joy

Beach Day!

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As the weather is so lovely, I thought it would be a good time to share one of our favourite beach stories! One summer about 8 years about when our kids were aged between 4 and 11, Sean was working most of the day on a Saturday and so was a good friend of mine, so I offered to take her kids and mine to the beach for the day.

So, I took all six down to the beach and reserved ourselves a spot. I set up the windbreaks and umbrella, sun-creamed all the kids and then entertained them for around 6 hours. Sean then arrived with my friend. She bought a dinghy, which we immediately blew up and took out on the water. Sean said he’d look after the kids while we headed out in the dinghy for a row and to give me a bit of a break.

Now, we had a lovely time bobbing on the waves and getting away from the noise of the shore. To be honest, I was a bit hopeless at rowing, a bit of lack of co-ordination! But we got pretty far out. Eventually, we felt we should head back to shore and check everything was ok with the kids. As we drew closer, we saw all the children standing on the shoreline calling something to us. We couldn’t hear, but they were very urgent about it. As it felt urgent, I jumped out of the boat and swam to shore. The kids immediately surrounded me, and that’s when I heard this story!

When I had left Sean with the kids, the kids had all gone off to play, and Sean had been enjoying a bit of peace after a busy morning. After a few minutes, he decided to have a quick headcount and counted only five instead of six. Both my friend’s kids were with him, but only three of ours. The youngest, Leo, 4, was nowhere to be seen. Minor panic set in. Sean was sure he must be with one of the other kids.

He checked with them all, and none had seen Leo for a few minutes. Bournemouth beach in the summer is heaving! Sean took a deep breath and commissioned the kids to go off in pairs to try to find him. They scoured the shoreline without success, and they regrouped. At this point, Sean began to try to rationalise in his head what he would say to me when I got back. He knew I’d had the kids on my own for six hours and he’d had them for less than half an hour and lost one! One thought was that maybe three out of four was ok!

Finally, my friend’s daughter ran up and said she thought she had found him but couldn’t be sure. Sean was a little baffled by this but ran in the direction she pointed in. There was a large crowd of people surrounding a beach hut. Sean pushed his way through and there, right at the centre, with some police officers and some friendly beach hut owners, was Leo. Sean swooped in and scooped Leo up. He reassured the police he was definitely Leo’s dad and managed to convince a tearful Leo to agree!

He headed back to the beach camp and gathered the children to talk to them. “Now kids, Leo’s here, everything is ok, there’s no need to tell mum about this!” Cue the kids then running to the shore to wave and shout at us as we headed back!

Camping with young children!

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We have been camping with the same family every year for the last 11 years, since our youngest, Leo, was 2 months old. This means we have quite a few funny stories. Camping with toddlers leads to some hilarious moments. When we recently went away, we were chatting about some of these, and I knew I had to write them up for you. Don’t judge us too harshly; we’re good parents really, but these stories don’t show us at our best!

When the children were very young, getting them to sleep was a bit of a challenge. We would take it in turns to settle them before sitting out in the fading light drinking something, usually alcoholic! One evening, when our littles – Abbie, 2 and Leo, 1 – were just about asleep, we sat out in the awning to listen for Abbie to settle before we snuck in to get the wine out of the fridge. Finally, all seemed quiet, and a sneaky peep through the window showed two sleeping toddlers. Sean went to open the door, but though the handle turned, the door wouldn’t open. Of course I had to try too, but no, the door was stuck. We realised that Abbie must have turned the latch on the bottom half of the door and locked herself and her brother in!

At this point, our friends had finished settling their kids too, and we all stood staring at the caravan, trying to work out how we were going to get in! Fortunately, the window to the ‘bathroom’ (really just a cupboard with a toilet in) was open. This was still quite high up, as you can see from the pictures! It wasn’t easy for Sean to get in and we were all laughing more than helping!

Another morning the kids were entertained watching a film in the caravan while we had our coffee outside. Abbie came out and told us there was a bird. We all said that was nice, they were watching the Lion King and she was right there were birds in that. She frowned and went back inside. A couple of minutes later one of the other kids came out and told us the same and said we should come and see. We’d all seen the Lion King numerous times and so weren’t overly excited about rushing in to look at Zazu on the TV! We said we’d come in a minute. Sarah drew the short straw and went to see! She dashed out a moment later saying there was an actual bird in the caravan! She then managed to catch the bird and release it back to the wild!

