Resigned to it….

It’s 3 months this weekend just past until ordination, and as a result we’re hitting that time when colleagues are making the practical changes… school applications…. arranging house moves… resignations…!

Some of these are ordinands, some spouses with a changed role… either way, I’m feeling a bit left out 😉 so I pondered what it might be like if I tendered a letter of resignation from my current role… after all, I’ve been doing it for 14 years, and, well… there’s a serious point or two in there about how many roles we carry, and how easy or not it might be to lay them down, and should we…?

(as background you have to know that on Facebook I currently describe my occupation as Senior Project Manager at **** Family Logistics)

ps it seems as good a time  as any to say that MrF has now formally had the goahead to reduce his hours to half a week. 2 days of which will be office based. This will be from the last week of June. He’s a massive STAR… he always said  he’d do this, it’s taken a bit of a twisty bumpy path  for his employers to get there  but ” there” we all are now and I am hugely grateful to him  for  it.

Dad

This was the card I bought my Dad this Fathers’ Day.

When I was a teenager I got frustrated sometimes by his insistence that I could aim higher, improve my grades, shoot for the difficult goal. (no dad I really don’t want to do Maths A level… ever…) Perhaps with the innate laziness of youth I just wanted to kick back  occasionally!!  Looking back he wasn’t really nagging, but what he did was make me see I had a lot to offer and set the foundations for me to believe in myself  ( That bit took a while though….!). It wasn’t just school work either. He encouraged me across the board, and especially in what I was doing in church and  the beginnings of leadership skills that were learnt  in Scouting,  and in youth work.   I’m sure it has been his unwavering belief, not in my abilities per se, but in my ability to go for it that has helped me take big steps in my life, believing somehow  it would be ok.  Applying to Cambridge was certainly one, and then there’s the Very Big Thing I’m doing now!  I don’t think up to now I’ve been fully aware of dad’s part in this,  it’s been less about specific advice,  just that unwavering belief. Maybe it was seeing  this card and realising it was perfect that has helped me see the bigger picture – but  in any case, Thanks Dad, and Happy Fathers’ Day!

Nice Day for a White Wedding…

(Uncle) Si & Anna’s Wedding was on 9th Jan, right in the middle of all that snow, oh yes! Planned for a small village just outside Oxford, the church had to be changed with 24 hrs to go as the village  (and particularly the church on the hill) was inaccessible to vehicles!! Thankfully Anna’s Uncle was marrying them and is an Oxford cleric, so managed to both find a church, and get the Archbishops office into the right gear to get the requisite licence just in time.

We had a wonderful weekend, the children had been off school all week anyway due to the snow, but we had booked them out of school for the Friday, and we drove to Oxford with no problems,roads were  fine once out of the village, we arrived at the base camp hotel on the Banbury road, just north of Wycliffe Hall, and then yomped through the snow into the city for some lunch.  Then we yomped back up the Banbury road to the church in Summertown for the rehearsal and emergency repositioning of flowers & candles. All the collected Niblings were Bridesmaids/Pages so there was a spot of choreography as well as rehearsing the important bits.

Friday evening was a fantastic dinner for family and a few very close friends,. Anna’s mother is Danish and they have a tradition where guests  make up a song, or a poem  for or about the happy couple, everyone gets a copy of the words and tunes are well known ones,so  you end up with a great evening of hilarity, family jokes, teasing, love, celebration and not a few tears!! It was a great way to meet the ” other family” for both sides, and meant we all felt that we knew each other well by the Saturday. It turns out we have lots of mutual friends and connections anyway, so it didn’t feel like two  separate families much  anyway!

We’d all mostly taken over the hotel, so Saturday breakfast was a very sociable time, and left a reasonable amount of time to get all those bridesmaids & pages ready, for the ushers to go & have lunch, for photos and  a whole host of other bits. Mr FF ferried bridesmaids in impractical but lovely silver slippers, (well the girls were in the slippers, he ferried them in the car…) and  lots of others who preferred not to walk, to the church, the snow was gorgeous, very sparkly and white and the children were all sparkly too,

The service was fabulous, they’d picked the overarching theme of Grace & Truth,   the hymns were really good, great talk by Anna’s BIL, I read from John 1. In lots of ways it reminded me a lot of our wedding. Great stuff 😀

and then  into the centre of Oxford to the reception at St Cross (incidentally academic home of one my historian heroes Diarmiad MacCulloch)

it was a wonderful day -and the mad pair jetted off to SA the next day when part of their itinery included a triathlon!! only Marathon man….:D

