Born performer.

We're all still here, by the way.  I just don't blog here much at the moment, tending instead to blog over at my newer blog.
But this is something that doesn't really 'fit' into that blog, being more of a family kinda thing.
This was a recent trip to Sainsbury's.
And yes, he was singing very loudly.

His performance was met with different reactions.  Mainly positive, though he wasn't without his critics...

Village Show 2013

I wasn't quite sure where to put this post - it involves growing stuff, making stuff, and generally busy life stuff.  So it ended up here, and will be linked to from the other two blogs.
This weekend was the village show (as you may have guessed from the title of the post...)  I was aiming for saturation this year - I entered 14 different classes.  Frankly, this was a mite foolish, given the sort of week we've had, but hey.  I failed to enter any photography this year, having misplaced the relevant card.  I'll put the photos up when I find them, though, so they'll have their five minutes of fame (appearing in a post on my blog; fame?  Hardly!).
I'll start with the things I didn't win any prizes for:

Some lovely flowers.  Well, not lovely enough to win a prize.  Looking at them in this shot, the left most stem does look a bit feeble, but I'm pretty sure there were more flowers just out of shot...

A large pumpkin.  Ok, so it's not going to win any national awards, but it was big.  Again, not good enough for a prize though.  Mr Peach's very fine cucumber took first in this class (can you sense the slight bitterness in my voice?).

Any this is the entry that bore the brunt of my bitterness.  'Under cooked', apparently.  In my humble (and entirely unknowledgeable) opinion, they were, if anything, slightly over cooked.  I can't stand dry flapjack.  The vast amount of treacle in Granny's amazing recipe means that they are, by nature, squishy and sticky.  Under cooked, my foot. 

Bit gutted that the jam didn't pick anything up, but comments are to be learnt from in this case :)  So I'll have another bash next year.  I've just found a blackberry and sloe gin recipe.  Sounds good!

Ok, so runner beans aren't really my forte, it would appear.  The ones on the left are mine, the ones on the right are those of Mr Peach (yes, he of the cucumber).  His won.  Mine fell far short.  In fact, there are two classes for runner bean.  One is 'six beans', as seen here, the other is 'longest bean'.  My longest bean was shorter than a number of others' regular beans.  More manure needed perhaps...

And blackberries.  Turns out they're supposed to be displayed with stalks on, according to the comment on someone else's entry.  Live and learn.
There was also some elderflower cordial, though I don't appear to have a photo...  Oops (it also means I somehow miss-counted my entries and only put 14 on the entry form, when there were, in fact, 15.  Thankfully, I paid more than enough to cover the error!)
So, they're the things that didn't get anywhere.  A couple of third prizes:

Tomatoes.  These were five of the six ripe tomatoes.  I have about a billion tomato plants, and only six ripe tomatoes.  Still, they bagged a third prize.

One vegetable and one bloom.  A pumpkin (same type as the large one, just a lot smaller!) and a rather smashing dahlia.  I was pleased with the dahlia!
Then some second prizes:

More dahlias.  Though there seems to be some confusion over what prize this was awarded...  The judges comment card says '3rd', the certificate (which I'm choosing to believe) says second.  There were only three entries here.  One entry seemed not to have garnered an award, while first prize went to, yes, you've guessed it, Mr Peach.  Again, deservedly so:

And then my proudest moment was this:

Second prize in the bread plait class.  And the first time I've ever made a bread plait.  Wholemeal, at that.  It actually tastes quite lovely, too. 
And finally the firsts:

A plate of five eating apples.  Feel a bit of a fraud with this sort of thing, as I can't really claim to have 'grown' them, given the tree's been around for a while.  I suppose I did select them quite carefully though...  And I'll happily accept a first, anyway!

And a squash.  Which I can take full responsibility for, having grown it from seed.  I'm a bit baffled as to what makes it first-prize-worthy, but again, I won't complain :)

Mr Peach won the best veg and the best flowers (the man is an allotment machine) and Mr Johnson won best fruit (cooking apples).  Most points (awarded the Crockett cup) went to Robert Crockett.

A few reasons why I enjoy the village show:
It's about creation.  Some of it needs to be created by those who enter; much of it is merely delighting in creation itself.  Both these aspects of life are very important to me.  I enjoy doing stuff in the garden partly because I think that takes us back to our roots - created in a world with responsibilities to fend for ourselves in so many ways.  But also with the responsibility to see the way God's creation continues to provide for us.
It's about competition.  Not vicious competition (at least, not in our village...), but a bunch of people doing something they enjoy with the added bonus of coming together to share what we've done (and, in my case, to marvel at the abilities of other people to grow perfectly straight beans!)
It's about community.  Our second year here, it was a very quiet show, and there were classes (categories!) that had fewer than three entries.  (This led to perhaps my lowest moment at a village show - my sweet peas won third prize, despite the fact that they were the only entry in the class...).  This year, it felt like the village show was very well supported and many people were involved.  Of course, like anything, a minority of people do the majority of stuff, but there were plenty of people involved, even if that simply meant turning out for a village event. 

Happy Anniversary :)

This year, we've been celebrating our tenth anniversary.  It was (way!) back in 2003 that we married.  An amazing day, with wonderful friends and our fantastic families, with the reception help in the beautiful garden nurtured by Anna's amazing parents. 
On anniversary day itself, Anna was treated to a fancy dinner.  Not by me though...  She went out with a friend of ours who's moving away.  (Don't worry - we were putting off celebrating our anniversary to the following week, anyway!!)
We went to Anna's parents on the Sunday.  It's always wonderful to be with them, but given that our wedding was in their village and the reception in their garden, it was particularly nice (in fact, perhaps we should have popped into the church while we were there...)
And then, on Tuesday we went to London.  Without the boys!  Anna's parents had very kindly offered to look after our two (gorgeous!) sons to allow us to get away for a couple of nights. 
We were in a lovely hotel.  We arrived in the morning, before our room was ready.  As they chatted through check-in, they asked if this was a special occasion.  We explained it was our tenth wedding anniversary.  When we got to our room later, we found this:

Very sweet (in more ways than one!)
London was fabulous.  We went and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (The issues of poverty in it demand another blog post somewhere!) 
We enjoyed meals at some lovely restaurants, including Rules.  The first time I met Anna's parents, they took us to Rules, so it was great to go back (it's not a restaurant we go to frequently!!).
We also popped up the road to see The Easel. 

