Ten!

Ten years ago today Little J became part a tangible of our lives. After 9 months we finally knew that our first child was to be a boy & that the 'J' of Little J was to be Jordan, not Jessamine. I can hardly believe that ten years later that tiny 7lb 11oz bundle is nearly as tall as me & is able to perform stunts whilst riding his bike at great speed up & down our road! He brought great joy to us on the day of his birth & has continued to make us smile & laugh from that day until this.

Today has been some what low key due to the fact that Jordan usually has a cello lesson on a Thursday tea time so no 'big' plans were made. However, the lesson was cancelled last minute as his teacher's daughter was admitted to hospital rather suddenly. As the sun was shining gloriously (as it did on this day ten years ago) & we now had no need to rush home for tea, we took a trip to the park on the way home from school. The kids had a lot of fun playing there until the wind picked up & we all felt a bit chilly! Back at home, homework was completed & tea was eaten. Then came the part everyone had been waiting for- THE cake!! Annie-Joy & I made the cake together this afternoon. It was a chocolate cake covered with a LOT of chocolates & is in the shape of the number 10. It has been declared by Jordan & Luke as 'the best cake EVER!' Jordan was delighted (as you can see from the photograph)!

Timmy wanted to get in on the action (as did Jack Nano & Timmy's place name holder which can be seen at the bottom left of the picture) while we waited in vain for the sparkler candles to do their thing.

Despite the lack of sparkle, the candles were a pretty impressive sight.....

..... & it took Jordan several goes to blow out the candles fully as they kept re-lighting themselves! He blew so hard that wax sprayed over my arm as I was sitting opposite him! Ouch! Later, Nanny & Grandad popped around with presents, which was lovely. Jordan also had a lovely chat with Auntie Helen & Uncle Ian on the phone. When the three younger children were tucked up in bed, Jordan & I had a little look through the photos of him on his birth day. He liked that! We all look so young!! And now he is tucked up in bed, Lee & I are reminiscing & wondering where the years have gone. They have flown by & our little bundle is growing up into a wonderful, loving, kind, thoughtful, hard working, amazing boy. We are very blessed! :o)

Sneeky Peek!

I have been feeling unusually Christmassy of late (although I normally have an urge to sing a few Christmas carols mid August!), so I have made a start on the Christmas gift & card making! I am having a lot of fun! This particular gift has gone down really well with all in the Davies Tribe. We are all looking forward to rolling out lots more on the production line over the next few months. And who knows, this Christmas Eve I may not be up till the early hours helping Father Christmas with all those last minute tasks! :-)

Sent from Samsung mobile

Outside Inside

This year I have been really privileged to be given the chance to put my creative skills to good use in the prayer room at our  church. The prayer room is a very small space that used to be home to the baptismal font but when the church building was modernised the font was removed (don't know where it's gone though! I should ask. A small wooden movable font is used now). Anyway, the purpose of my creative spaces is to give the people who use the church building a different way to engage with their faith & a reflective space to ponder spiritual things. For Lent (the six weeks leading up to Easter) I thought it would be fun (!) to create a life size Easter Garden in the prayer room. I asked everyone I knew, as well as a lot of folk I didn't know, to lend me large house plants for the duration of Lent. I got many strange looks from the congregation who were puzzled by my idea to create a garden indoors!

I also collected newspapers from parents at school & saved the large cardboard box my new bike came in in order to transform the wooden table (seen in the first photo) into a large papier mache tomb, complete with a huge rolling stone! It took me about three mornings to make it & it was a lot of fun. the kids really enjoyed sitting inside it when I had finished it. Luke lay down in it to find out how Jesus felt when he was lying in the tomb that first Easter. I used black fabric to pin to the underneath of the table to make it seem more cave like. (Do click on the photos then you can see them bigger & as a little slide show of all of them together! How fun!)

I covered the prayer room floor with real bark chippings after taping bin bags & weed suppressant fabric to the carpet to protect it- which was rather boring & quite hard work!!

I added the houseplants & potted up lots of daffodils & primulas & other spring flowers to go around the room.

When I created the garden I wanted to help people prepare themselves for Easter & to think about renewing their walk with God. For the first few weeks of Lent my ideas for helping people interact with God were inspired by the Garden of Eden. There were two 'sations' (places to stop & think & pray). The first was a prayer pool where people were encouraged to think about things they would rather were not in their lives, or things that they hide from others (as Adam & Eve tried to hide from God in Genesis 3). As they thought about those things they would hold a pebble in their hand & then drop it into the water (with a satisfying SPLASH!) to signify letting go of those things & surrendering them to God as the water washed over the stone.

The second station was an apple tree. I hung lots of eating apples on the tree for people to 'pick'.

Each apple had a paper leaf on it with the words 'Taste & see that the Lord is good' from Psalm 34. the idea at this station was to think about all the good things in your life & to eat the apple as you really thought about how the apple smelt & tasted & so in turn to see how good God is! I was also really inspired by a chapter in CS Lewis's book The Magician's Nephew where he describes Digory's mother eating the apple from the Land of Youth as well as Revelation 2:7, 22:2 & 14 & Genesis 1-3.

During the second part of Lent I added two more stations to the garden, this time thinking about the Garden of Gethsemene, where Jesus went to pray after he had celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples & just before he was arrested & killed. The words of Graham Kendrick's song The Servant King which say 'there in the garden of tears my heavy load he chose to bear' inspired me here. I added a waterfall of tears & a painting that I did inspired by Psalm 56: 8 (you can read more about that here).

