Sorry Graeme!!

Although this will give you something to read Graeme, it looks like you will have to learn to be a bit more patient for updates! I never seem to have the time to do this on a regular basis, so assume that I am going to become a once a month blogger and if you get more posts than that it will be a bonus!! :o))

To be fair to myself though, its hardly surprising that I haven't been on here. Just after my last post, a friend (and our vicar) was taken seriously ill (via a night on my sofa) and has been in hospital ever since. As our main vicar is also off work on long term sick leave, that left me dealing with a lot of very stressed brides and grooms, as its my job to arrange their banns and people to help at their weddings. Since they could not reach a vicar at all, most of them were in major panic mode! I thought arranging my own wedding was stressful enough, but trying to sort out around 10-15 a month has been doing my head in!!

Anyway, other than that here are some of the highlights of the past 7 weeks:

Benjamin started tennis lessons at the Delta centre, and is enjoying them so much that we bought him a racket for his birthday (more of that later).

I volunteered to be a complimentary therapist for the Prospect Hospice carers day. As a result I have been asked to go in on a regular basis and treat both carers and patients. I have to do some basic training, but then should be going in every fortnight. It's quite scary really as all through my aromatherapy training we had it drummed into us that cancer was something that we were not allowed to treat, and now here I am helping out with patients!

Lots of exciting things have been happening at the boys schools:

I went into Orchid Vale to help Ben make pizza faces


Benjamin took part in his first ever art exhibition, and we were allowed to buy the framed artwork. It was a self-portrait collage of his favourite things, and contained amongst other things football, golf, tennis, formula 1, pasta, guinea pigs and Starbucks. I'm not sure what that says about my 6 year old son!

Sam (&I) went on a nursery trip to Bristol Zoo - the first time that most of the children had done a full day. Apart from having the last bite of his cake stolen out of his hand by a very large (& I have to say scary) crow he had a great day, and it was nice to be able to spend some one on one time with him doing something different!


Both boys have had their school sports days (at the same time on the same day - oh the joy of 2 different schools!). However thanks to a bit of help from my mum, we managed both, although as Ben only ran in 2 races (skipping and the relay) I sadly didnt get to see him compete, but as mum took some photos for me there is something for me to scrap! And even though we didn't get to Ben's school until late, I still managed to get dragged into the mum's race. You'll be as surprised as I was when you hear that I managed a respectable 2nd out of 7. And yes there is photographic evidence thanks to Mrs Emma McCarthy, and no I am not posting it on this blog!!!



Ben has also taken part in his first musical performance with the Orchid Vale choir. They sang songs from musicals and classics from the Beatles, Abba and ELO. Everything from memory and with actions for some of the songs too. They were brilliant and it was great so see such a big choir!


As for me, I sang in my choir show at the Wyvern theatre. It was a great (if tiring) day (full rehearsal and 2 back to back performances) made all the better for having a real west end star (and ex Kentwood singer) guesting with us to do Les Mis for our finale. We have also done a couple of other smaller concerts, but have now got a bit of a quieter period over the summer which is nice, as it gives me a few more weekends with the family.

I have also done a bit more scrapping of late, but can never be bothered to scan & upload my layouts, so sadly wont be able to show you any. Apart from that it has been the usual manic rushing around that the end of the school summer term brings, several trips to the dentist for fillings (and a near heart attack at the bill!), quite a bit of massage work, oh and planning a 6th birthday party of course.

We were so fortunate with the weather for Ben's birthday. What on earth I would have done with seven 6 year olds had it been raining I don't know. As it was, they mostly played out in the garden, and then we sent them off to do a treasure hunt around the close. They loved it! We did of course also play the usual games of pass the parcel, musical chairs & musical statues and fortunately this was enough to keep the girls amused (first time Ben has invited girls to his party!) But I think this will be the last year we party at home - I don't think I can cope with 8 seven year olds in the house!!


We've also been geocaching. A great event was organised down in Bradford On Avon last weekend, so we took ourselves along with a picnic and joined in the fun. We managed 5 different sorts of caches in one day, including the very special Wombles cache, from which Ben managed to bag himself a Bungo backpack. If you have no idea what on earth I am on about check out this website.


Well I think that's pretty much us up to date - apart from the most important event of the last month, which was our 10th wedding anniversary. But I am too tired to do that justice tonight, so will post again with the pics from our very special day.

PS - Hope that was long enough to give you something to get stuck into Graeme! :o)