Grapevine

Well we just got back from our camping weekend (Fri-Tues)@ Grapevine, a Christian worship festival set in Lincoln show ground....

Packed worship meetings with over 5000 in the Big Top!

Absolutely BRILL! The children had their own worship groups to go to, Jelly Beans for Isaac(learning about Joseph's journey), Kingdom Network for Joseph (finding out who is God?)and Powerpack for Matthew (cre8,activ8 getting them to be comfortable with their faith and even blessing people). The littlies stayed with us and although there was an optional Sparkies group for them with parent, we perferred to all go to the Big Top for some Wake up smile!Life looks funny being in a green tent! uplifting worship (waiting now for the preordered CD to come so we can share the music again)and some pretty good preaching. This year's theme was "Forward" and all the talks focused on how to help the church revival by looking forward and doing rather than harping back at yesteryear.... some sound ideas and now up to us to live it day by day; I pray that the momentum we've built up during this refreshing weekend will help us go "forward" as we set out to carry on God's will in our community.

A mixed week...

Well Tom had booked his van in the local garage to have it's MOT and the call came that the power steering had gone and needed to be fixed by Ford themselves! Great! So having been unable to hire a van for the week (the original garage had offered him a courtesy van) Tom had to take the bus down to London. Leaving me without a vehicle and getting ready to go camping at Grapevine this weekend!!

We had a lovely day on Tuesday celebrating our friend Asha's 9th birthday and here she is with her God-sister!We are all getting excited about Grapevine especially Isaac who will be going to the "Jelly Beans"club!
Watch out for the next post telling all...

Holiday in France part1

A little out of synch with the blogs, but we are back from our hols, safe and rested..... well feeling tired but that's what goes with 5 children and long journeys! Finding getting back to homelife a little difficult!We started our hols by stopping by Penny and Steve's in Charentes(http://www.chezcharente.com/) to see the renovation progress on their gîte. We arrived with breakfast croissant and even met up unexpectedly with Stainsby cousins!!! what a small world! We had a lovely lazy day around the pool being beatifully catered for... Matthew and Joseph spent the day underwater with flippers, Isaac and Benjamin overcame their fear of water so much so that they were being over confident by the water's edge and even our littlest dipped her toes in and sat in her inflatable seat! We had so much fun that we forgot to take the camera out!!! Thank you guys for your hospitality.Short and sweet we headed back off in the early hours of the morning to our final destination.( a little delay in arrival as our windscreen wipers stopped working and we had to wait for the rain to stop to carry on our journey!)

Holiday in France part2

But arrive we did and as usual "La Taillade" was as homely and relaxing as ever... good food, lazy afternoons, M&J going on adventures armed with a walkie talkie so that we could summon them back, river scrambling with daddy although not much water in the river this year they had to hunt for pools, a resident beaver who was happy to let us admire him, a two day visit to Lus la croix haute to see my cousin Frédé and her family (lovely to see Benjamin with Élie only 4mths younger), lovely mountain walks in absolutely stunning scenery, ski slope motorbiking for the big kids M&J included!,a family get together meal for the 15Aôut, lunch with Bonne-Maman or the Ohlala lady as nicknamed by Isaac, childcare for us to escape the entire brood for hours at a time to go shopping and even go out for an evening meal. A lot to cram in a relatively short space of time, and a long overnight journey back in bad weather ,made for a cranky return... We are slowly getting back into Billinghay life and trying to catch up on washing (drying being made difficult by the torrential downpoars)
Click here for a slide show of holiday pics

Look at me! I'm 4 mths old.

Our first crop

Our courgettes were well looked after during our absence!!!
(What DID you give them Julie?!)
A few too many leaves?
We had to hunt for our crop...




But hunt we did and look what we found!

Delicious homegrown scrummy veg.

The boys didn't bat an eyelid when given salad for lunch! (well Benjamin did need a little bit of coaxing! Thanks Penny!!)


Overall we are quite pleased with this first attempt, but any advice from experienced kitchen gardeners would be most welcome...
Now we know we CAN grow our veg, we now need to figure what, how many and when... Me thinks lots of trial and error...

Watching the harvest