Happy Easter

 Happy Easter to everybody.

We have had a lovely day today. We had an early morning communion service at church followed by breakfast. Then we had a music rehearsal for the main service which was a really uplifting one.. We were on breakfast detail so we were down at church by 7.20 so that we could get breakfast prepared - cereal, toast, boiled eggs for Easter and croissants. And coffee from the coffeeshop coffee machine. 

Since we were involved in the music rehearsal, I had got a "volunteer" to finish clearing up as there just was not enough time to do it all. I had expected people to disappear fairly quickly after the main service since it was Easter and lots of people were seeing family - but everybody wanted to stay and chat and have more coffee. Then we went to a friend's house for lunch, which was lovely especially after the early start and a full morning. So we were treated to a lovely Easter lunch and then sat and had a nice chat afterwards. I really enjoyed that : )

So tomorrow, Easter Monday, will have a leisurely start and then we are off to youngest grandson's 4th birthday party. I expect that we will enjoy that but I predict that we will also be glad to come home and put our feet up afterwards : )

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to everybody!

Normally on Maundy Thursday, all the Baptist churches in our area get together and have a service in the evening. We hold the service at one church one year and go around the other churches in turn. Then on Good Friday morning, we hold a service at our church for all the churches of any Christian denomination and the churches takes turns in leading the service. Then we have a procession of witness up the main road to the next church up the road and hold another short service in the square outside that church. On Good Friday evening we have a service at our church just for our congregation. On Easter Sunday, we have an early morning service followed by breakfast (eggs as they symbolise new life) and then a celebration service at the normal time.

This year we had a short service on YouTube on Good Friday evening and again this morning for Easter Sunday. It almost doesn't feel like Easter because it is so very, very different because of the lockdown.

Grim news this morning - fractionally under 10,000 people dead in Britain and over 102,000 worldwide from this coronavirus. Surely these figures will make people realise that they must stay home.

April has been a busy month

Yes, April has been a busy month but my life seems fairly busy this year. I can feel the pace picking up and I'm not sure whether or not I am happy about that.

We went to Cambridge for three days and I pottered around while my husband had business meetings. I enjoyed that! We had a big family get-together for our eldest's special birthday celebration. We went to the Think Tank in Birmingham (the children really enjoyed that) and then back to my son's house and we all had a Chinese meal. The people who ran our local Chinese takeaway are friends of ours and they did us a fantastic meal. My daughter was really pleased with it and delighted when our friends sent her a bottle of champagne with the meal. How nice was that! They were retiring the following week and they knew it would be the last meal that they cooked for us so they wanted to make it extra special for her.

Easter week was filled with church things and I think I must have sung every Easter hymn and song in our music books... It was a good Easter.

We are in the countdown to our daughter's wedding as it is just three weeks away now. Exciting times! I've been out today and bought some shoes to wear with my outfit. However, coming home with them and seeing them next to the outfit, I am not so sure about the colour as I was in the shop. A rethink is needed there, methinks. And then there is the question of a bag. Hmm.

I'm am still souping every week for our church coffee shop. I did have a week off for Easter, though. I do find it funny that I am making soup for a coffee shop. It just doesn't seem right, somehow. I made pea and mint before Easter which people seem to have either loved or hated. It is good to have feedback but now I'm not sure whether to make it again.

I've had a mini clearout of a corner that has not been tidied for a very long time. So that means eight things have gone in the bin, two things are being dithered over, three bags of stuff have gone to a new home and a bag is sitting in the hall, waiting to go to a charity shop. I've got my eye on another corner to tidy and sort through so I'm hoping that the bag in the hall might well become two or even three.

