Had long chat with minister about church library. He's all for buying new books which is good & we seem to be on same wavelength about types of books. I've been trying to reorganise the library a bit. A couple of weeks ago I went in & with P's help put the books in piles according to which category they came into. I didn't have time to finish, went home & came back 2 days later to find someone had tidied them up & put them on shelves in random order. Obviously they were trying to help but I could have cried. Anyway I want to sort them out, & get it looking nice.
After church J went round Adam's house & is going to sleep over. Peaceful afternoon & evening.
P has just started working on our ventilation & heat recovery system. This is very good as it might mean we don't have to have the windows open in the winter. It'll be really interesting to see what difference it makes to the temperature of the house. I still want to get a wood burning stove though.

Swimming party

Got quite stressed doing prayer bulletin. Realising that one disadvantage of an open-plan house is that when you need peace & quiet you don't always get it.
Swimming party was amazing - at place with lots of whirlpools, slides, waterfalls, jacuzzis etc Children had wonderful time. Louise & I are contemplating going back without them sometime & just sitting in the jacuzzi. Of course we will take them with us another time.
It was interesting watching the children, while the girls went round in twos & threes the boys every so often would coalesce into a pack. It seems to be the nature of a pack of boys that whatever intelligence they possess as individuals seems to evaporate & they collectively look for the most moronic activity available. One of them tries to block the waterfall by sitting on it so they all do. As J would say 'Duh!'
Do some of the local senior schools realise just what they're letting themselves in for?

What I should be doing.

You know sometimes you're meant to be doing something & you do something else cos what you're meant to be doing is a bit like hard work & you're not sure how to do it. Well, what |I sat down at the computer to do was write the church prayer bulletin so I'd better do it I suppose. Sometimes it's quite hard as people send me emails about problems then say 'you decide how to word it' & sometimes I don't know what to put. Also there are so many troubled areas in the world it's hard to choose which ones to mention. I suppose what I need to do is stop uploading pictures of sunflowers & butterflies & pray about it.

Sunflowers

And these are J's sunflowers.

Butterfly

This is a butterfly in our field.

Busy week

Ok, getting J to try on his uniform when we were all really tired was a mistake, my mistake. This has been such a busy week. J has been doing archery & ice-skating with Tim & Adam & their sisters. I have to say the girls did rather out-perform the boys at skating, gliding effortlessly & gracefully across the ice. Tim's sister got a Grade 4 & Adam's sister a Grade 3. Adam had a rather wobbly approach but managed to get Grade 3. Tim tended to look as if the wall wasn't there he would never stop & he was a little bit what you could describe as 'blundering'. His face was almost constantly in anguish as whichever size skates he wore they still wouldn't fit. Every so often he left the ice to sit in misery. Poor J looked like his body just wouldn't do what he was telling it & he looked very stiff & as if he'd topple over backwards any moment, which made it rather nerve-wracking for his poor mother. Still he was very determined & worked hard. Both J & Tim got Grade 2. Still they all said they enjoyed it & want to do another course. We'd better try & take them back for some practise first. It is cold at the ice-rink though. So cold I had to have a hot chocolate yesterday to warm me up.
When it came to archery J seems to have a degree of natural ability & did quite well. Wonder if we should let him join a club.
Yesterday morning J & Adam missed the archery & met up with the other ex Year 6 boys for a morning of laser tag. They all dressed up in combat gear, divided into 2 teams & had a great time shooting each other in the woods. The idea was that the mums would sit & relax but only 3 of us stayed the whole time while most of the others dashed off to Tescos etc Still it as nice to have a chat with the other two & two more came along after a while. I seem to be getting to know the other mums better since he's left! I did reflect on the fact though that I was sitting chatting to the mums of the two boys who persistently teased J for most of his time at junior school. Still, let bygones be bygones as they say.
Then we had a quick picnic & it was off to skating followed by more uniform buying. Tonight J has a birthday swimming party 30 miles away. I'm exhausted!

Scream time!

Now as a complete break from uploading beautiful tranquil beach scenes I am going to silently scream because buying & getting J to try on his school uniform has turned me into a stressed-out gibbering wreck!!!

Aaaaaagh!!!

How can trying on one simple pair of white PE socks be such major trauma, how can it? They are the largest size they make & he's struggling to get them onto his feet. Ok, that's not easy for him but is throwing them across the room really the answer?

And now we're onto the football socks. J has a very vociferously totally negative attitude to his football kit as he doesn't want to play football or rugby. I don't think he needs to worry as he'll probably spend the whole lesson trying to get his kit on. If he throws a football boot at me he goes up for adoption. And no, I've just said to him, he can't chop off the studs.

And the trousers said Age 13 on the hanger & when we took them out at home they're Age 11 & too short.

And I've still got to wash, iron & label this lot.

I must say though that he does look pretty smart in his uniform.

Monastery

This was an ancient monastery we went to visit.

I was wearing my brown hoody so I pretended to be a monk. We got the children to sit down & contemplate for 5 minutes then tell us what they were thinking about - they came up with some quite deep thoughts.

Scooty

It was a good job I had my new friend Scooty.

The beach

Because down a steep windy path we found this beautiful unspoilt beach.

Some pictures P took of the harbour

Lunch

This was meant to be a light lunch.

Thieves!

These are the criminals who stole J's bait!

Crabbing

This is the harbour where J & his cousin went crabbing. I could have included a picture of the fishmonger who was selling fish-heads he would have thrown away to children for 25p.

Wales

Where we went was to Wales for a couple of days to see my brother & family. We took a different route this time - a southern one so we weren't able to call in on friends we saw last time (but we will come & see you again!). I didn't like this route very much because it was over steep windy mountain roads & made me feel sick. Younger niece was doing activities during the day but we went out with older niece who is 13 & a lovely girl. She & J are just like brother & sister together. We also took my brother's mother in law with us one day, she is living half the time in a flat built into what was originally their garage & the other half in a flat back in her home town.
Anyway we had a really nice time & in the evenings I managed some Barbie play time with my younger niece.

Hello again.
I haven't been blogging for a while because:

• was away for a few days
• have been really busy, mainly ferrying J around
• our internet connection has been rubbish! Right now computer is saying it might not be able to publish this. We are in the process of changing to a new provider so hopefully things might improve
  

Sun set

But it did clear up eventually.

Wet weather

The day it rained a lot!

J' s bed

This is J on his bed (that thing under the blanket is his head).

Our tent

This is our tent in which we lived last week. This shows J's bedroom, ours was up the other end. It was a very cosy tent & I actually enjoyed camping, especially as P did all the cooking & washing up.

What's this picture?

Do you know what this is? It's the window in the roof of the bookshop at Faith Camp which is where we were last week. P took the picture because he liked the pattern. Had really, seriously brilliant time at Faith Camp. If you want to know more about what it's about you can click on this link: www.kingdomfaith.com