Dear Monday, I gave in, I got up this morning and went to work – I’d been at work about ten minutes and my colleague commented how ill I looked – and I agreed with her – I felt like my brain had been turned to mush. Somehow I got through about three hours of work and then came home. Due to Chris needing the car I had to fit in with when he could get me from work and bring me home but it worked.

Dear Snow, you arrived on Saturday during Tori’s 18th Birthday Party – my Aunt and her best friend were so excited about the snow – You know how in films they have like the young version of a person reacting to the situation then in a blink of an eye it’s switched back to the current time. That’s what it would have been like on Saturday – my aunt and her friend ran out into the snow without coats on – they ran around in circles before heading back in again. Then again I ran outside without a coat or a jumper on and wrote Tori’s name in the snow.

Dear 4pm nap, I’m not entirely sure where you came from, I heard Our Sidekick get in from school but the next thing I knew it was 5pm and Chris was heading out to his meeting. I’m sure I needed it though.

Dear Friend’s, Romans and Countrymen, let me your ears (or mouse clicking finger) please go and vote for us. If you want more information click here then follow the link. Thank you (That’s two clicks and a small bit of reading – it would make a huge difference to The Fountain (Bedford) project if you could take the time to click thank you muchlie).

Dear CJ, (you get two letters a la Today’s Letters) thank you for playing Hannah’s Taxi today – you took me to work (so that you could use the car lol) and then fitted in collecting me from work too. You then went out this evening in the cold and slushie snow to get ingredients for Our Sidekick’s Food Technology homework – technically this was my job but at 7ish when it was dealt with the idea of going out in the cold was just too much for me. Thank you lovely one.

We’d had the meal that my Aunt had cooked with help from her friend. We’d had lovely pudding. We’d done the quiz and my cousin’s team won. We were about to eat birthday cake when something happened.

At about 10:30ish, one of the girls from the party had been heading home and something happened so she’d come back to the building – a lady had slipped over in the alleyway behind the church and couldn’t get up – they’d called an ambulance but it was so snowy that the ambulance hadn’t got through yet.

Well a bunch of us, grabbed coats jumpers and a blanket and went to offer what help we could. When the ambulance did arrive I was shivering and my hands were hurting as I hadn’t stopped for my gloves or coat, I was in a hoodie and went for it (I know bright spark!)

We were waiting for the ambulance and it was getting to the point that this lady was getting really really cold the adrenaline from hurting herself wasn’t keeping her warm. The coats and blanket etc were just soaking up the snow and not really helping. She made the call that she wanted to get into the wheelchair (her friend had been to borrow it from a neighbour in the hope that she could get the lady into the chair without assistance but the lady couldn’t put weight on her leg and her friend couldn’t take enough of her weight to get her into the chair).

I was on the handle bars leaning on the chair to make sure it didn’t over balance. Various people grabbed a hand or an arm and then did what they could to manpurve the lady into the chair, my uncle then helped me push the chair in the snow for the lady to sit herself down in once we’d got her upright.

We all kept chatting to the lady and thankfully the ambulance arrived not much later. The chap in the ambulance got us to pull the wheelchair backwards round the alley way to the ambulance. I had one side, our “honorary” uncle (he’s the youth leader at my old church and everyone called him Uncle even though only 4 of the youth group were actually his nieces/nephews!) was on the other side and Chris was on the same side as me.

The lady kept saying how lovely we were and how lucky she was that’d we’d been at the church and been able to help and things like that.

My hands were red, very sore and cold and the snow had soaked into my socks (I wasn’t really dressed for snow) but I’m glad that our team of good samaritans were there to help otherwise she’d have been sat in the snow for nearly half an hour if not a bit longer given the amount of snow and how unclear the roads were.

Thank you to the ambulance service – it took some time but they got there and the guy was lovely and friendly.

Dear CJ, You got very excited after reading my blog plan a few minutes ago – I’m not entirely sure if you read this though so maybe the plan it is – I am glad though that you show off my blog when you have website meetings.

Dear Our Sidekick, I am still so chuffed about your pizza from the weekend – can you make another one please? I printed off the FB comments about it and I’m going to print out a picture – then again I’m going to get a lot of pictures printed – we need to start your journal/scrapbook thing.

Dear Cousin V, you turned 18 a few weeks ago and it’s your party this weekend – ROCK ON!

Dear CJ (Yes you get two a la Today’s Letters) My appraisal is on Wednesday and I’m a bit nervous about it – will you give me a super big hug so I feel extra spesh?

I managed to snap this one above while Our Sidekick got ready – he’d had to get the scales from our room as Chris had been using them for weighing items to put on eBay and then him and Chris got all the ingredients out of the cupboard and I retreated to the living room to stay out of trouble.