When Leo was younger, he had a nasty stomach issue, which meant he regularly would have a day of vomiting. Poor boy, he coped with it really well. This happened once when we were camping, and the best thing to do seemed to be to keep him isolated in the caravan and let him try to sleep it off. He was very sleepy and so slept a lot of the morning. By lunchtime, I brought him outside to sit on my lap, and he seemed to perk up, but being concerned in case it was a tummy bug, I took him back inside and he felt sick again. Sean came in and noticed there was a funny smell in the caravan. Sean has a very sensitive sense of smell, so I wasn’t really that surprised. Leo had been sick more than once, and so the smell was to be expected. But when one of the kids came in and said they smelt something funny too, we investigated a bit more. To our horror, we discovered that the leisure battery was leaking gas into the caravan! We’d essentially been poisoning Leo by leaving him in the gas-filled environment! Fortunately, a caravan serviceman was on site and quickly helped us to get rid of the battery, and I sat outside with Leo until he was feeling more normal!

There’s another poisoning incident, but I think that deserves a blog post all of its own!

There used to be a very tall and, let’s be honest, quite rickety slide at the campsite. This was the focus of much of the park fun. In the pictures below you can see Sarah, safely holding onto her daughter as she went down the slide, and also Sean kind-of holding Abbie. However, when Leo was old enough to go down at around two, he was a little scared to go and so Sean decided to help him. He did this by taking him up the steps and then holding him dangling at the top, before (much to my horror!) letting go and allowing him to whoosh down on his own! Needless to say he didn’t enjoy it! We still talk about this and wonder if it’s why Leo is so fearful of slides and often concerned about safety.

Next time I’ll elaborate on the poisoning!

Camping Acrobatics

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Enjoy this blog written by Tom!

Another classic camping moment comes from two fathers of the respective families, my dad and Adam. Each time we go camping, once in May and once in July, the men (I’m happy to be included in that category) go to the pub for a pint and we get meat for a braai. The women often go charity shopping together on another day for clothes or mediocre board games that only get played once a year. 

On this occasion, I was able to drive the car for the first time, so I was naturally allocated the role of the designated driver! We parked up after some great driving (given the car was quaking under the weight of myself and the 3 large men it was holding) and went to the butcher; browsed for the meat we wanted and we got it using the great discount for those camping at the place we were at. We then headed to the pub. It had a great garden seating area, and the sun was shining bright so we were almost fighting for shade under the giant parasol that was above the table. Due to my being the designated driver, the other guys had a little extra to drink, which was, after later evaluation, likely the reason for this story being told. 

We got back to the camp site, and sat down to eat some really well-cooked meat! We were discussing how our dads are old, and can’t do anything. Unexpectedly, our dad got up and said that he can still do a headstand which he then demonstrated. Surprisingly well. He even managed to spread his legs in the air.

At this, Adam, filled with excitement, said that when he was 14, he could dive-roll really high and said that he would demonstrate. It was at this point that the cameras came out. The videos should be linked below. My dad resumed his position and Adam began his “run-up”. He had recently had a knee operation and is not the most athletic person to begin with, so this was more of a limped waddle leading to a collision and the two rolling on the floor in pained laughter. This story is great, because it’s one of the stories where there are multiple videos to look back on. At every mention of it since, Adam has remained convinced that he could do it if he tried again and I’m eagerly awaiting the time they try again.

Kid’s eye view!

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I have compiled two stories into one here because I feel like they both fall into one category of “How we saw Mum do it” because the funny part of the story is not what actually happened but the way we, the kids, saw it using the beautiful imagination God blessed us with! 

The first of these stories happened when we had our Tesco food shop delivery, usually on a Sunday. This service is really helpful for our family as it means every week mum doesn’t have to carry food for 8 people and a cat up the drive… instead a random spotty teenager or grumpy old man does it. It also means we can all pull our weight by doing something together in a super efficient manner. On a rare one or two weeks, a non-essential item would slip through the system and not make it to us like marmite, for example. 

On the week in question, Tesco seemed to have missed a few items, but the thing we noticed after the Tesco man had left was the bananas, a very important fruit in our house, so mum went back outside to see if she could get them. In reality, she had called the man, who had not yet reached the van to check and as it turned out, he had accidentally missed a crate of food and he brought it up to our door. When mum came in with the crate, she was very surprised to find everyone in the house in utter hysterics, because of how we imagined the interaction.

In our minds, the Tesco man had already driven away and mum ran with all her might to catch up to him, had hit her slipper against the window, forced him to stop and then dragged him out of his van to search for our bananas. It also transpired that the Tesco man standing at the door heard what we thought had happened and was chuckling when mum gave him the crate back!

The second of these stories comes from an evening dinner when we were having a staple meal in our home, fajitas and enchiladas. We all sat down to eat, with everything laid out on the table so we could serve ourselves. There are usually 7 or 8 of us at the table and so a common problem is that we run out of cheese very quickly! As everyone knows, over the last 5 years, the cost of, well, everything has gone up massively, and it’s not stopping, so every penny counts. Mum, aware of this, told us, “we need to stop wasting the cheese! Cheese is really expensive!” while putting a small portion of cheese onto her wrap. This was met with a chorus of laughter and mime as we showed what we had seen her do. The way we saw that moment was that we saw her saying that cheese is expensive while furiously filling her wrap with the cheese so that it was flying away as she threw it down onto the plate. This is regularly mentioned when we have cheese with any meal, particularly fajitas. 

