A day at the temple

We went to the London temple last Saturday. The children enjoyed the newly developed visitors centre there with its own Christus, touch screen displays, and pictures of inside that actual temple (they were amazed at that). We'll explore it more another time when we're there for longer. It's a relief to have an indoor place to be now the weather is getting freezing. Talking of freezing, it has apparently snowed in some parts of the country this week, including in Coventry where we just moved from. The children were quite disappointed that we were here instead! It's certainly freezing enough here for it to be snowing, but it's partly the wind that's always there that makes it feel so cold I think. We hadn't quite made it down to 0 degrees in reality.






While I was in the temple, Michael and the children managed to find a fairly sheltered bench to have their lunch. They were joined by a very friendly duck who seemed to want to join in their picnic.




Later on while Michael was in the temple, Hannah got creative. She had already made a flower from some beautifully coloured autumn leaves, then while trying to hold more leaves to make more flowers, she decided she could really do with a basket. Hannah's obvious solution to that would be to try making one! She didn't get as far as a basket, but she did a pretty good job at weaving some grass/reeds together. She didn't really know how to weave having not done it before, but it didn't take her long sat on a bench on her own to work it out, and be very pleased with the result. Whenever we are at the temple Hannah's mind and hands get busy and she creates something or other. It was a boat to float in the pond last time. :o) She seems to find it an inspiring place to be, and no wonder with the lovely grounds there.






Michael and I also went round taking quite a few photos of the temple as requested by Debbie to give to somebody. It wasn't the best weather for it - very grey for most of the day. These are our favourites from what we managed to get though. Hopefully one for them will be fit for the purpose, but if not Deb, then we'll try again soon, hopefully on a brighter day!

Autumn fun

We went for a little walk last Friday afternoon in Stanmer Park, just in front of our house. It says it's a local nature reserve - a sort of park really. We actually drove there to get further in but have discovered a path since that will let us walk there. I'm just not sure how long that'll take. We'll try it some time to see. We actually didn't get very far at all from the car because we stopped to sort shoes out and to give some people a much needed snack. Meanwhile Rachel and I had a go at drawing this totally beautiful tree. Playing in the leaves beneath it took the next hour and a half. We ended up with a huge pile of leaves that was a lot of fun to play with. I got the camera out and just took loads of pictures of these beautiful children having such a fun time playing with nature. I did manage to put it down enough to join in with them too. :o)

Everyone felt so much better for being out in a beautiful natural place and just having fun. The fresh air, light, beauty and playing about did us all so much good. It was so nice to have everyone coming home refreshed and happy.

Yay - we're clean, and just in time!

We spent much of Saturday and Monday de-gunging the garden! (Is that a word?!) We'd had had way too many accidents on the decking when wet and as that makes up the majority of the garden, and autumn/winter is very often wet, this became a necessity. It took ages, and too much water to think about, using Mum and Dad's power/jet wash on it. I was exhausted after quite a while of doing it on Saturday, but everybody other than Peter also took a turn that day. Then Monday I took on the job of doing everything that remained. I got soaked and dirt-splattered twice in the process. A lovely bonus is that I much prefer the look of the garden now. Lighter and yellowish (wood-colour) instead of grey. It was an exciting thing seeing it all come away! :o) The biggest most fantastic thing about it though is that I can hang the washing out without slipping over, the children can play with (hopefully) no more injuries, and we can get back into the house down the decking-clad steps with ... no more injuries! I even managed to slip (and catch myself just in time) on the very last bit of slimy decking left just before I washed it all off!! So thanks to Mum and Dad for lending that too us - it was a life-saver. One extra bonus (monetarily, not environmentally!) is that we got it all done before the water board fitted a water meter to our property early this morning. Phew!!

It's quite a pleasure to look outside now. here are the first few pictures coming of our new place, albeit little bits of the garden with washing in progress. I promise to take some more all-encompassing pictures soon! ...








I did just find this one of the shed that Michael has put up since being here (taken from the conservatory window). The video gives you an idea of the garden. It is taken from our bedroom window (it doesn't seem too high up because the garden goes up a fair bit from the back door). You can see a bit of how slippery the decking was. That did seem to be one of the trouble spots where Peter keeps falling over, probably because it never gets any sun. Luckily it's not by any steps or brick walls. The steps were pretty bad before. It's a little peek at Peter and Rebekah playing too, and Rachel doing the sweeping that she loves so much (I'm serious there - it's her favourite job!) :o)

We're here!

Well we're back on line now, and no I don't have any photos of this house for you yet other than the one you've already seen. We've had a battery problem for quite a while now with our camera which is at last sorted out, so we do have a camera now. There were several occasions in our first couple of weeks here that I wished I had the use of a camera, but have committed those occasions to memory at least for a little while and enjoyed them at the time at least. No, we haven't been to the beach a lot! We're not really as keen on the beach on Brighton seafront on the hotter days as it is so packed and frantic. We found a lovely beach where we had a short family "home evening", or really a "family beach afternoon" I suppose, a few Sundays ago. It was rocky still of course, but it was a place to just be by the sea and enjoy the wonder of it. That was along the coast a bit somewhere around Shoreham I think. We plan to go back there during the week as soon as we can (before the weather really turns to winter if possible) so we can explore it properly.

These photos are from our last Sunday in Coventry. Rachel, Hannah, Sarah, Michael and I all spoke in sacrament meeting, and we all sang one of our favourite songs together. At least everyone did but me. Michael had persuaded me to play the piano - a piece I can play without a problem at home, but when I started to play in front of nearly 200 people, my hands began shaking enormously and just never stopped! It was quite impossible really. Nerves certainly got the better of me, but I had never played in front of people before, so that's a first anyway!! I'll be sticking to the singing next time, which I am certainly better at. :o) It was a lovely day though, and a bit of an emotional one, but then we have been in that ward since we were married, and me for a couple of years before that, and each of our children have been born and grown up there so far. It's funny to think that Peter, and probably Rebekah won't remember much of anything of it after a little while - quite a shame really, as it has certainly been home to us for a long time! Amazingly though, Brighton is beginning to feel a place to call home already.


Hannah spending some time with her friend Milla.



Rachel babysitting baby Heather for a while,
and clearly loving it!


Cousins - most of them anyway.


A big Peter watching the goings on in the corridor after church.


Ceri and Michael outside church.


Michael and Hannah outside the church where he only recently baptised her.


Our bishop, and brother, and uncle.


David let Michael lock the gate one last time!
He had some helpers who wanted to join in too.


A special place where we spent our "family home evening" that afternoon. We had a lovely time there, until Rebekah fell over on the hard gravel ground and called a fairly abrupt end to our proceedings she was so distressed about it! We were all exhausted though and needed a good rest, which we got that afternoon at home.