Slipping through my fingers…

There’s something about this time of year, the diary seems to be filling up rapidly. All but one of my children are making a Big Transition in September, Ben starts school, Charlie goes into the Juniors, and Ruthy makes the big leap to secondary school, even Kate who thinks she isn’t making a big jump, really is, as she enters her last year in Primary. The result of all this right now is Meetings. Just when I’d legitimately got rid of lots of church meetings for the duration of my training, the school ones seem to be coming thick & fast. Attending my 4th and last Reception Year welcome meeting was amusing though rather than emotional Ben has the rather wonderful teacher that Ruthy and Charlie both had in YR so I’m very happy, and she doesn’t seem too worried (yet!). Ben’s certainly not 🙂
Everyone tells me that your last child starting school is emotional, that I *will* be there sobbing at the school gates. Well, they told me that when the first one began, 7 years ago, and I wasn’t sniffing into my hankie then and I really am not expecting to this time – ask me again in September. Starting secondary school however is another matter – no! I am not old enough to start with, nor can she be! for goodness sake, I remember her only yesterday learning to walk!
She’s ready though, tiny as she is, and I’ll wave her off in September trying to ignore the Abba soundtrack in my head.

Rocking my world

On Easter Monday we packed ourselves up ( tight turnaround after EasterSchool given how busy Sunday was… all good practice!!) and did that traditional clergy (in training) post-Easter getaway!

We were on a narrowboat for 4 days with friends from church here for her 40th celebrations, with us were other friends of hers, he a vicar, also doing that post Easter escape thing! 6 adults, 11 children, 2 boats!

It was a lot of fun, the weather ( bar Thursday when it poured down) was gorgeous, the children, two groups of whom had never met before, were fantastic ( even Ben, source of much pre holiday angst for Mr FF, understandably, 3 year olds + boats = stress, but no, he was fantastic ) Keeping the close in age siblings on separate boats helped of course! 11, 12 and 13 girls on one, 8, 9 and 10 year olds on another – bliss! Feeding all 11 of them together on one boat was fun, but did enable the 6 adults to have civilised evenings together later.

Many locks ( 17 in one day on the Wednesday) and hot cross buns, cups of tea and glasses of wine later we parted company, the hosts to welcome more friends on board for the weekend, the rest of us back to real life (and in Mr Ff’s case to an early morning flight to Las Vegas). I’ve been home alone with all four for a week now, with a ski tan, post-motion vertigo ( hence the title!) and an essay to finish. I am pleased to report that the tan still exists, the PMV has almost worn off a week later, the essay is in the envelope and Mr Ff is at the airport 🙂

Assorted pictures follow – taken with an inadequate camera phone!

Creation to Extermination!

Not a post about eschatology – just a birthday cake!

7 is always a special birthday in our family:-) this one was no exception!

Blue Monday? could have been here!

 Today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year – it’s based on some calculations about light and time since Christmas, and credit card bills and general malaise – oh and it being Monday. I have heard of it before but today I wasn’t aware of it being today until I was recounting my day to a friend and she reminded me –

Anyway, nothing of my day has anything to do with credit card bills or daylight or even it being Monday –  and it hasn’t sent me into the pits of despair, but it has been one of those days you’d rather not repeat in a hurry.

Mondays are one of Ben’s full days at preschool, so a full work day for me, however I knew that today would have a couple of hours out of the middle to take Kate for some repair work at the dentist,, only I’d forgotten that I’d booked a Pilates class, so I had to cancel that:-(

Next  Ben woke up with a small spot on his face having got infected – gah 3 year olds and their ability to lick their chins! That means no preschool for him. Already my day was looking more complicated than I’d like, and all thoughts of study are floating out the window. Ruthy said she felt a bit sick, but ate breakfast and went off to school anyway. Charlie was way too excited that it was now only one sleep till his birthday, so  that was ok.

At home I managed to write about 3 sentences, none of which bore any relation to the previous one, while entertaining Ben, then we went off to fetch Kate and drive to the dentist. The highlight here was finding a parking space that didn’t involve a 3 mile uphill walk, or scraping my car along  unseen 6 inch walls. Out we came and found a message on my phone ominously labelled “School”. This can only mean Ruthy isn’t well. She was still feeling icky and school with as much phobia of vomiting as I have ( and that’s saying quite a lot) wanted her gone. Kate was feeling very sore now as her anaesthetic wore off, plus she faced another 2 hours before she could eat anything, so I collected Ruthy and took them both home. Pretty good going by 1.30 on Monday to have 3/4 of the children at home!

At 2 I had to phone the doctors to get an appointment for Ben, praying it wouldn’t be at 3.30pm I hung on hold for a nice longwhile, and then got one for 5.30. Great Mr FF can do that then, he’d said he  could get out of the office early ” if needed” well he is!

