Andy and I have a friend who has recently started blogging on a regular basis, and usually blogs about something holy that he has read or learnt and I felt kind of inspired to do the same. (Check out his blog by the way. He’s called Jon Cooper).

A few nights ago I read something in the Bible that prompted to write in my note-book for the first time in almost a month, and I also want to share that with whoever might read this.

Andy and I have been talking a lot over the last few weeks and months about doing church differently. Or rather, about church being different. Andy said that we should worry less about how to make it ‘church’ and to just start living differently because that will lead to community and church etc. I really struggled with this, not because I disagree but because it’s not how my head works. I want to be told how to do that, when to do it, where to do it, exactly what to do and who to do it with and for. I would love to be able to get my head around the vagueness of “do what you would normally do, in the places where and when you would normally do it, with the people you would normally do it with, but do it for God.”

Then I read Romans 12:1,2 – “offer your lives as a living sacrifice…only for God and pleasing to Him. This is the spiritual way to worship…be changed from within by a new way of thinking. The you will be able to decide what God wants for you…” And I realised that this is what I need, to be changed from within so I think differently, allowing God to show me what is pleasing to Him rather than waiting for other people to tell me. Once this happens, once I have let God in to change me, then it will be obvious to me how to live my life as a sacrificial act of worship, which is the beginning of changing how and what church is.

I can’t change the practicalities of my life. I have to look after Isaac (and will have to look after Brister, too) during the day, because that is my job now, but I can chnage how I do it, what I talk about and who I talk to about the things that God wants me to talk about. I love my life. I don’t miss (paid) work, I love that Isaac learns predominantly from me (and Andy) and I couldn’t imagine doing things any differently but being a full-time mum can be pretty mundane after being used to full-time paid employment. It’s a different world. But I can change the mundanities of being a full-time mum into the excitement of being Jesus’ disciple, just by listening to God and being willing to let Him show me what is pleasing to Him.

Exciting times.

So Andy and I took Isaac out for a (very short) walk in the snow yesterday and I thought I would blog a few of the pictures we took while we were out, so here they are.

Getting ready for an Arctic expedition, or so you would think!

Trekking through the snow with daddy…

I told you snow makes the world look pretty (Andy took this one!)

Insisting on being carried by (pregnant) mummy…

I love snow!

So my lovely big brother Huw paid for me to go with him to see Coldplay at Wembley for my birthday and it was AMAZING!

(This is going to be a long post, by the way, so if you are planning to read it, you might want to get yourself comfy with a cup of tea before you start).

I’ll start with the support acts. Actually, no I won’t, I’ll start with the venue. For anyone who has not yet had the privilege of going to the new Wembley Stadium (sorry beb), it is immense. We entered at the end of Wembley Way at ground level and were directed up an escalator which was getting on for being as long as most of the London Underground escalators. We were then directed around a corner, and up another similar-sized escalator. From there, we walked around maybe a sixth of the circumference of the stadium before being able to emerge onto the stands. We showed the steward our tickets and the instructions that followed went along the lines of “go up those steps, keep going a bit further up, then go a little bit further up until you’re about as far up as you can get, then you can sit down”. We were far up, but it was cool, and didn’t actually matter too much due to the massive screens on either side of the stage which showed all the important stuff anyway! So, basically, Wembley Stadium is quite large and there were quite a few people there…

So, the support acts. We missed White Lies, but they were on at 4:00 in the afternoon, so I’m not thinking we missed much there… I had been quite looking forward to seeing Girls Aloud (guilty pleasure…) but they were also on very early in the evening, and we just arrived in time to see the last one and a half tracks. And even that small amount managed to be a huge disappointment. They didn’t dance at all (OK, so they may have danced earlier in the set, but you’d think they’d finish on a big dancy one if they were doing any like that) and just stood at their static microphones, which were about 8 feet apart from each other, so they didn’t even look like a coherent group. And, granted, it may just have been because the sound was all set up for Coldplay, but they sounded terrible. Much as I love Cheryl (and for some unaccountable reason, I really do), I just can’t think of a single good thing to say about them.

So then we had Jay-Z. Huw and I kind of unspokenly agreed to give him a go and see if he was any good, but after a couple of tracks I leant over and said “I feel very old. I just don’t get him” and Huw agreed. In addition to just being old and middle class and white (all of which, I feel, had an impact on the experience), there was the added issue that the sound was, again, terrible, and rap loses a certain something when you can’t understand the words. Like, the point. Anyway, we ended up using the time to get some food (more on that in a minute) but before we left the arena we did experience the most awesome moment of the night (so far) in Empire state of Mind. Oh my word, Alicia Keys was incredible, and worth enduring four tracks of unintelligible rap just for the experience of hearing her amazing voice. I’m running out of superlatives to use. She was good. Very good.

So, the food. That wasn’t really what I wanted to comment on, but it is related. At the front of Wembley Stadium there is a balcony which over-looks Wembley Way. Pretty cool in its own right but if you turn around, and look upwards, you get a fantastic view of the arches over the stadium, which looked really beautiful against the dark night sky. We took our standard stadium-fare meals out onto said balcony and enjoyed the view far more than we would have enjoyed Jay-Z.

And on to the main event. Coldplay came on stage at about 9:00 in the end. The stage was awesome, with these massive globes which came down from the ceiling of the arch (hard to describe, but none of my photos really showed it properly so my inadequate description will have to do. The picture below is just quite good) over the stage, with various images projected onto them, or maybe from inside them, I’m not sure, but it looked cool, anyway.