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After Easter

Easter has been and we have enjoyed it.  The celebration is the highlight of the Christian calendar and can get rather busy. On the Wednesday before Easter, we had a shorter lunchtime service at church and lots of people came in for that including all the children from the nursery school. On Maundy Thursday, all the local churches in our group get together and have a service and we rotate whose church we all go to and which minister does what part of the service. On Good Friday all the churches in our area, of all denominations, get together and pack out our church for a service and then process about 150 yards up the road to the parish church where we have a short service in the village square before tea and hot cross buns in the parish church hall. We rotate which church is responsible for both the services and this year it was our turn. This meant that we had to be at church very early for a music rehearsal. We also have a service just for our church on Good Friday evening. Saturday is free but I had to do the shopping for the breakfast after the early morning communion service on Easter Sunday which my husband was leading. So we were down early to set up breakfast (boiled eggs to represent new life) , have the early service and serve breakfast. After eating a very rushed breakfast, there was a music rehearsal for the main service and then the service itself followed by tea and coffee. 

We were not quite free after that because all three of our kids and their families had rented together a large holiday home in Cornwall for the week and we were on cat duty. After a little tour of their houses, we went home for a rest and also a late lunch when we had recovered enough energy to get it. I have to admit that I am really pleased that all my kids and their families get on so well that they go out and do things together. They rented a house about five miles from Callington where my mother-in-law used to live and where my lot spent happy holidays for several years.

Easter is a week ago now and we spent the rest of the week pottering through various jobs.  We did a bit of work on the allotment and did a few jobs around the house. To be fair, it was me that did the pottering because my husband had a deadline to meet in his exam work and he only did a few jobs as a change from being glued to the computer.

I've let my two cats outside now that they are bigger.  After my last two cats were ill and crept downhill slowly to the end, there has not been a cat presence in our garden for around three years.  There are a lot of cats in our neighbourhood and they all think that our garden is now part of their territory. I knew my new cats would have a job on their hands to establish the garden as their territory and was worried about setting two young cats up against a large number of adult cats. So I waited until mine were a bit bigger before letting them out. When I have had young cats before, we always had an older cat with the garden as their established territory so I felt this was a very different situation. Well, the young cats are loving their freedom - now what a surprise : )

They have conquered the cat flap, both in and out and are spending their days exploring the wider world.  They both pop back in the house about every 10-15 minutes to check up on us and then sprint outside again. They only seem to have two speeds at the moment - full gallop or asleep in a heap, exhausted. They have met the rabbit and the hens and survived the shock and they are having fun : )

ps BT have finally got the internet working at church again. Hurray!

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Easter

Easter was a whole week ago.  It was a lovely weekend although very busy.  There were lots of things happening at church as you can imagine for an event that is THE major one of the Christian calendar. I met somebody that I hadn't seen for some time and they asked me if we were at home for Easter.  I replied that I rather thought that we were at church for Easter but not knowing our schedule from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday teatime, they didn't get the joke : )

On Easter Monday morning, I went to a local egg producer that has expanded its business rather.  They have a restaurant and a VERY expensive farm shop now although they do still sell their own eggs. For these two weeks around Easter, they also have a huge display in one of their barns.  They had lambs and calves, alpacas, miniature donkeys and several goats with kids, including pygmy goats whose kids were minute.  They had an area in the middle of the barn with various types and colours of fowl too.  And of course they had a little barn with incubators and brooders for recently hatched chicks. We managed to be there at the right time for my grandson to watch one chick fighting its way out of the shell.  Until you've watched it happen, it is hard to imagine how hard a job it is for the tiny chick to break out of this tough shell that has been its world for the previous three weeks. I love watching a very new chick just collapse asleep in mid stride.  It never fails to amuse me.  Of course, the whole object of going to this place was to let my grandchildren look at the animals....... : )

Then, later in the afternoon, we all went to my eldest daughter's house for her birthday tea.  So I had almost a whole day with my grandchildren, which I enjoyed. The birthday tea was good too.  My other daughter had baked two enormous cakes for tea - one was tiramisu  and the other was chocolate with a yoghurt topping and lots of fresh fruit laid out like a big flower. Yum!



You can't tell from this photo but the tiramisu cake with the chocolate topping was about 12 inches in diameter.  And no, despite our efforts, we didn't manage to finish the cakes. But we did our best!

