A lot of change

A lot of stuff has changed for us since the end of 2018. Financially it's been difficult to keep track of anything because literally every month there was a big change. So in November our income was Dan's job (something about procedures?) my job (making mosaics and murals for schools) and rental income from our old house. We had recently lost my lodger/sister so we were feeling the pinch a bit. Then our tenant said she wanted to leave, and then after having two big work projects I got no work booked in for December or Jan, so we were like arrrgh! sell everything! So we ended up putting our house on the market and putting our spare room on airbnb.  The house sale is going through next Friday. We've lost 10K on it so we'll be trying to make a bit of that back by flogging all the furniture and white goods this week!

By mid January I decided as well that 2 months without work was long enough to need to take Eric out of nursery. However good the previous months were you can't pay £400 a month when you're not earning anything. So I'm back to being a full time Mum. Which I'm ok with. Percy gets free nursery 3 days a week so I only have both of them 2 days a week. It's a million times easier than that summer where I had them both full time and Eric was a newborn and Percy was 2. Ughh that was a horrendous time. Eric is at the peak of cute now. I decided this with Percy but 22 months is the best ever age. We went out to town today on the train to get stuff for our holiday (the holiday we started booking when we though we were richer). I spent £4.60 on 2 t-shirts and 2 pairs of sunglasses for the boys:

We had this holiday in France when Percy was 22 months and I think it's made me idolise that age. He was old enough to communicate, old enough to have so much fun at the beach, off breast feeding, sleeping though the night and generally being adorable. On the last day of the holiday I found out I was pregnant with Eric, so only a few weeks later I was being sick everyday and life wasn't quite as fun.

Summer 2016

So this holiday I'm going to try and have the most fun possible. I'm not planning on getting pregnant any time soon or possibly ever again. We're planning on driving from Nice to Barcelona in a camper van. Theres a lot that could go wrong as Eric has never slept not in a cot before and the sleeping arrangements are 2 double bed bunk beds in a van and we can't afford to stay in actual campsites so were just going to try and wing it. So it's not like one of those holidays where you think "I know this will be relaxing and wonderful" but I guess it might be "memorable" or "character building".

Other major changes that have occurred since January are, we started going to a new church. This was massive for us as me and Dan met at Frontline church and had been going there for 13 1/2 years. I won't go in to all the ins and outs, there was no big drama or fall out, but we just didn't feel like we had found our place in Frontline in recent years like we had done in the past. After over a year of trying to make it work at Frontline we decided to join our very local church St. Stephens, which we really love now. The main thing we enjoy is being 4 of about 60 people rather than 4 of 600 people. And being one of maybe 3 families in our age range makes you feel a bit more special. It kind of makes you want to contribute where you can. Percy has already befriended an old lady called Betty, he challenged her to a race. She said "why don't you race mummy" he said "NO YOU"  and they raced twice. Later I asked him why did you not race me? he said "I knew I would beat her"

Our church looking like it's part of a beautiful village, but if I did a panoramic you would see the world's ugliest shopping centre.

Anglicanism is funny though and not something our kids are used to, like when this lady vicar, or some kind of dog collar wearing woman, (not the actual man vicar of St. Stephens) put her hand out to bless Percy in communion he high 5'd her. He's done it at least twice now ... should I tell him it isn't a high 5? It was some kind of Anglican census thing the other day and we had to tick a box to say we were members of the church, which I did but I sort of wanted to make a new box for myself which would read something like this:

"I'm a dedicated member of St. Stephen's and follower of Jesus, but I just happen to go to this church because I like it, and it's my local. I would never describe my self as "an anglican". I like Jesus and his teachings, I'm fine with most of the New Testament apart from a few bits where I think "that's probably Paul just being a bit sexist because it was the proper olden days" but the Old Testament ... I've got some big issues there. Not sure what to do about that but I'm open to discussion."

Imagine if that was the creed.

I also started a comedy club in Jan. As you do. I've chatted on enough about that on Facebook so I won't bore you with it again now, but here's a link if you want to check it out.

I've been super busy doing comedy gigs though probably a little bit too busy. Some have been awful, some have been amazing, but I hope overall I'm improving.

Theres so much more I could say about life because I haven't made the time for blogging for ages but I think thats enough for today. Thanks for reading.