Beautiful weekend

Keith here – Carolyn invited me to do a guest post this week. Last weekend was a pretty special weekend.

A’s cycling club has moved from Wednesday evenings to Saturday mornings to take advantage of the light, and happily this coincides with M’s swimming. So we had a “cycloswimming” morning (at least, that’s what it says on our noticeboard!). M and I get some time together to go shopping, I get some time on my own, and we all get to enjoy the sunshine together as M and I watch A come fourth in his cycle race!

The rest of the day is contrastingly rushed and pressured, and we are so blessed to attend an event for youth leaders in the evening. “We just want to do something for you,” they say, “give you some time and space, feed you some good food, look after you.” We relax and begin to recentre ourselves again.

On Sunday afternoon after church we are suddenly inundated: it’s M’s 7th birthday, and she has invited 5 other girls. In a moment of recession-era bravery we have chosen to have an at-home craft and Wii party, and it is a glorious success! The girls pour custard into the icecream churn, then each prepares their own mini pizza for later. The major craft is decorating a papier-mache letter with crepe paper, cut-out flowers, and stickers. Despite glue and paper galore the chaos is contained and the girls are enthusiastically focussed. Wii Party provides endless hilarity. And the butterfly cake brings genuine sparkles to their eyes. Our wee girl had a fabulous party.

Chocolate fudge cake with Italian meringue topping and handpainted sugarpaste butterflies.

Butterflies detail.

–KW 8-)