I sprinkled loads & loads of acrylic gems & glass nuggets over the fabric waterfall & put lots of glass containers & bowls out for people to symbolically collect their tears (or the tears of others) in the jars knowing that God cares for us more than we can understand & knows us better than we know ourselves. It was also a place to pray for situations & people around the world whose cries seem to go unheard (such as orphans or traffiked people).

My children especially enjoyed collecting the gems, nuggets & clear marbles into the various receptacles. It was great to see them interacting with the station & think about how much God cares for each of them.

I also created rain drops falling on the garden by using acrylic & glass beads strung from the ceiling with invisible thread (bit of a faff but well worth it for the final effect). Jordan wasn't sure how I was going to use invisible thread if I couldn't see it!

I made an audio effect (with Lee's help) of a rain storm & the song 'Singing in the Rain' which played on a loop in the prayer room. As people listened to the rain they could sit under the umbrella & ponder the different Bible verses I put on the wall about God refreshing us (Psalm 46:10, Isaiah 40:31, Hosea 6:3, Deuteronomy 32: 1-3, Isaiah 25:4, job 36:26- 30).

I love listening to the rain! And indoor rain really was lots of fun & therapeutic!

The Easter Garden was used as part of the Good Friday service at church too. The people who came to the service were given a pebble (it should have been a black piece of paper but I forgot them!) to throw into the tomb, symbolising them throwing away their sins & old nature & putting it to death as Jesus had been put to death on the cross. Then the stone was rolled over the entrance to the tomb & it was sealed shut. On Easter Sunday the tomb was 'miraculously' opened up with light streaming from it (our desk lamp & standard lamp from home carefully hidden with black organza!) & all the stones/sins were gone- risen with Christ in new life! Hooray!! :o)

I really, really enjoyed being able to let my imagination & creativity run wild in making the garden. It was really fulfilling, especially hearing all the comments from people who used the garden to pray & think in. It made it all worth while. My favourite comment was from an elderly lady who said to me with tears in her eyes that the garden was 'beautiful, just beautiful!' & another lady who was so moved by the Jars of Tears that she cried & cried as God spoke to her through it. I am so grateful to Lee for all his support in helping me to juggle looking after the kids & being arty. I could not have done it without him! Annie-Joy was also a great help to me watering the plants with me each week after morning prayers & setting out the gems & glass nugget 'tears' with me & generally helping me to set up all the little details that made the garden work. So although I was the one who put the garden together, it really was a team effort to create it. Thankyou to everyone who helped me in so many ways.

Four!

Annie-Joy was four years old today! It seems like only yesterday we were eagerly awaiting her birth... 

... and yet her she is, age four, decorating fairy cakes to take in to nursery to share with her friends & teachers! 

We had a lot of fun baking & decorating 36 fairy cakes on Thursday afternoon after she had finished at nursery school for the day. 

She loves pink & she loves butterflies so that's how we decorated the cakes!

Annie-Joy giggled every time she put the wings onto the cake tops! 

These butterflies were made with giant Snowies (enormous white chocolate buttons covered with sprinkles) which were a little tricky to cut in half but were equally fun to push into the blob of butter icing on top of the fairy cake. The teachers & children all really enjoyed eating the cakes in class. There were even some left over for the afternoon children to have as well (there's only 9 of them at the moment).

Today I woke up to AJ's sweet little face pressed up to my own & her whispering 'Thankyou for my birthday presents Mummy!' I left her two gifts on the end of her bed for her to find & open when she awoke, as is our family tradition. She hadn't opened them yet though- such self control! We spent the first part of the morning sat on our bed watching her open all her cards & letters. She carefully examined & enjoyed each gift before moving onto the next one. It was lovely!  

At lunch time we had party food before I took the three boys to their friend's swimming party & AJ & Lee went round to spend the afternoon with her Godparents & their daughters. She had a great time, as did we at the swimming pool, even though the boys are non swimmers. (First time I've been swimming in nearly 7 years!). Fun!

After tea we lit the candles on Annie's giant birthday cupcake. She was delighted with the pink, sparkly cake! I made it while she was playing in the garden with her brothers after school yesterday & then hid it in plain sight on the cooker top behind some boxes of food! She didn't notice! How long will I be able to do that for I wonder? LOL!

There were gasps of amazement, including from Lee, as he lit the candles as they all realised that the candle flames were different colours! Such fun! :o)

And it's always fun blowing out the candles too (which we had to do twice as I didn't get photos first time around)! 

I love the smokey haze after the candles are all blown out. We all enjoyed a slice of delicious cake before heading off up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire- this swimming & partying lark is exhausting! Hee hee! :o)

Lee Sees The Light

Over the last year Lee has been going to night school at Liverpool Cathedral taking a course in Theology which he has really enjoyed. He's heard some very interesting people speak, meet some new (& old) friends & has found it very thought provoking, inspiring & faith building.

At the end of July a small graduation ceremony was held in the Cathedral for the friends & family of those on the course. It was a really lovely service.

The Davies Tribe went along en mass to cheer Lee on as he was presented with his certificates by Dean Justin Welby (now the Bishop of Durham) & the Archdeacon of Liverpool Ricky Panter. Our children were VERY enthusiastic when everyone went up to collect their certificates but, of course, Lee did get the biggest claps & cheers out of everyone!

It was great to meet all Lee's classmates & to get a class photo too (making good use of Liverpool University's stage & flower arrangements set up for their degree graduation ceremonies).

Annie-Joy really wanted a photo of herself with the flowers so I obliged....

...and then all four of the kids wanted to sit on the big Bishop's seats. 

They had a lovely time pretending to be 'important' people. Perhaps one day we will photograph them here again in caps & gowns..... Who knows.....