This was the amazing finished article – I posted a picture on Twitter and Facebook and the number of amazing uplifting encouraging comments that came in were awesome. I’m going to print off the Facebook page and stick it into Our Sidekick’s journal/scrapbook so that he can look back and remember how those people encouraged him.

Watching
Lots of TV. It’s not that good lol. I realised that I watch more American TV that British TV (if you didn’t get that already!). I was given Season 1 of Being Erica for Christmas and then bought Season 2 and 3 (in English but they had Dutch subtitles as default so learnt some Dutch at the same time). Want to see Season 4 but I’m not sure if it’ll make it to the UK. I’ve also been watching Covert Affairs. House and Bones (the second two are thanks to my Mum recording them for me because I don’t get Sky). On the other hand I’ve been really loving Call The Midwife, Sherlock and Great Expectations which have been on the BBC recently (Great Expectations was actually on over Christmas but I’ve only just finished it – I decided the Miss Haversham bit at the end was the last thing we needed while eating dinner!).

I also watched 127 Hours this week which probably wouldn’t have been my first choice but actually it’s not as bloody as people made it out to be – okay it’s not pretty but at the same time it’s no more bloody than ER or Grey’s can sometimes be.

Reading
I’m half reading Pride and Prejudice – although I’m doing most of it by audiobook I am reading some of the chapters by book. I realised that I have 3 copies of it but have never read it completely. (One of those is in an anthology like Grigg in Jane Austen Book Club but it’s kind of heavy so I only read that one when I’m at home and can prop it up rather than hold it!). I have like 6 books to read before my Birthday to complete more tasks on my 25 before I’m 26 list. They are: Love Wins by Rob Bell, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, two more Austen (Probably including Northanger Abbey so that I can read The Mysteries of Udolpho)

Eating
Probably too much pizza this week but the first meal of pizza was meeting up with my old school friend who I haven’t seen in ages (we sat in the pizza restaurant for 3.5 hours! We sat down at 12:30 and were almost there when the dinner run started lol). We then went out for tea for family night and had pizza but we had a large pizza between three of us which was plenty enough for me lol.

Wearing
Clothes – I bought a brown t-shirt from the charity shop which is a Size 14 which is awesome that it fits without making me look really silly lol.My Size 16 black trousers that I wear for work are getting a bit big now but I’m still not quite small enough to fit back in my Size 14s that I bought a few weeks ago. I really need a Size 15 as I’m not quite one or the other at the moment! Also sticking to layers – can never tell whether it will be cold or hot in our office.

Enjoying
Sleeping – well when it happens as I seem to have hand some insomnia in the last two nights – 2:30am on a work night isn’t fun – I tried reading but even on the lowest brightness on my phone it was still lighting up the room!

Loving
MY BED! I wasn’t very well last week and spent most of the weekend curled up on the sofa or in bed just trying to get rid of the cold.

Thinking About
Friday, our team are going to London for our Christmas Do but because of how busy Christmas gets it was postponed to the New Year. I think I’ve been appointed Tour Guide to make sure we’re heading the right way when we get off the tube at Covent Garden – then again it’s one of my favourite areas of London so we should be fine – I think I just need to wear a really bright hat or take my stripey umbrella so I’m not missed!

We’re off to see The Lion King at The Lyceum which is really exciting – I have already seen it but I love musicals so just going to London to the Theatre makes me excited. I loved the elephant the most last time I went to see it but I can’t find a picture of it – then again all the animals were pretty amazing – the giraffes and the leopard were my next favourites. Bring it on!!

Starter points adopted from:

I was all ready for Our Sidekick to be knocking on the door at like 6am like me and Rich used to do to our parents (alot of the time!!). Our Sidekick came and knocked on the door at 8am which wasn’t too bad – it could have been a whole lot earlier!

Chris was milking it and doing his best to wind up Our Sidekick as much as possible before actually getting out of bed. (I thought my Dad was bad on Christmas Day – Chris was hilarious!). At one point Our Sidekick had gone downstairs and Chris jumped out of bed, got fully dressed and then got back into bed. I wasn’t sure what his thinking was but it was going to be funny that’s for sure. Our Sidekick came upstairs and started trying to wind Chris up but the more he tried to wind up Chris, the more he got wound up instead!

it got to the point that he told Chris that he wouldn’t be able to catch him. Well at this point Chris throws back the duvet, jumps out of bed and is chasing Our Sidekick round the house. Our Sidekick is bricking it and doing his best to stay just ahead of Chris. Well I just listened to the cheers/screams/giggles while finishing my cereal and then getting dressed.

Because we were going out to lunch later on I dressed up in the LBD I’d bought for Bex and Adam’s Wedding last weekend. I wore navy tights and my boots – figured it was smart enough for lunch out but warm enough that I’d be comfortable.

