God, what do you call an elephant with no nose?

There is a chasm that exists between my real life and my aspirational life, portrayed in this blog. I shall attempt to bridge this chasm tonight...

Today I took my recently released children (Holidays start today! Cry freedom to the oppressed!) to a china shop to buy a birthday present. Hence the very lovely Emma Bridgewater plate, and one mother tumbling over five year old boy thankfully on her way out of said china shop and not dropping said plate.

The plate will be delivered with three tastefully decorated fairy cakes, and one cupcake iced with a musical note, nestling in a handmade-by-Niqi box. So obviously we had to measure the cupcake, although we needed not to eat it long enough for this to be accomplished.

And then we decided to do more work on our summer diaries. It was late by this stage, which perhaps accounts for the fact that during open prayer time after stories Joshua decided that God would like to hear some jokes. I do wonder if he was possibly the only person on the planet telling God a good joke, or two, or three, or.... go and sit on the top step, Joshua, and read quietly until Matthew is asleep.

The punchline, by the way, was a woodpecker!

For Pom Pom (and everyone who needs to meet the most encouraging bloggiste there could possibly be...)

When I first read Pom Pom she was festooning Blogland with images of hobbit houses and little houses, and enraptured I was. This grey bird house is in its colour unworthy of her collection, but I saw it for the manyth time and thought this time of her.

Pom Pom loves people, she loves you, and she writes for you with gift after gift of loveliness. She thinks about you during her day, and I am mostly sure that she prays for you too. She knows that children are precious, but she knows that mums are precious too, and she tells us all the time.

I think about Pom Pom in my hall because in a comment to her I once imagined that she would be going out as I would be coming in, given time and its mysteries, and perhaps we would pass invisibly in some virtual hall somewhere.

And all will be well with my world, virtual or otherwise!

A Midsummer Night's Dream

An impromptu feast for the summer solstice- thank you, Prince Charming. (But, Mise, I really think that ironed linen would be better...)

Three to go...

Here it comes!

Or more acurately, gone GCSE marking! Return of scripts 18th June...

Monday's Greatitudes 221-232

So, our apple blossom weekend started with our apple pie under our single, solitary single apple bearing apple tree. And bloomed mightily on Saturday as we drove into the blossom heaven around Loughgall. Imagine fields and hills and stretching vistas of apple blossom. "It's like the vineyards in France," smiled PC, who doesn't compare anything easily to vineyards in France!

This Northern Land is really one to love. I've been to many places, but wanted to stay in none. Nowhere is further than two hours away, but all of life and landscape is here! It's like my favourite quote on wisdom from The Christmas Mystery- travel everywhere and see everything, or stay in one place and watch it all go past!

I'm also grateful that this week I finished my now named "Apple Blossom" blanket. I feel the title justifies the profusion of pink! And the blanket means that I can blog with confidence, having actually crafted something and not just talked about it!

We had a youth service yesterday morning led by fine, fledling folk! Obviously the choice of PC to play my very, very muchly favourite song was also good. This reminds me that there is one week left to Pentecost Sunday and I am still inspired by Lenten times to pray that this house will be a House of the Spirit. And in this house this week I have some unsettling thinking to do, which is good for the mind. All of which only brings strongly to bear just what a fabulous three years I have had living a life of Mrs Riley.

And lastly gratitude for the highly exciting Ardress House where you can feed chickens and be chased by them all in one cobbled courtyard! (And ride your bikes, eat your picnic, practise your reading with tricky signs like fowl and threshing, and play in a park too...)

Finally!

You can forgive the use of what are still "bad words" in this house when juxtaposed with words like "ethereal" and "tangible". There is a mad genius to Roald Dahl, quite apart from the awed fascination with fictitious cruelty that he knows children have!

The strawberries didn't blink an eye at pupils launched into orbit over the school fence, or ears stretched in a prolonged class test! Maybe the fact that it all comes via the DVD version makes that happen. Although they did sit bolt upright at the accounts of Matilda outwitting the Dad at the start- I'm encouraged that they felt such treatment of a parent might be just a step too far! And now that I think about it, in August Jo did ask if there would be a Chokey in his new school!

It has taken us three and a half months to read this chapter book. It felt like longer! Time now to admit to myself that I have lost The Magician's Nephew, buy a new copy (so that Prince Charming's childhood complete set be not lacking- I know...), and finally find out what happens to Digory and Polly at the end...