Birthdays and Sunshine

Crikey I didn't realise it had been so long since I blogged!

What have we been up to?


We had my niece's 1st birthday party at my brother's house (she's the little girl in pink watching whilst everyone else plays with her new toys!).

Everyone dressed up for the occasion and, ironically, Roarke, Josh and William all wore blue shirts.

That meant I got a lovely photo of my "boys in blue" (one of whom is bound to want to kill me for putting that picture on the internet... *shrug* mother's prerogative - and I could put worse ones up!)

We also officially started our Pampered Chef business, with Roarke having three cooking shows in four days. It is really fun, and we love having something to do that includes food ;-)

I have finally been able to pass on the media spokesperson role, with Ian Matthews being announced as the new spokesperson. I'm sure Ian is going to be amazing, and I wish him all the best. I'm not going to miss the endless phone calls nor the short-notice "can you do a radio interview?" or, worse, "can we send a car to bring you to the studio?"!

Ongoing activities include Josh taking his Level 4 Sailing course at Danson Park, and going to SAVVY on a Thursday. Samuel is getting more and more involved at church on the sound/multi-media desk. He served in ROCK Sunday School on Sunday and then in the evening (and again on Monday) when we had Pastor Bill Wilson from Metro Ministries over, he served in the tech box. He has also been going to band practice every Thursday to do the sound for Baseline.

Josh is still doing his math regularly, which is encouraging. I need to start thinking about giving Jonathan some more opportunities for learning actually. I think, having never gone to school and therefore having no hang ups about studying, that he would response well to having some worksheets and things to do. I need to dust them all of ;-)

Bill Wilson was amazing, actually. The messages that he brought have really affected myself, Roarke, Josh and Samuel and there is a lot of thinking, praying, and planning going on as a result. There has definitely been a paradigm shift..

That same weekend we also went to another first birthday party, this time for Kaiyah.

This was a lovely gathering and we were very pleased to have been included amongst friends and family invited.

We went with William and Jonathan for the start of it; they had a great time with all the kids there.

We then collected Josh and Samuel from their life group social, dropped Jonathan at Mum's, and went back and stayed until the end.

It was good to be out as a family.

This morning I had an interview with a reporter - not about home education for a change! Woo hoo! Actually it was about Dad's story and I'm hoping that the piece gets published and helps a little in raising awareness of coeliac disease.

The garden seems to have recovered from the frosts and the plants have all responded well to the short sunny spell that we have had. I have finally worked out that it IS the pigeons eating my brassicas, having caught them in the act, so yesterday I went out there and made a make-shift netting cover for them all as well as for the strawberries. I hope that works!

Now I need to focus on the fact that Jonathan will be THREE next weekend, and then it will only be a few weeks before William is EIGHT!