I then went downstairs and we each opened our first presents. (Tradition in our family is that we open one present before we go to church, then we open the other presents after church while dinner is being cooked – when I lived with my parents our church didn’t have a Christmas Day service and so we’d get up at like 7:30/8ish and open all our presents then.)

I opened my present from Chris which was a little unexpected and confusing at first. It was the front of a Christmas card and then the back of the Christmas card was cut into squares, triangles and other shapes to make it into a jigsaw puzzle.

First I stuck it all together and then posted a picture of FB and Twitter. It was hard and I was going to need help.

Well I was confused and I really had no idea what the code was. I tried changing the kisses and hugs to 1s and 0s in case it was in binary code – I don’t know why this came to my brain first but it did so I went with it.

That wasn’t right and it broke the binary convertor i was using on the internet. In the end, Chris had to give me a hint – I was really really struggling and couldn’t get it. He re-wrote it with little squares and rectangles – it was then that I thought why not try Morse code. Well that was correct, the big kisses were dashes and the little kisses were dots. I went straight for Wikipedia as I know that they have an alphabet with the morse code equivalent. I worked out what the code was and it looked really random it was like FH4HDE7SHJD or something like that which made no sense at all but I realised that it could be a voucher code for something like Amazon or iTunes – well I realised that it was far too short for an amazon gift voucher code so I tried it on iTunes and I was right. I put in the code and it started downloading Season 1 of Being Erica – which has been on my wish list for ages!

I set up my laptop on the work top in the kitchen so that it could download the episodes while we were out. We all sat around while Our Sidekick played Lara Croft on the PS2 as he now had a new controller (That was his first present to open).

Following Church, we opened our other presents.

I got two “Grandma Bowls” which sounds really silly but it does make sense. In our family they are called “Grandma Bowls” because our Grandma’s all seem to have had one somewhere along the line. I’d seen an alternative in a local supermarket and was going to buy one a little while back but decided that £15 on a mixing bowl was a little bit too much especially as at the time I didn’t need one (The Kiwi was still living with us and her Grandma had one of the bowls, that The Kiwi had adopted when her Grandma passed away). The two bowls that my Mum and Dad got me were a big part of my present but I know that I will use them and if I don’t damage them and they last then I can hand them onto my kids and grandkids – and carry on the tradition of them being “Grandma Bowls” lol.

Mum and Dad also gave me two knitting kits – they are technically kids kits but I’m sure my Mum saw them and thought of me! They are both from The Little Knit Kit Company and are so up my street it’s stupid! I’ve started the Egg Cup kit and have the Surfer van one to do later – I think it’s got more work to it.

We had dinner at the Beefeater Grill at Priory Marina – the dinner was lovely as usual, the waitresses were so friendly and helpful – the only major fail was the fly that had found it’s way into my chocolate sauce for the profiteroles. I’d finished my pudding when I noticed it – I spoke to the waitress who had been serving us when she walked past us. She went to see what could be done and came back and offered me a second portion of pudding as an apology – erm, well I’d just eaten a three course meal – I was about to explode if I ate anything more! I could have done with having it in a doggy bag to take home for lunch today! She then offered me a complimentary drink – we’d just been brought a pot of tea in error anyway (which we weren’t charged for) so I was drinking that rather than wasting it and I still had like 3 mouthfuls of diet cola in my glass – I didn’t need a drink. We were bought the bill for the drinks we’d had in addition to the meal (you have to pay in advance for the Christmas day meals) and i was tempted to ask her if that bill (it was less than £4) could be waived due to the fly in my food but while we were waiting to pay I noticed that we were the only table still in the restaurant – everyone else had gone as lunch service had finished. I decided that we’d pay and I’d raise my concerns after – okay they might not be able to do anything but at least they’d be aware of the situation and know that Christmas Dinner did have a few hitches.

Following lunch we popped home so Our Sidekick could change his trousers and we could grab some board games – we then headed to Mum’s for a games evening – we were going to have tea but we were all so stuffed when we sat down for tea that we just chatted and nibbled rather than actually eating (I think Chris had two plum tomatoes that’s how stuffed he was lol)

Yesterday was our first Parent’s Evening and yes I was a little bit nervous (is that normal?)

I made sure we were early for our first appointment because I know that nearly all teachers end up running late and I really didn’t want to be the person that had made everyone else late. Well we were early and stood in the corridor for like 20 minutes chatting because our first appointment was at 6.45 but we didn’t get in until nearly 7 which mean we were late for our 6.55 and 7.05 appointment.

I think when I was at Middle School my parents would go and leave me and Rich to read in the corridor or sit in the car (I think sometimes they’d get Grandma and Grandad to babysit while they went). We took Our Sidekick with us, I half expected that he’d be asked to wait outside but actually all the teachers were happy for him to come into each appointment.

We didn’t get to see all his subject teachers but we covered English and Maths along with French, History, Geography and R.E. which covered most of the others. Would have been good to see Science but he had absolutely no spaces.

