Enlightened, humble and Duchenne smiles

I am reading for my essay. Loss, bereavement and the Grief cycle. I have been putting it off for months. Now that I cannot avoid it any longer, I'm finding it just hypnotic. I am loving reading about a new and fascinating subject - and I feel....like I'm a step closer to...I don't know...getting it. Life I mean. Have you read Its Never About What it's about? It's making sense to me - one of those life changing books I think.

Paul Mealor's Stabat Mater (Movement 2) - makes me feel humble. Moves me to tears and made me think I wanted it played at my funeral. (oh dear, I am preoccupied with the big D today).

I learned about Duchenne smiles. Not for the beauty conscious - those big, catch-you-unawares smiles and laughs that light up faces and make eyes muscles do strange things. Love them. Want more of them.

The new war memorial was unveiled. They took their time getting going, it was blowing a gale and beginning to rain, I started to feel impatient and wished they would stop faffing about. Then they played the Last Post and marched with their flags. I felt ashamed of my haste and short-temperedness. It was humbling -- I felt small, inconsequential...in the face of what those in WW2 endured - how would we all match up today?

A hot chocolate for everyone when we got home - we were chilled to the bone and damp - but the chocolate soon fixed us.

We loaded up Tulip the campervan and headed out for the afternoon to Stowe Landscaped Gardens. The children ran, hid, jumped and just enjoyed. When I asked at bedtime what their favourite bit of the day was - they both said simply "Stowe".

light, the dog walk and fresh air

We saw piles of straw bales stacked up in a field. The sky was dark and imminently shower-y looking but a tiny beam of sun peeping through lit up the warm yellow towers.

We went on a dog walk and it was lovely. To see the dogs run and wag their tails, and the children running after them until their cheeks were pink and they were breathless. Perfect.

All the way home in the car the children were quiet. Sated, spent and worn out from their morning of tearing around a field with their pets.

party, missing them already and Noah

We had our annual party (though it has been 2 years since the last one as we had chicken pox this time last year). It was fun, fun and more fun. We saw old friends, welcomed new ones and loved the fact that the children are so much more self sufficient & easy than 2 years ago. I didn't see them all afternoon and they told me they 'loved everything about the party'. Friends were sleeping in tents, in spare rooms and yesterday morning we all sat in the garden & had a party post-mortem.

The children go to stay with Nana on Wednesday until Sunday. I am going to miss them so much (although I do get a little bit excited when I think about having 2 WHOLE DAYS on my own.) I hope I can make the most of it and not mope about.

I have discovered Noah and the Whale. 'Blue Skies' actually makes my heart soar and my skin tingle, despite the fact that I must have played it twenty times this weekend. "Blue Skies are coming" is my new philosophy on life.

home safe, pottering and tingle

After all that has been happening in the cities the last few days, I am so glad and so thankful to be here, where all I can hear is the wind, my little girl singing as she plays and the combine harvesters at work. The news reports make me shiver as I imagine how it must feel to be in the thick of such hideous mind-numbing violence and lawlessness.

We are all pottering about the house doing our own little things, and every now again, we bump into each other and check in that all is ok.

Tonight I am teaching. I am nervous -- but excited too.

foreign climes, the smell of rain and going against the superstition.

I unwrap the bunch of rosemary, which I hate to have to buy but my plant has turned up it's toes, and imagine the warm, dusty, fragrant bush it must have been picked from. It rained, just for 5 minutes. It has been a long time since we had a shower and the smell of the rain hitting the earth was pure joy to a gardeners nose. A fleece, disgarded on top of a 5 bar gate as I drove past the horses field. The owner must have gotten too warm & casted a clought before the May is out (it's still in bud here).

White Christmas, looks good and learning

We are snowed in. We had to get some cards in the post though and so I took the children on our 'borrowed from Nana' sledge around to the post box. They were sceptical about getting on it at first. By the time we came back around the block, they were both on, holding on to each other, singing Jingle Bells and calling 'Faster mummy, faster'.

I have made a few more presents, was worrying about these ones as I thought they might be fiddly but they took hardly any time and look FAB!

I have learned some key facts today for my exam (4 weeks to go). I love to learn something new each day.