Lent has just begun. It's been daily rain since New Year's... it's been grey, dank, cold: British winter at its worst. And we haven't gone away for a week of sunshine, as we have done in years past; we have stayed and felt it, every single day.
Now Lent is here, it feels like a countdown to Spring has started - something to look forward to!
There's not many photos to show from these past few weeks, though we have done lots of things; mostly indoors, of course. Recently we celebrated Valentine's Day with a lovely brunch at the Lounge…
We visited Aerospace Museum on the anniversary of Concorde's final flight, which meant there were many crew - pilots, ground crew, cabin crew - there to witness the nose being dipped! We hadn't planned for this, but it was quite an occasion to see, and we enjoyed chatting with several of the crew members about their experience. One pilot told us that the nose was once struck by lightning as he flew over Reading, and that the lightning branched out like a tree from there! Quite amazing.
Our fortnightly home ed co-op had a visit from the Bloodhound education team, who put on a full day of activities ranging from making cars and testing them, to flying rockets! My kids said before the day that it would probably be too 'schooly' and they wouldn't enjoy it, but they actually loved every minute and were really engaged.
We continue to be very involved in church, D(9) is an experienced altar server now and we have also started volunteering at an old people's lunch club - serving food and coffee, and socialising with people there. Both the kids and the old people are enjoying that - this month there were 'dancing dogs' and since then, the kids have (unsuccessfully so far) been trying to train our own Cody. He's enjoying the treats, but refuses to learn any tricks.
Here and there, during the breaks from rain - rare, and never a full day yet! - we went out for as long as we could.
Lastly, I've moved on from watercolour - I'm just not artistically inclined in this way. But, the intention to create things has remained; and I've really got into handwriting. This is ironic, because I've spent decades now minimising my need to handwrite - I type much faster than I can handwrite, and it's been many years since I've chosen to handwrite anything longer than a to-do list. But here we are. I've rediscovered fountain pens, which are delicious to write with on the right paper, so now I'm having fun rediscovering my handwriting style! As well as playing around with calligraphy a little bit. But mostly it's simply writing: I'm writing letters, prayers, Scripture, diaries... anything and everything, and it's a lot of fun.
Since I've also decided to fast from on-device Facebook (in fact, I have deactivated my Facebook profile entirely, at least the one in my own name; I'm keeping a false name one so I can access certain resources and groups), reading and writing has become an incredibly fruitful pastime. Here are some samples…
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