Friends and shopping

We had a lovely day yesterday with friends from Sheffield....with two years worth of christmas and birthday presents to swap it was a long over due visit!

Jo and the girls enjoying the sun...

H's daisy crown...

The daisy decorated table...if we had said 'go pick all the daisys from the lawn and put them through the holes in the table' they would have laughed at us!!!!!

The weather continues to be beautiful...I have to keep reminding myself that it's only April! With so many bank holidays coming up, let's hope it continues!

The fruit trees are full of blossom...

We (finally!) found a suite we like.....I'm being VERY strict with a no food or drink (even water!) policy whilst it is still new!! I love the way it looks kind of old and feels very at home...it's also really comfy too.

I also had a big spring clean....a friend has had one of those outdoor office/sheds built. It is really cool and I was thinking maybe we would have one built....
but then I thought about it....the room in the loft is mostly unused until H gets in from school. So I spent all of last Friday clearing out unused stuff, cleaning, tidying and finally moving all my stuff out of the dining room into the space. It's a great place to work and the bonus is we get the dining room back and all without spending a penny (apart from a new blind and a few storage bits! oh and need to replace the Velux blinds which aren't cheap...but still a lot less than a new office!) I was on a bit of a roll and C took two car loads of stuff to the tip from the loft too! (ok so there is still at least ten more car loads...but it's a start!)
I need to crack on with my diploma work...however shopping with my girl called today...so the work will have to wait a while longer!

sunny days and birthdays

The weather at the weekend was unreal for the time of year. Bright cerulean skies and June warmth.

Chris catching the rays......

....the consequences!

Josh turns 18.....

ready for his first 'official' night on the town....

Back to the Black Swan

We have been married for 20 years this year and to celebrate we went back for the fourth year running to The Black Swan at Helmsley http://www.blackswan-helmsley.co.uk/

The weather was bright, sunny and warm! Just look at that blue sky!
We enjoyed  a complimentary cream tea when we arrived, a half bottle of champagne in our room.

And the food was absolutely superb as always.

On Monday we took a trip to Scarborough.

I have to say the donkeys looked pretty depressed...perhaps all donkeys are just naturally down in the dumps like Eeeyore!

The Richard the Third cafe bar...we sat outside here and enjoyed a cold drink.

We ate chips on the beach and then walked up to the castle (incidentally, despite many trips to Scarborough over the years, this was the first time I even noticed that there was a castle!)

We enjoyed another cream tea when we got back before getting ready for another yummy dinner.



We enjoyed a lovely drive over the moors before going home.

This is the panoramic view that my laptop produced!

The art of simply being...

A couple of my dearest friends and I often explore the idea of just being, living in the moment. I think I have done this successfully for much of my adult life, never planning too far ahead, seizing chances to splash in puddles, walk in the sunshine, do whatever feels right in the moment.

When the youngest of my three children started school (over ten years ago!) I decided that it was time to be more proactive and began a journey to discover who I was and what my role beyond motherhood was.

These days the journey continues, I mix planning, learning, growing and discovering with as much just being as I can manage. During my homeopathy training one of the valuable lessons that I learned was to let go of the end result and enjoy the journey.

I still have to work at letting my mind settle, there is a lot of 'monkey chatter' goes on inside my head (I often think others must be able to hear it, it's so loud sometimes!).

Life isn't a rehearsal, so I feel it's important to enjoy it as much as possible.

Spring is in the air!

At the weekend the sky was cerulean blue and there was warmth in the sun, spring was definitely in the air! (though still a sharp nip in the air too!)

Dear hubby and I went off to visit the gardens at Harlow Carr. http://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/harlow-carr

What do you see? (I see an old crone bent and pointing to the distance!)

The smells in this little green house brought a rush of memories flooding back, I was reminded of my grandads' potting shed right at the top of his garden.

I loved this statue of a boy sitting contemplatively by a pond.



So there it is, spring is most definitely on the way! (Tea at Bettys tea room http://www.bettys.co.uk/bettys_harlow_carr.aspx was the perfect finish to the trip, by the way!)

I am enjoying this leg of my life journey,  I am more settled than I can remember being for a long while. There are still up's and downs, but I guess that is life!
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of facilitating my first antenatal course. There was much to learn from, but it felt really good. Wednesday evenings will seem empty!