Killer Cat

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As the weather is getting better, we all start thinking about BBQ’s (or in our house Braai’s). This always leads us to the story of a BBQ we had a couple of years ago. The sun was obligingly shining for us and we were all enjoying chatting and the smell of cooking meat! We had a few friends over and Sean had made his usual platter of meat, which I’d supplemented with some salad!

I should mention here that we have a little black cat called Ozzy. He’s often the cause of drama in our house, whether that’s trying to get on the countertops to get at the meat or trying to eat sticky tape and gagging when he does! Well, this day he had been helpfully out of the way while the meat was being cooked and while everyone served themselves.

But clearly, when we all sat down to eat, he decided now was his time to make his big entrance. We’re all sitting with our plates balanced on our laps as he walked into the centre of all of us, a large flapping pigeon in his mouth! Cue guest jumping up and away from this demon proudly carrying his latest kill!

Horrified, Sean handed me his plate and tried to intervene! He tried to shoo the cat out of the centre of the circle, but he wasn’t having any of it. He obviously thought he would join us and bring his own meat!

After several failed attempts to get him to move away, Sean picked Ozzy up, flapping bird still firmly in the cat’s mouth, and threw him over the fence into the neighbour’s garden!

By this point there’s blood drops all along the patio and feathers everywhere! Half of the guests sat opened mouthed at the horror scene just played out, and the rest of us were in hysterics at the look of shock on Sean’s face!

This is probably one of Ozzy’s low points, or if you think it’s impressive that he caught the pigeon, a high point! I’m sure he will feature in other stories, usually being naughty somehow!

Clumsy Mum! (Again!)

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Following on from the electric scooter incident, there are a number of other stories that the kids like to tell about my clumsiness.

This first one is written by Leo, my youngest. You should know that in our garden there’s a fairly steep grassy slope!

“One day in the summer I was hungry so I went into the kitchen to look for some food. I looked outside and everything was normal and Mum was hanging the washing. I looked away for one second, then looked back to see Mum rolling down the hill. She had done it again, she had fallen down the hill starfish style again.”

The other story that causes Millie, in particular, great hilarity, happened last spring. As we’ve mentioned before, we have a caravan, but last year the one we had been using for about ten years was deemed unusable! So we took the kids to an outdoor caravan showroom. Not that we had much intention of buying one from there, but we thought it would be helpful to get an idea of what we would want.

This is Millie’s version:

“So this is my favourite story to tell anyone who is willing to hear it. It was the spring 2024, and we were looking for a new caravan, after the old one sadly broke. In the first caravan we looked in, we were excited and intrigued to see what it would be like. The first caravan was right in front of the caravan shop. Dad and I had finished looking around and were outside waiting for Mum, Leo and Abbie to come out. Suddenly, we hear an enormous crash behind us. We turned to see mum on the floor looking like a starfish! She was looking at the sky, praying that God would give her the strength to get up and not have her family laughing at her! Unfortunately for her, me and dad couldn’t control our laughter. Abbie and Leo were watching from the caravan and laughing too. Not only the family, but everyone in the shop! It was really embarrassing as the manager came and asked if mum was ok while the rest of us were still laughing. Then the manger went around all the caravans and took the steps away so that mum wouldn’t fall again, although that would have been fun to see. This was my highlight of 2024! I can’t get through the story when I’m telling my friends. I either can’t breathe or I’m on the floor like my mum dying of laughter.”

Here’s Leo’s version of the same event!

“We all went to a caravan showroom to find a new caravan. When we had arrived, we began to look around. The first caravan we looked at was nice and comfortable. We decided to look at some more. Mum went to get out of the caravan first, she stepped onto the stool and… the stool slipped and she fell starfish style on the floor.”

You’ll notice the theme of me “starfishing” on the floor, as it’s become known! I’m sure there will be more of these stories to come!

Saying Goodbye to 2022

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At the beginning of every year, we are filled with optimism about what lies ahead. We make plans and set goals. Often to be forgotten only a few months (maybe even weeks) later. Around Christmas and New Year, we have a few family traditions. My favourites are the little routines we have at New Year.

On New Year’s Eve, we sit down as a family and make a poster of thankfulness. We draw around each family member’s hand (the poster has gotten bigger each year!) and then fill the hand with all the things that person is thankful for. This gives us a chance to look back at what has happened over the year. We laugh at the silly memories, we talk about the best parts of our holidays, the biggest surprises we had and touch on things that made us sad. But mostly we’re grateful for all that’s happened.

