Will Dig Life

This is the yearly roundup post - as I've done almost every year for 2022 ,  2021 ,  2020 ,  2019 ,  2018 ,  2017 , 2016 seems to be skipped as I got to grips with mothering two little ones, and  2015 . 2023 was, for us, a year of highlights and milestones as well as getting on with life and growing.  Milestones This year, Mr. and I were married for the third (!) time, almost exactly ten years after we first tied the knot. Some of the background (and lots more pictures) about this is here  - in short, our three weddings were firstly the Register Office legal wedding that only Mr.'s parents attended as witnesses; secondly the church wedding at City Church where we invited everyone, also in 2013; and now, finally, following the annulment of Mr's previous marriages, we made our marriage sacramental by having it convalidated in the Catholic Church. 2023 was also the year that saw N(9)'s First Holy Communion. A beautiful celebration of her now being ol...

Since the kids were little, Advent has been a very special time filled with activities and traditions created intentionally. Here's what I wrote about it in 2019 and we still do all those things. My aim in choosing and creating traditions was to help the kids build anticipation over the season, focus on why we celebrate (it's Jesus' birthday!) and to try and take the focus away a bit from the receiving stuff to the idea of giving as well. Most of the things here we've been doing for years now, but this year for the first time we're doing a 'Jesse Tree' (going through the Bible leading up to the birth of Christ, one event at a time) as well. As every year, we have the obligatory chocolate advent calendars as well as an Advent Wreath with four candles on it. Every Sunday in Advent we light another one, so that we end up with four lit candles by Christmas. There's also the reuseable Advent Calendar which has an 'activity' card in it every day (pr...

I listen to a lot of podcasts, broadly in three areas: Catholicism (interesting/faith growing), true crime (guilty pleasure), and homemaking/parenting (learning). An episode from the last category made me think today.... they were talking about home making routines and creating a "home-centred" life for the family. And I thought about our lives and how busy outside the home we are again , even after the lesson in staying home that Covid was; and that we definitely don't lead a "home-centred" life. But - is that a problem? Back at the start of 2020 it was one of my resolutions to try and spend one full day a week at home because we were always out and about, and I felt that a day at home would be beneficial in some way. Mostly on the basis that I saw other mothers do it and value it, taking pride in home making activities. Covid gave me a chance to bring in a routine, structure our days , and be at home in a way that didn't feel like a complete waste. And yet...

This post's title is almost exactly the same as one I wrote several years ago: I'm not the parent I thought I would be . I wrote that old article very much as a new parent with very small kids. The values I held then are still there, of course. But now, with kids in mid childhood, I'm more and more conscious of my shortcomings as a mother. And this blog is my thinking out loud space - it's not meant as a place to show off and appear perfect in every way, but a real record of where I'm at. And this is where I am today: feeling inadequate, ill equipped, not enough. I so desperately want to do right by them There's never been a time in my life before where I desperately wanted to do something well but kept failing, yet continued on. If I couldn't be good at something despite trying for a while, I'd just give up and walk away. Maths comes to mind... though I was never passionate about that, just had to pass the class somehow. Or playing instruments - I never...

It's definitely getting autumnal around here. We're back in our 'school year' routine, which is familiar and regular on the whole - exactly what we need after the action filled summer months. That said, the seasons move on and we're fully into Autumn, pumpkin picking and carving, and dressing up! We went to a pumpking picking farm where Cody met a pig for the first time (he shook like a leaf as he tried to sniff it!) and the kids found enormous pumpkins, then enjoyed equally enormous marshmallows... Roasting... Watching over the fence... We also took part in a few community activities as it was half term - getting dressed up for a Halloween party, cooking and baking with pumpkin, and of course some pumpkin carving as well. Carving time The perfectionist kept at it for aaaages Bit of physical playtime Learning to make sweet pumpkin treats at our local community centre Pumpkin decor to hang in the windows! A big highlight this month was attending a live concert of And...