Easter has come - and gone too

The Easter celebration is over for another year. I never got to go on the Procession of Witness on Good Friday because an elderly lady had fallen and cut her leg quite nastily on something at church  and I was the chatty distraction while her leg was cleaned and dressed.  Then when we got home again, I mentioned something about the two Sunday morning services and my husband said, " Oops, I forgot to tell you that I said that we would prepare and serve the breakfast following the early service...".  Did I say that he was taking the early service as well?  And since we had been at a different church on Palm Sunday, nobody had thought to put out a sign up sheet so I had no clue how many we were catering for...  Sunday was a great day but so very, very busy.  I went shopping on Saturday and decided that I would prepare for 40 people with an extra box of cereal and an extra loaf "just in case".  And I got it about right.  We also went down to church and set up the tables and chairs and cutlery and organised as much as we could.  Then we were down first on Sunday morning to get the urns on etc.  My husband led the first service and afterwards I beetled out as quickly as possible to the kitchen and boiled the eggs while everybody had their cereal.  I had detailed somebody else to stand over the toasters and keep refilling them. The same kind person supervised clearing away afterwards because I had to move on to the next thing.

Then before I had quite finished eating my breakfast, the music rehearsal started so I had to rush up with my toast still in hand.  Ever tried singing with a mouth full of toast crumbs?  Don't, because it is not a pretty sight : ).  My husband picked up his guitar and he started a nose bleed.  A mega fountain (ok too much info, I know) which kept going for just short of half an hour.  I got him out to the gents where there was a plentiful supply of absorbent loo roll.  It is somewhat difficult being a lady and needing to go into the gents...  I got another man to keep going back to check up my husband but my mind was not exactly on the rehearsal much and especially so as time went on.  We had finished by the time my husband came back to us with a very soggy shirt where he had tried to wash out the front.  And the gents looked like a mass murder had taken place in there.  Then after that service we had jacket potatoes and salads (prepared by somebody else : ) ...) and we made my husband sit down for a while.  Then there were all sorts of games and I made my husband sit and watch lots rather than joining in.  After a while he admitted that he had a tremendous headache and was glad to sit out and just watch.  And after we had cleared up and tidied, we went home for a peaceful evening and early to bed.

My farmer friend went home then too - and then rang me to tell me that they had gone out to the hens and found that something (probably a fox) had got in and killed them all.  What a sad end to a lovely day.

On Monday, my husband was right as rain and just as well because he had promised to go and help a friend move some furniture.  That took all morning and he came home with a present of a bag of wood for the woodburner.  What a nice way to say thank you to us!

This morning, my husband had been detailed to go and help our daughter and her husband to lay some floor tiles.  While he was out, I happened to open the front door and heard the joyful sound of a chainsaw being used close by but out of sight. Then I saw a man come round the corner with a wheelbarrow full of logs...  I grabbed a key and rushed off to see what was happening.  The council had sent a team round to cut all the branches off a tree on the pavement that they wanted taken down as it was starting to lean a bit too much.  In that road, the trees had been planted a long time ago, so they were big but they are not really a suitable type to grow on a narrow pavement and close to the front windows of the houses.  There were two men standing to the side with their wheelbarrows and taking the pieces of branch as they were offered.  I was asked if I wanted some too, so I rushed back for our wheelbarrow and joined the queue.  I ended up with four heaped wheelbarrows worth of lovely big pieces of branch which will be wonderful.  I'd have been happy to take away some of the smaller branches too but the treecutters shredded them.  One of the other men told me that there is a tree being taken down in the next road tomorrow so I'll be listening out for that chain saw music : )

A lot of wood is better for drying out for two years rather than just one before burning and we are filling up our garden with wood.  My husband has built several wood stores with pallets (airflow) for sides and and some lap fence panels as a roof to keep off the rain.  We reckon we have enough wood drying for next winter and we are now working on the winter after.  It is not all brilliant wood like we have acquired today, but it was all free, which is very important.