For the uninitiated, this is the announcement of the birth of a new prince.  George, as it happens, though we didn't know it at the time.  We also enjoyed the changing of the guard. 

We had a lovely time eating lunch by the Serpentine.

And here's my wonderful wife (with a dragon sticking its tongue in her ear...)

It was a fantastic couple of days. 
But most of all, I'm immensely grateful to my amazing Anna, for all she does for us as a family and for the love we've shared for the fabulous first ten years of marriage. 
I love you sweetheart!

Big Church Day Out.

So, it's been like a bazillion years since I blogged here.  A lot of my blogging now happens over at www.longingtobeholy.wordpress.com, if you ever fancy a look.  But there tends to be a bit less family stuff over there.
Anyway, we went to Big Church Day Out during the half-term holiday.  Joshua and I went drove down on the Friday night, having first kidnapped a friend's son, so he could help put our tent up (the rest of his family were coming along later, and we figured it was worth having one tent done during daylight hours!).  We drove through sunshine, showers and downpours, all the time hoping that the sunshine would prevail.  I didn't, but then neither did the downpours.  It was mildly drizzly as we put the tent up.  The others arrived after dark, we put their tent up and then had a hot chocolate before bed (at midnight).  Joshua, unaccustomed to such late nights, woke at about six, and then went back to sleep for another couple of hours (while I lay there getting bored, but resisting the temptation to wake him up!).  And so I amused myself by taking a picture of him:

The rain of the night before meant that this was my first view outside in the morning:

Though looking out onto a ferris wheel was some consolation... (this was taken at about 7am)

Going on the ferris wheel was good too (though the price made me wince a little).

It made for some good views.  This was the house bit of the estate, with various entertainments and a kids work tent next to it.

This is where we stayed.  (If you're wondering about the camera craft, bear in mind I was on the ferris wheel - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

 This is a whole lot of people being worshippy.

There were loads of groups there exhibiting their services and the like.  There was a whole tent full of them, plus MAF and the like. 

The main stage was one of three stages and the offerings were varied and awesome.

But it was COLD for the late night acts.  We had a duvet with us, thankfully.  One distinct advantage to camping on site (Anna and Luke wisely slept at my parents' house).  

Overall, it was a fab time.  I think the two things I liked best were being there and being there with friends.  In terms of being there, it was just amazing that we could be with so many other Christians at an event that was focused on spending time with God and praising him.  It was great having loads to do as well.  There were actually kid sessions, as well as loads of other activities.  We're a bit starved of lively worship and that sort of thing, so that was amazing to be a part of.
And being there with friends (from church) was also fantastic.  Awesome to enjoy fellowship with them in the context of a big Christian event.
All in, a great weekend (and a very sunny one, after the first night!)

A little fishing trip.

The holidays are coming to an end.  In one week, Big Boy will be back at school, the girls will be back with us, and the crazy term-time lifestyle will be revisited.
So we're trying to fit some fun stuff in over the next few days :)
Yesterday was a fishing trip.  We went without a licence, but we also went without a chance of catching anything, so I wasn't too bothered!
On the way, we saw a crane being built for the new science block.  This was a fun distraction for a while, as we watched massive bits of crane being taken off the back of a lorry.

The crane is now completed, and presumably ready for action.  I can see it being a distraction for some time to come...
But we did make it to our fishing spot in the end.
Sadly, there were loads of reeds in the way, so it was difficult to reach the water.

Also sadly, most of the little jetty things were covered in water, and while Big Boy had his boots, I only had trainers on.  Thankfully, he avoided falling in (though did get one of his socks wet...)

However, we still had some fun and, despite my pessimism, managed to catch some things:

All in all, a good day's work :)
Love you Big Boy!

Playground antics

Quite amused by this photo. It's Big Boy pushing Little Boy on the swing, but he's paying far more attention to the girl on the neighbouring swing than he is to his own little brother. 

Maybe you had to be there...

Roots and rot.

We were having one of our many wanders around Calke Abbey recently, and came across this tree.

It looks ok doesn't it?  Bit short, perhaps...  But then you have a look around the other side and this is what you see.

Not looking so good now, is it?  You see, the tree looks like it's doing fine, but actually it's rotting away at the base.  That got me thinking.  And then, blow me down (perhaps that's not the right phrase to use here...), we got home and I found this in the orchard.

It's one of our plum trees.  Half of it has fallen over.  Not the first plum tree we've lost, sadly, but there we go.  And what do you find if you look at the bottom of the tree?

Rotten roots.

We can be a bit like that, can't we?  We might be looking fine and dandy, but if our roots aren't good; if they're rotting away gradually, it's only a matter of time before we collapse.  I wrote about Rootedness a while back.  We all need to be rooted if we're to survive and flourish.
As a Christian, I know how important it is to be rooted in my relationship with God.  That's not to say it's easy, just that it should be a real priority.  At the moment, I'm finding it hard to prioritise the things I should, but these trees were a helpful reminder that I need to look after my roots better.


What are you rooted in?

Are your roots nice and healthy, or have you got some work to do?

What can you do to help your roots grow?