Then on New Year’s Day, we sit back down at the table and take out our time capsule envelope! In it, each year we write a note to ourselves a year ahead and open it on New Year’s day of the following year. This is always very amusing, looking at the things we hoped we would achieve or resolutions we made. It’s always interesting to sit and write a letter for the next year. Thinking this time I’ll be realistic, but as we start to dream about what we’d like to achieve in that year the dreams get bigger! I encourage that! Aim high, who knows what might happen and even if it doesn’t work out, what have you lost? We’ll all enjoy reading it next year.

Both these traditions can draw groans (particularly from the teenagers), but every year we can see how far we’ve come and look forward to what’s ahead. I’ve kept every one of those posters and letters. When the kids were small, they would draw pictures instead of write letters, they’re dreams were smaller but no less important. Time has flown and so these traditions mark time and keep us aware of how fleeting our years with children are.

As 2022 draws to a close, I can honestly say it’s been a real rollercoaster of a year with spectacular highs and dramatic lows. A year when my oldest son turned sixteen, the age Sean and I were when we met! We’ve been able to have dozens of different friends in our home for dinner or just to spend time with and we’ve been learning again what it means to rest.

Saying goodbye to 2022 is a relief in a lot of ways, but as often is the case, we start a new year at the top of a rollercoaster, waiting to see what lies ahead as we launch ourselves into 2023!

Wendy Worms

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Sean’s Gold Dust!

After spending the last few weeks going quite deep I have to share something that makes me smile! My husband Sean has a weakness for this jelly worm! We buy them in Aldi during our weekly shop but for about the last six months there haven’t been any in stock. So imagine his joy when they suddenly became available!

He stood on tiptoes to make sure he got every single packet they had just in case they ran out again! He then tried to spread them out on the conveyor at the checkout so he didn’t look crazy! It didn’t work!

It has become known that if you want to win Sean over all you need to do is buy him a fruit cider or a pack of Wendy Worms!

When they were out of stock we were looking up any other way to could buy them. There were some apparently in an Aldi in Salisbury and he was very tempted to go and get them. But having to admit to anyone that he had made a journey to Salisbury to buy a pack (or 12 packs!) of sweets was too embarrassing!

So I’m embarrassing him on here! When I was doing a year of training my housemate and I found some chocolate ice cream that was only available in one shop and we would get a craving for it and even if it was late we’d venture out and buy it, then eat until we were nearly sick!

My oldest two still laugh at how when I was pregnant with my youngest the best thing I could find to eat was a white bread ham sandwich stuffed with Salt and Vinegar Chipsticks! I honestly used to cry as I started to eat as it hit the spot so perfectly!

What’s your food weakness? Have you fought and overcome it? Or are you secretly eating/buying them?

Fireplace Season

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As the weather has gotten colder I love having an open fire in the lounge. Even the smell makes me feel cosy and warm. Last night I sat next to the fire with our lovely lodger, Rhi, while we both worked on our laptops. No sound except the tapping of our keyboards and the crackle of the fire.

It’s also a distraction! I was supposed to be editing my novel again and replying to Cadence related emails. Instead I put the laptop aside every few minutes to prod at it and feed more cardboard into it! (Hence all the ash in the picture.)

I don’t know about you but procrastination is a big challenge and throw a fire in the mix and I’ve got ample reason to get distracted! Add the cat and there’s no chance of getting work done.

So how do you overcome distraction and procrastination? In my case you don’t be the one in charge of keeping the fire going! I’m not good at it! Next you shut the cat out of the room, and lastly set yourself a target. For me last night it was to get to page 200 in my novel editing. I didn’t quite succeed but there’s always tomorrow.

Blazing fire (only took an hour to get going!)

Rest

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This week coming I have time off. I’m so looking forward to having a rest. But it’s made me ask the question ‘What is rest?’.

I’ve realised the answer is different for everyone and different in every season of life. For Sean, it’s playing his guitar and getting out his loop pedal! Or lighting the BBQ and cooking some meat. We all get to enjoy that one!

For me it’s books and sunshine! I haven’t had much time to read just for fun recently and so that’s what I’m looking forward to.

I’ve listened to some teaching on slowing down and it makes me realise how busy we are as a society. We wear our busyness as a badge of honour. We try to out do one another with how much we’re doing. No one’s boasting about the really good day off they had!

Rest is vastly under estimated and under appreciated! Rest isn’t only found in staring at a TV screen. The best rest is found in the things that give you life and energy.

So that’s what I’m dedicating this week to. Everything that helps me to take a deep breath and pause. I’m throwing comparison out of the window and embracing doing whatever so can to give life not just to me but to the kids as well.

Fresh air, food and friends! And most importantly books!

A great book on this subject is ‘In Praise of Slow’ by Karl Honore or ‘Three Mile an Hour God’ by Kosuke Koyama.