We’ve got various targets to aim for and I’m determined to help him “mature” his reading age by the end of the year – it was 11.03 at the end of Year 7 but needs to be between 12.00 and 13.11 to be the correct reading age for his age by the time he leaves Middle School in July. Let’s do this thing!!

Since becoming a foster parent (or at least going through the motions so far) to Our Sidekick I started counting “Firsts”, okay so he can already walk and talk, so they have passed but I thought I could count other experiences – as I’m sure there will be many.

Our Sidekick who had been staying for weekends and odd nights in the holidays is now staying on a more permanent basis – at least for now.

So we are now the 3 Musketeers lol. (Yes I am that cheesy that I called us that! Then again it’s just as cheesy as me standing in the hallway and shouting “SUPERHAN!” before standing on one leg pretending to be SuperMan!

So meet our sidekick……

So life doesn’t go to plan, you think you know how it’s going to go and then you get thrown a curve ball but actually that doesn’t need to throw your life completely. The biggest thing I’ve learnt is to trust that God has plans for me and they are bigger than my own plans. I had this plan that I’d be a Mum to my own little baby who would be half me and half Chris but that’s not quite how the plan is going at the moment and although it threw me and did stress me out I’m getting with the program now lol. As a Kid, I think I was always under the impression that to do what God had planned for me I’d have to move to the tiniest remotest village in Africa and teach kids about God, but as I’ve grown up I think I’ve realised that my Mission Field doesn’t have to be thousands of miles away from home, my mission field can be my town or my county – if all the missionaries go to Africa or China or Russia or somewhere distant then who is a missionary to the people groups here in the UK and maybe it’s not going to save thousands of people but by being there for Our Sidekick, me and Chris could be teaching Our Sidekick the right ways so that he can go and save thousands or be a fab missionary somewhere crazy. So maybe this is my mission field and my mission is to be a foster mum/big sister/generally awesome and caring person towards Our Sidekick! (very excited now lol), Yeah it’s not as sunny as doing YWAM in South Africa like my friend Suzie, or going to YWAM UON in Hawaii like other people but I’m here and I’m staying.

Me, Chris and Our Sidekick were prayed for at Connect Group a few weeks back (or maybe it was only two and it seems longer ago!). The Murf and a couple of other friends all agreed that this needed to be said – and they were so right!

Do not be pressured by what other people might think of you.
We well stand by you and support you whatever you decide.
We love you just the same.
God loves you just the same.

So even if it seems like the plans that God has for you are too big for you to handle, pray about it and trust in him that he’s got the whole plan laid out in front of him.

Now I have some other bits to do and then I’m assisting with Science Homework.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding Proverbs 3:5

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

It’s that time of year again where crazy people like me sign up for NaNoWriMo and write a novel. This is then fourth year that I’ve done it and I’m hoping that it’ll be my second year to actually complete. I spent most of October asking myself whether I really had the time to get on and do it. There is so much else going on in life that do I really have the time to fit in 1667 words a day.

Well no I probably don’t have the time but something in me had to do it again. Don’t ask me why but I had to do it and I am doing it. Not sure where the ideas are coming from but I’m working on it and so far am on target.

I’m going to go carry on writing before Chris tells me off for starting something else and not finishing.

• My Manager at work retired at the end of October (Well kinda yesterday in fact) which means it might be all kinda of crazy soon – if life wasn’t already bonkers.
• Went to the cinema with Dad which was kinda rare as he doesn’t really like going.
• The Fountain had an official reception with lots of important people. I seemed to spend alot of the evening talking to my Dad and my friend from church but I had a fab time and got to meet some new people and put names to faces.
• I got to see an old friend too. Dr M aka Ade helped The Fountain team kick the reception off in style which was fab. We had our photo taken by Alan (Dr M’s friend)
• We chatted about my friend Steph doing a Sponsored Silence and Alan recorded it – you can hear it here. Which is going to be such a challenge for her as she’s a chatterbox.
• As if that wasn’t enough we gained a housemate/sidekick who might be staying some more.

Films seen
Mission Impossible 3 (DVD)
Johnny English Reborn (Cinema with Chris and Our Sidekick)
Made of Honour (DVD)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Cinema with Dad)

Books Read

The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn
Cold Hands, Warm Hard by Jill Wolfson
Lipstick Apology by Jennifer Jabaley
Twilight: Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (yes go on judge me!)

Books Purchased

None (Shock!)

Penpal Letters Received
3 (From Astrid in Germany, Becca in Norfolk and Rebecca from Ireland)

Penpal Letters Sent
5 (One to Trisha in Germany, Two to Becca in Norfolk and Two to Astrid also in Germany)

CDs Purchased
Scenes from The Cutting Room Floor by Caro Emerald