Will Dig Life

It's been two busy, amazing, wonderful weeks. First, Spring Harvest; which led straight into Holy Week. A huge contrast as we went from the loud concert atmosphere with strobe lights at Spring Harvest to the silence, reverence, bells and smells of the Cathedral... here are some photos. Holy Week kicks off with the Chrism Mass on Wednesday. This is where the oils for the coming year for use within the entire Diocese are consecrated - oils for healing / anointing the sick and for anointing at Confirmation. Every priest, deacon, and seminarian of the entire Diocese is there too to officially renew their vows, and it had such an impact on me seeing these men, who have given up so much and are literally living their lives in sacrifice and service... true, everyday heroes. D(8) got to serve too, he was in charge of the Bishop's Mitre. D(8) passing the Mitre to a Deacon *All* the priests On Thursday, D served at the altar again and Mr. got his feet washed by the Bishop at the Maundy T...

After last year's hiatus to Minehead, we returned to our 'home' Spring Harvest at Skegness. It's a long way away - five hours' drive - but for years it's been the site that Spring Harvest wanted me to go because there's already a captioner at Minehead who's been covering that site for over twenty years. The kids had the best time, as usual, they loved the kids sessions. N(10) particularly really gets it now, and even decided to begin sponsoring a 10 year old girl from Uganda through Compassion . She'll give up half her pocket money and write to Jenipher regularly, and pray for her. This was N's choice and I'm really proud of her. Hooray for Spring Harvest! It was such fun for us all! I've written about what Spring Harvest is like previously - see here - so I'll just put the photos of this year on this post, with some comments... We stay the night at about halfway - Leicester - because we're supposed to arrive  in Skegness by midd...

I am not, and never have been, a gardener. There's some real trauma in my teens, when after moving from my parents' apartment where I grew up and into my aunt's house which had a garden, I found myself having to weed and cut grass for the first time - and I hated it! I never tried again. The garden of our house (as well as the houseplants!) have been firmly Mr's responsibility. On a whim, years ago, I put our name on the waiting list for the allotments near our house. I knew the wait was long, and to be honest I forgot about it, until a few weeks ago an email came in saying there was now a plot and would I like to come view it. I thought, well, viewing it won't do any harm... and the timing was impeccable, because only a few weeks prior to this email, Mr and I finally settled in our hearts and minds that we would not be moving house (which had been vaguely on the cards for years, culminating in almost buying a house in 2022, which fell through). We are in Bristol, a...

N(10) has written and illustrated her own books for years ( here's an early example) - she's really quite prolific, her approach being to do lots and lots of them quickly: they're generally not coloured, and mostly just outlines of the action. D(8) is very different in his approach, he's meticulous and methodical and very much a perfectionist: he's worked on the same book for almost a year now. Mystery of the Magical Werecats is that book, which the kids started together last Easter when they met a new friend, Caleb. N quickly lost interest and moved on to the next project, but D stayed with it and refined the story, adding to it and illustrating more. He wouldn't write anything, though, because his approach to writing is still that he won't do it unless he knows exactly how to spell things. So unless he's got one of us parents to ask how to spell every word, he doesn't bother to write. This is where their collaboration as a team worked so beautiful...