Garden Excursions

It is heatwave season.  This means a number of things.  Firstly the Daily Express gets even more shrill about weather than it is the rest of the year, seriously just click on the link above and I can pretty much guarantee that one of the first two or three stories will be about the incredible heat, or the possibility that next week we will be struck by an 'icy blast' from somewhere.  Secondly it means I write a blog post complaining about how hot it is.  Regular readers will now that I have a particular view about hot weather, which boils down to, it seems that lots of people seem to enjoy it, I don't and I would rather that it be somewhere else, anywhere else really.  However, this year will be different, this year I am not going to complain but instead I am going to regale you with a quick tale that will both entertain and instruct, well, maybe one of them, and probably the only instruction you will take from this is the obvious, if important, lesson that you should never leave your children under my supervision.

Gratitude

Tomorrow I will have been married for ten years.  Other than an opportunity to use a nice juicy future perfect, this also gives me the chance to remind everyone that I have the best wife anyone could hope for. 

This has not been an easy pregnancy for her.  She has suffered with a number of illnesses during the pregnancy, none dangerous to either her or the baby, but enough to make life much more difficult for her.  She has had to deal with two children, one of whom has enough energy to power most of urban Britain and is not afraid to use it all by attempting to destroy most of the furniture, whilst the other one somehow manages to make her sibling seem like the calm and lethargic one.  She has continued her usual hectic pace of work and activities, which make me tired just thinking about them, so I probably won’t anymore.  She has continued to support me in everything I do, and to encourage me to be the best I can be, which is a real necessity when you are dealing with someone as lazy as I am.

Difficulties, which seem entirely insurmountable to me, melt before her, which can get a little galling when I have stared at a problem for what could have been all day and B will sidle up (considering how big she has got she can still exhibit some pro stealth skills) and suggest a simple, elegant, entirely practical, #whydidn’tIspotthat? sort of a solution that had been staring me in the face (a lot of staring going on there).  That happens more in our house than you might expect and I would like to admit.

She seems to have a reserve of energy which manages to carry her through long days chasing after two Tasmanian Devils.  I can barely manage twenty minutes after work with them, and it would be a lie if I tried to pretend that my job required any physical effort.  I should be at my peak but after an entire day those two can still run me off my feet before tea whereas B has managed with them for 11 solid hours.

Ostensibly this is a blog about how I can’t quite keep up with my children, but none of it would be possible without B being there to clean up after the messes I make.  She has bailed me out on many occasions and I don’t know what I would do without her.  I suppose I just want to take this time to show my immense gratitude for the way that she makes my life such a fun-filled and laughter-packed one.  Here’s to ten more years, one day we’ll laugh about this.

Slip Sliding Away

We’ve been away recently.  A week with around 350 other Christadelphians at a place in Derbyshire.  It is my favourite week of the year and brilliant for the children.  You really know you’ve had a great week when N is bawling her eyes out almost all the way home because she “doesn’t want to go hhhhhome.”  A sure sign of a week filled with fun and friends.

One of the very best features of where we go is that it is relatively enclosed.  We can let N and S have a far greater level of freedom than we would at home because there is so much less that could go wrong.  N is old enough to remember what it was like before and so is not really surprised by this any more.  S, however.  Well, let’s just relive about twenty minutes of his life from last week shall we?