I often struggle to put into words what I am thinking, feeling or believe. This can be frustrating to say the least! I am often left feeling woefully inadequate and that I have left others with the opinion that I don't know what I am talking about/speaking rubbish/have blind faith in all sorts of quackery! None of which is usually the truth! I have spent a lifetime learning, listening and developing ideas and beliefs. I am constantly reviewing these ideas. And yet in arguments, discussions etc I usually just don't know how to express those things in  a coherent, intelligent way....I will continue to work on it! However, in the meantime I will borrow other peoples ways of expressing, that beautifully illustrate some of my thoughts! One such person, whose blog I recently discovered, is Kedi. I was going to post a link to a recent post, however, on reading through several of her posts I thought I would just add a link to her blog!! http://keditalksbirth.wordpress.com/

Love!

Tonight I am reminded what young love feels like. It is Valentines day, these days the commercialism of the thing troubles me...not to mention the fact that me and my beloved have two love anniversaries to celebrate in March. But I am softened by my children sharing time with their current 'loves', Josh is in the kitchen making stir fry chicken sweet and sour from scratch with his girlfriend and Lorna spent ages on Saturday making 'love heart' cookies for Joey, who will be round after he has finished work. It refreshes me and reminds me to be less cynical, which has got to be a good thing yes?

I am fully immersed in my first antenatal course and all the planning, making and laminating that that seems to involve. I am aware that a lot of the practical stuff won't need to be repeated and the plans will need minor tweaks here and there as I do more courses, so this time around is probably the hardest. I'm really enjoying it, being with the fabulous people who are sharing a little bit of their journey to parenthood with me, is so exciting (I do contain as much of my 'cheesyness' as possible, honest! But it IS cool, I look back now wistfully at my motherhood journey....no regrets, I loved it every minute (even the long days and nights trying to figure out how to keep my dear son from crying!) I learned so much from them. I learned that my mama heart was infinitely full of love and kindness.

this is me with the children, many moons ago!

25th December 2010

Running...standing still

For the whole of this year so far I feel like I haven't stopped. After a slow paced snowy November and December, the holidays and the 'flu this has felt both shocking and good. Good to get my teeth into LIFE again, good to notice the mornings getting lighter, the evenings drawing out a little. Great to finally be testing out the skills and plans that I have been hatching and incubating for three long years by teaching my first antenatal course. Good that this has taken over my life so completely for the time being and great to be able to just go with that.

Today I have been luxuriating in nothingness...yes the bathroom needs cleaning, there is food shopping to be done and a million other minor, trivial things (which sort of do keep this family ticking over!)...but the impetus to get dressed wasn't there, instead I got back into bed and finished the book that I have been reading since the holidays



when I had finished the sun was shining and the sky was blue, across which the wind was ushering wispy white clouds....

I'm still ignoring 'life' hammering away at the door to be let back in, I'm going to write my blog, put new music on my iPod, print off the photos from the HOLIDAYS a MONTH ago!

I have been thinking about how precious LIFE is...and yet how pressing 'life' is...how do we strike a balance? How do we enjoy and suck every last morsel of pleasure out of LIFE whilst managing to do the shopping, laundry,cooking, washing up and the myriad other seemingly endless demands on our time? (answers on a postcard please!)

Sharing a couple of hours a week with some very special people who are embarking on a new and thoroughly exciting chapter in their lives...becoming parents...really makes me stop and think. I remember, more than twenty years done the line, how exciting yet terrifying that place is. To be on the cusp, not really knowing what to expect. I remember the early days which were full of magic, terror, and lots of special humdrum! Finding our way the three of us working out who we were and how we all fit together in this new thing called 'our family'. Later the joy of adding to that mix a couple more ingredients, shaking and jiggling to see how they fit in.

Nowadays of course it feels very different. I have always been aware of the my children as 'real people' with their own thoughts, ideas, feelings and big, big personalities. But now they are so very grown up there is absolutely no avoiding it. I marvel at them, I despair at them!

There is so much in my head and my heart right now....I would love to be able to grab it all and fling it at the page, much of it slips away like quicksilver to disappear or return whilst I am in the shower and have no way to pin it down...

Ah! well as I mentioned the sky is blue and the sun is out, so I can dare to dream that spring is round the corner. I remember eleven years ago (ELEVEN years where did that go?) when we first moved 'up North', after we had dropped the eldest two at school the youngest and I used to walk home spotting 'signs of spring'. I am missing that today....I might just have to put my coat and boots on and walk to the shops, surreptitiously looking for those signs (bulbs peeking through the earth, buds here and there on the tree...) for now though I will settle for the bunch of tulips that I bought the other day...

Ooh and it is Chinese New Year, so Xin Nian Kuai Le! Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy New Year!

Wishing you all health and happiness.