By this time Ruthy had eaten something and was feeling miles better, Kates lip was back in  contact with her nervous system and Ben was playing bowling on the Wii. I snuck into the kitchen and iced Charlies birthday cake while peace reigned…ooh for 5 minutes until they realised I’d trimmed bits off the cake to get the right shape ( no you can’t see it, it’s not finished!) I got it hidden before Charlie arrived home with a neighbour -result!

Mr FF got home about 5 and whisked Ben off to the docs – it was that or cook supper, I managed supper and some more essay, and have managed a few more words this evening – it’s not flowing well, mainly I think because it’s last terms leftover assignment ( yes I do have an offical extension!) and I’d just like it done now.

I’ve got Ben off  tomorrow at least now, and most probably Wednesday, so there’s more midnight oil to be burnt. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day though, and I can’t believe it’s 7 years since Charlie was born on the bathroom floor – but that, as they also say, is another story!

Sometimes life just isn’t simple

It’s the little things that eventually get to you – like today, I had a clearish day, except that I had to take Kate to the dentist in the middle of it. So a little bit of work, go and collect her from school, hold her hand under drill fire and back to work for the afternoon. Yes, well that was the plan.

My car won’t start.

The dentist is 12 miles away

There is one bus an hour if you’re lucky, it takes over an hour and then there’s a 20 minute walk.

The appointment is in 55 mins

My car still won’t start.

So I came indoors and phoned school, and the dentist, and the garage.I cleared up the kitchen, and did some laundry and thought I’d sit down & work. Then the phone rang, it was my friend G telling me that pre-school was shutting because the loos had frozen!! ( yes it’s funny, Ben thought it was hilarious when he was telling me later)

I must have sounded slightly stressed because she offered to have Ben for the afternoon – I told her I shouldn’t even have been at home if my car had started. At this point I’m still waiting for the garage to call me back.

So back to some work, but my concentration has been shot, and it’s not very effective, so I do some more laundry so that I am at least achieving something out of the day.

I go up to school and pick up 5 assorted children, only 3 of whom are mine, deliver them back to their homes and pick up Ben from G’s, bumping into one of his pre-school teachers on the way who cheerfully tells me that pre-school is shut tomorrow too and ” we don’t know about Friday yet”

The men from the garage eventually arrive to pick up my car, they get it to start (typical!) but want to take it in to check it over, in theory this is fine by me as I don’t want to be stranded somewhere when it won’t start again, but I’ve just realised that tomorrow is fairly scuppered too – no car = can’t get to library, no preschool = have Ben home anyway. Mum and Dad are planning to come down for the afternoon to field children so I can work. I won’t be escaping to a quiet library but maybe I can salvage something!!

12th Night – back in the box?

12th Night – back in the box

Originally uploaded by fibre~fairy

I just loved these colours all together as I was packing away the tree decorations – and I realised I hadn’t taken any pictures of the tree over Christmas, so here’s the tree, back in the box. The poor tree is back in the garden, it’s SO cold out there I feel a bit sorry for it, it’s a bit of a shock even from our “on the cool side” house to the “below freezing” garden. I hope it grows well again this year, it’s had a lot of new growth since last Christmas.
The girls & I had an interesting conversation as we were putting away the nativity advent calendar, they were arguing about how many wise men there had been, Ruthy was adamant it was three, Kate equally sure there had been four. “Go & look it up” I suggested. Ruthy demurred (I have a feeling she knew what was coming!) Kate took the bible off the dresser and we looked up Matthew’s gospel, where we found that the number of Magi ( “that’s wise men,” I said, “yes mum I KNOW what Magi are, I’m not stupid”… – the ” durr” was implied! ) is not specified. We decided that the traditional three came about because of the three gifts named. They were quite thankful that they weren’t having to wait till tomorrow for Christmas though!
I’m always mindful of not packing Christmas back in the box along with the decorations at this time of year. I like remembering that the longer season of Christmas goes on until Candlemas, February 2nd,  by which time Lent & Easter are in sight (though not this year as close as they were last year!)

As ever, as the shops clear up Christmas, out come the Easter eggs, while I dislike the commerciality ( is that a word?) and the constant need to be onto the Next Big Thing, it does me no harm to be reminded that Easter & Christmas are inextricably linked, and that the Newborn Christ of Christmas is the source of the new life of Easter.

I want to sewwwwwwwww

 I just spent the morning in the library trying to get my head round evaluating the life & kingship of David (as in the King of Israel). It’s interesting, yes really it is, but I’ve come home and blog-surfed while eating lunch and everyone is making gorgeous beautiful things and I Want To TOO!

but I shall have to wait…

Back to the reading /essay now while the children write thank – you letters!