Back to school for me today! Terrified that I’d forgotten everything simply from non-usage over Easter and spent a lot of the lesson feeling out of my depth again. I can do the grammar thing, I got that, that’s the logic part that I can do. But my vocabulary still sucks!! Need to figure out a way for me to actually get chance to use the learning sites we’ve been shown, to listen and repeat and get the sounds into my head.

The rest of the day was productive, things happened, I got the fire lit fine and the boiler up to temp pretty quickly, everybody ate (even Charley whose wobbly tooth is really bothering him at the moment and is putting him off quite a few of his favourite foods), I made a really yummy bread and butter pudding (for breakfast of course) using the last of the stake sourdough, and Erika demanded to be mostly dressed last night before she fell asleep so she was easy to finish getting dressed this morning!

She’s easily pleased in the mornings, usually. Give her food and somebody to snuggle with and something to watch and she’s a very contented little bunny. Today it was a bowl of sliced pepperoni, frozen raspberries, and chocolate wafer sticks (yep, same as supper!!) and she and Ben snuggled in front of Blaze and the Monster Machines while Charley slept on.

I was doing my usual scrolling idly through Instagram this morning while I waited for my morning coffee to brew after lighting the fire, and saw a post with some song words on which prodded something in me. “The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning…” and I felt a need to listen, to sing, to worship again. So I did. I’d stopped playing Christian worship music a while ago, I’d found myself crying too much when listening to it without any real way of processing whatever it was that was hurting. But this morning, I cried a little – it always seems kind of painful, coming back to God like this – and then sang, the familiar lyrics coming back easily to me. “It’s time to sing Your songs, again.” I had no idea how that would come back to me later on. Walking home from school later, I found myself raging at God for something (unrelated to school, and which I don’t need to go into now), really venting so much fury and hurt and frustration. And in the middle of it all that song starts up in my head and if I could have, I’d have balled it up and thrown it in God’s face. But God, thank God, is big enough to hold me while I rage and beat my fists on his chest and scream and cry, and know that I need holding. If anyone fully understands that saying “when I’m at my most unlovable, that’s when I need your love the most” it’s God. And God let me cry, and my soul cried out and sang “sing like never before, oh my soul – I’ll worship Your Holy Name”… Oh how God reaches in in the most unexpected moments, and today he prepared my soul in advance, knowing I’d need it later. It was good to be able to walk the rest of the way peacefully, able to enjoy the sunset.

It was drizzly this morning, not so lovely weather. Nice to not feel the pressure to go outside every day. It is forecast to be lovely and sunny tomorrow although I forgot to check the wind forecast – it was brutal today, I took the bus all the way to school and even the short walk from the bus stop was painful! At least on the way home I remembered to buy marshmallows. Charley’s been begging to have a campfire. A small affair, not like the bonfire. (And hopefully we’ll be able to light it without the need for a gas-fired weed burner!!) Hopefully the weekend will give us some good weather again.

I took my crochet bag to school so that I could try and get some more work done on those cardigan sleeves, and the twenty minutes I saved by taking the bus all the way up were very very welcome. I got so much done! I might actually have two finished sleeves by the weekend!!

And last but not least. The kids took themselves off to the kitchen to play this evening. I’m still not sure why. But when they call you to say “mum look, I packed all my cuddles!” and it dawns on you that you know where those baskets have come from….

Yeah.