Will Dig Life

When we became Catholic a few years ago (blog post here ) we knew that we were leaving a loving, deeply connected community of friends. We were willing to do that to follow Christ; but there’s no sugarcoating the fact that the type of churches we came out of has a much stronger fellowship, and of course we have missed that. Doing life together - families whose kids grow up together, meeting up regularly and being each other’s social circle, practical and emotional support, deep friendship. This is life in the type of church we were part of.  D’s First Holy Communion - in our old parish The Catholic Church is pretty much as expected; while we have certainly met lovely people, there is no understanding of fellowship the way we mean it. On Sunday, after church there will be coffee and friendly conversation - and then everyone goes home. There’s midweek Masses of course, but those are about meeting with Jesus and not with each other. Fellowship meetings, small home groups, are unheard ...

It's been a busy autumn, and it's nearly over - to me, Advent marks the new season (as it also begins a new Church year!) - so here's a photo dump of things we've done. The big highlight of autumn is of course N's birthday, which I've covered in another post . Not long after that comes Halloween though, which we enter into sparingly: I'm not on board with a lot of the commercial excesses of it, nor the gory expressions of death and torture which have become so popular. But, we pick what we like and leave the rest; and one thing we liked a lot was the offering of a welding workshop (yes, for kids!) where they got to make their own spiders... Keeping their distance from the sparks! D with his finished product! We also visited the Wetlands Birds Centre at Slimbridge, which is always a great day out and was gloriously sunny... Another great day out at half term was the SS Great Britain - we'll certainly be back for the Christmas festivities there later this ...

My kids have never been fond of 'clubs' - half term activity clubs, for example - where I leave them for the day. D(8) in particular much prefers having me nearby, like at co-op, as he is much more cautious and reserved than N(10) who immediately dives in and makes friends. So, knowing this, I was not too sure how they'd feel about the local 'home ed club' that meets once a week; but I thought they were old enough to try it. D wasn't hugely enthusiastic about the idea, but I convinced him to at least give it a try. And guess what - the first day, when I picked them up, D bounced out of there with the words, " I love this!! " So they're having a fantastic time each week now, doing Pawprint Badges and challenges, BBQing, building friendships, and they even had an outing to the local fire station! And what's amazing is that this setting is in walking distance for us, so they can even go there on their own which N has been relishing: that sense of ...

So... this amazing girl just hit double digits. There was a time, when I was pregnant with her, that I really had to work through my feelings about becoming a mother at all (I've linked some blog posts here). I had never been all that keen on motherhood - from my own growing up experiences, I saw children as nothing but needy and motherhood as a trap . How different it all has shaped up to be... I guess like the baby inside me during pregnancy being unable to imagine life outside, nothing I imagined was anywhere close to the reality. Because what I was surprised by wasn't the drudgery of changing nappies and constant feeding - which turned out not to be drudgery at all - but the joy and love this little being filled me with. I felt like I was coming into my own, I never felt lost or 'not enough' as I heard other new mothers lament at times... against all expectations, I felt perfectly equipped and was loving every minute. Tired as I was, I loved it and I embraced it ...

There are lots of 'back-to-school' photos floating around Facebook at the moment, and of course we have no such pictures to share.  I'm excited to get back to a routine, though - since July, we've been in summer mode ( Vienna for six weeks, then Norway ) and it was awesome again, but I've definitely arrived at a point where settling back in my own house, doing largely the same things week-to-week, sounds very very attractive!  So, as I look ahead into the just-starting 'school year': what are our plans? Well, we kicked things off with the annual Home Edders camp: a rather wet one this time, but the kids weren't deterred - one night they even created a mud slide and came back absolutely soaking, mud covered, and glowing with joy! And everyone deepened old friendships and found new ones too. A few pictures... Marshmallow 'stache! Lots of dogs at camp this year Marshmallow toasting In the camper But, now we're back home, it's all systems go for...

After six weeks in Vienna, we returned home on a Sunday only to fly out again Thursday - this time not entirely for pleasure, at least not for me, but to work with Churchear supporting their big bi-annual conference by live translating / captioning.  For Mr. and the kids however, this was another one of those short trips for fun as well as educational purposes... I feel that seeing the world teaches kids a lot, and then of course these types of conferences in particular teach them to relate to people with very diverse backgrounds, nationalities and disabilities - all very valuable. And the beautiful thing is to see them forge connections, making friends equally with 80-year-old German conference attendees and a four-year-old Ukrainian girl who happened to stay at the same hostel. D (8) communicating with a deaf-blind Polish man by tapping on the letters on his glove I'm not planning to write lots, just a few photos and impressions - we only had five days there. I have now stepped d...