Monday, July 26, 2010

Anyone out there?

My email system is online, and can be downloaded to something like outlook, but I've not set that up since I got married. The problem with it is that it automatically deletes emails which are more than three months old. This means that even if I should have your email, I probably don't anymore.

So, if I know you, particularly people like the folk from One Weigh or Another, I would love the chance to get back in touch with some of you. But many of you I've lost your emails and or links to your blogs and stuff like that, and I don't really know how to get in contact with you. But if on the off chance you're still reading my blog, maybe you'll do me a favour and get in touch with me!

Leave a comment or email me white-elephant AT hotmail DOT co DOT uk (this may not be the email you've had from me in the past, but it's one that does not include my name, which is why I'm putting it here)
I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Thursday, July 22, 2010

update

I'm still buying reduced. I gave up trying to work out how much I was saving each shop cos a) I didn't have time to stick it all into a spreadsheet and b) half the time it's not possible to know what the original price for something was. However, I have a pretty good idea of how much certain things cost, and how much I'm willing to pay for them. I think I probably have pretty low (or is that high) expectations of price for some things. I won't buy something like raspberries or strawberries unless they're very reduced. I saw some strawberries reduced to £1.19 today and just laughed.

As well as buying as much reduced as I can I've also set myself a budget to stick to. This is just the first week, and I'm only halfway through, but it's going well I think. I decided to have a certain amount of cash at the beginning of the week, and that's my limit (although I've still got my debit card in my purse for emergencies, or really good offers!). I think that using cash gives me a better idea of what I'm actually spending, rather than just blindly handing over my card and not really taking any notice of how much I'm spending.

Sophia's had a nasty cold since Tuesday evening, and Tuesday night was a really rough one. Last night was better, and she's down for the night tonight, but she's still not right. She was coughing a lot when she first went down, but that seems to have stopped for now. I think Menard may be coming down with it too, so hopefully we'll all get over it quickly. Especially since Sophia's being dedicated on Sunday and we're having a party afterwards. It would be a shame if one of us were not able to be there.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

They really do exist!

Aftera fewinteresting outtakes
we finally got the "I have two teeth" shot.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

more drivel?

I've got writers block. I stare at the empty blog post and my mind goes empty. I blog all the time in my head, but when I'm face to face with a computer I forget all the things I wanted to say.

I want to write real things, about life as a mummy and wife. Life trying to lose weight. Life being me. But I also want to protect my daughter and husband and not make them live in a goldfish bowl.

I want to write as a therapy to help me move on in life. Not that I'm in a bad place, but that I know that writing my thoughts helps me to analyse them. I don't know how to do that at the moment.

This blog has been a lot of things. A place for photos and to record family events, a place to share with the folks back home what I'm up to. Somewhere to show off our little gift from God and how she's growing and changing. A place to muse and ask opinions. I've been a mummy for over nine months, but I don't feel qualified to call myself a mummy blogger. I've been married for 15 months, but is that long enough for me to share my thoughts, opinions and advice about marriage?

As an aside I'll tell you what Sophia is currently doing. She's sat on the floor in front of me with two spoons - one a dessert spoon, the other wooden. She keeps holding them out in front of her with her arms outstretched and then banging them together and singing. Occasionally she'll give one or the other a lick, but then continue banging and waving them. She's so totally engrossed in what she's doing, and totally enjoying it. I'd like to be that about blogging again, just for a few minutes of my day. To sit at the computer and write, and enjoy it, be satisfied with what I'm writing. That it's not just drivel. That's all I seem to be able to come up with at the moment.

Monday, July 12, 2010

can we pretend

that I didn't neglect the bit of my mental do-to list (over a week ago) that said "auto-post some pics and stuff so that your blog isn't left without posts for a week or so"

I'd write something more now, but I'm in post-dentist appointment state, and since I had an injection, it's not pretty (it tends to leave me feeling pretty rough).

Back soon, with, I think, at least one pic of Sophia on the beach on holiday

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get

In the boot (aka trunk for y'all across the sea) of my car there are lots of things that probably don't help me to get the most economical use of my car, but it also means that I don't have to store them indoors. For example Sophia's buggy, my walking boots, a couple of picnic rugs, shopping bags...
There are also a few other more random things, including the orders of service from the last few weddings that we've been to. These include Bekki and HP (now HB)'s weddings. [In case anyone doesn't know, or is unfamiliar with the term an order of service is basically the outline of what will happen in the wedding service and song words, who will do what, etc. It's a lovely way to help people know what's happening on the day, and to look back on afterwards].

I started thinking about the orders of service as I drove over to my mum's house yesterday. We didn't have one for our wedding, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain...

They say that women start to dream about the perfect wedding from when they are little girls. Certainly, it's a role play game that little girls are often found playing. I remember our dressing up box with old net curtains being great for making veils and dresses etc. I'm not sure that I exactly ever 'planned out' my wedding ceremony, but I did have certain expectations of it. In my early teens (or even earlier) I was a part of our church's choir. This was a Church of England church, with a set wedding service. If people requested a choir for their ceremony we got to sit up in the choir stalls to sing, and got paid for it. That seemed like easy money to me! But anyway, the point is that I got used to hearing the Church of England wedding ceremony, and can still quote back lines from it.

HB and her Steve did get married in that church, they had the traditional wedding service and I enjoyed the chance to be a part of their wonderful day. I was the 'pregnant bridesmaid' on that occasion. But for Menard and myself we decided that rather than get married there, in my local parish church, we wanted to be married in our own church - Jubilee Church. This has what you might call a less traditional typical Sunday service, and consequently our wedding was less traditional than HB's.

We got married in a cinema! How many people can say that?! And who would ever dream of that from an early age (although some of the current young folk in our chuch may!) We didn't have the traditional wording for the vows. We did choose a couple of the songs, but I can't actually remember what they were. As proof of that, someone in my family said to me a while back "we sang this at your wedding" and I said "did we?!". We didn't have an order of sevice for people to read on the day and keep if they so wanted to. We actually had to additionally have a registry office ceremony as the legal obligations of the marriage ceremony could not be fulfilled in the cimema at that time. In many ways it was entirely different to what I would have expected of my wedding.

But I'm so glad that our wedding was different. In a way it prepared me for the fact that marriage itself was in many ways entirely different from what I'd been expecting. Oh, it's not a bad thing. I love being married. I'm just not sure I really understood what getting married would mean in the long term. Having a wedding is one day, a marriage lasts a lifetime. I love Menard with all my heart, and I hope and pray that this is 'until death we part'. But it's entirely different to some of my expectations.

(I will be blogging more about this soon)