I wish I had blogged about this nearer the time because I would have remembered the details of the tracks they performed and how they did them much better than I can now, but suffice it to say that Viva la Vida was brilliant. Yellow, which, controversially is not one of my favourite tracks, was great, with a load of massive yellow balloons being released into the crowd at the beginning of the track. Mysteriously, they had all but disappeared by the end of the following track…!

Fix You was suitably melancholy and touching, but also very beautiful. I have to confess I didn’t know all the tracks they played (and still don’t) and consequently the ones I did recognise are the ones that really stuck in my head. There was one particularly memorable moment, though, when they walked through to a little square stage in the middle of the standing spectators down on the pitch and, on the way, were joined by Simon Pegg, who then joined in with the next track. Slightly bizarre, to say the least! I can’t remember what songs they did (I really should have blogged about this weeks ago) but they involved harmonicas, which are always good for entertainment!

They ended with a big track (can’t believe I can’t even remember what they finished on!) with confetti falling from the ceiling in huge quantities. You can’t tell from the photo, but each piece of confetti is shaped like a butterfly. Bit girly for a rock band!

The final challenge of the night was to find the way back onto Wembley Way. Instead of following the crowds, like any normal person, this girl-who-has-no-sense-of-direction decided it would be better to go against the flow and ended taking us about twice as long as if we’d just done the sensible thing to start with! Still, we eventually made it back onto Wembley Way and joined the crowds heading for the station. The image below and the sound of thousands of people spontaneously bursting into the refrain from Viva la Vida will stay with me for a long time to come.

Thanks Huw.

So, 20 years ago today I was 11 years old. Just. Which means I’d've been in Year 6, although we definitely did not call it Year 6 back then, it was Top Juniors. Makes you feel much more important.

Around this time of year the school nativity started getting under way. Being somewhat blonde-haired and blue-eyed, I had been privileged to play a starring role in pretty much every nativity play since my school career started, playing Mary or Gabriel almost every year, despite the fact that I would put money on Mary being neither blonde-haired nor blue-eyed, and Gabriel being male, but tradition is a very powerful thing.

However, this year, I was to play Marcus. Who? I hear you ask. You know, Marcus. That well-known character in the Christmas story. To be honest, I don’t remember the full details of the part but it involved wearing burgundy corduroy pedal-pushers and carrying a tray with an ornate gold coffee set on it. I think I was King Herod’s servant, and heard about the baby Jesus (“my favourite Jesus”) from the Wise Men, and then proceeded to go to Bethlehem to see said baby. Anyway, small part, you might think, but for some reason my teacher at the time was under the impression that I could sing, so all of a sudden, this obscure role became yet another starring role, involving solos and and allsorts. Yep, there were definitely times when I was that kid that everyone loved to hate! Fortunately, it didn’t last beyond Primary School – by the time I turned 12 there were many more teacher’s pets than me!

I’m sure I was doing an awful lot more when I was 11 than singing solos in school plays, but life was pretty straight-forward then, and there wasn’t much of any excitement to be had in Taunton, although I must admit I will have been having some good times fighting, I mean, playing, no, I do mean fighting with my little sister.

All in all, I think I prefer being 31. There is a lot less solo-singing, and many fewer fights with my sister, although I do miss those corduroy pedal-pushers…

Why? Well;

1) She has an awesome curvy figure that is considered sexy, not fat. And she is generally beautiful (including having amazing hair!)

2) She eats midnight feasts of whatever she can find in the fridge, with no qualms or second thoughts. I would love to do that. Unfortunately, I never have anything in the fridge worth getting up and going downstairs for in the middle of the night.

3) She has a beautiful house and a kitchen the like of which I can only dream of.

4) She’s written books. I just think that’s quite cool.

5) She makes her living out of cooking and baking. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Opening Credits

I am a bit of a ‘fixer’. If someone has a problem then I like to fix it (I guess that’s why my job was so appropriate). If I can’t fix it, I get a bit stressed so the opening credits to my life would be Coldplay’s Fix You. (Just as an aside, this was AWESOME live.)

Love Scene

Andy and I were friends for a long time before we started going out so I was going to use The Start of Something New from High School Musical as the lyrics are embarrassingly appropriate. However, as I discovered just about when we got together properly, Andy had actually been quite in love with me for a long time. The reciprocity (if that’s the right word) of this feeling kind of happened by accident so the love scene song would have to be Counting Crows’ Accidentally in Love.

Fight Scene

Hm. This is a tricky one because I don’t do fighting. I don’t really even do arguing any more because Andy doesn’t join in. You feel a bit stupid having a one-sided argument. So I’m going to go with Heavyweight Champion of the World by Reverend and the Makers because if I WAS to have a fight, it’d be a big one.

Death Scene

I don’t know how I’m going to die but I’m pretty sure that it’ll be better for me than for the rest of you and as soon as I saw the title of this song while searching for inspiration, I knew this had to be the one. It’s The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). I can’t think of a better way to go out than to a good bit of classic REM.

Closing Credits

Andy and I walked out to this song at the end of our wedding and it seems somehow fitting to use it here too. Delirious’ My Glorious. Love. It.

I am very excited to present to you, Brister (Isaac’s brother or sister). S/he was going to be known as Google, but I think we’re going with Brister for now although we are open to suggestions…

As you can see, there is just the one baby, despite my and Susie’s ‘feelings’ that there may be two (or three). Apparently it’s quite common to fear that you’re having twins when you get pregnant the second time, but I’m not sure what Susie’s rationale was! And fun (?!) as twins would have been, it was a relief when the sonographer confirmed that there was just the one.

So, March 20th. Isaac was born on his due date so obviously we have very obedient children and this one will also be born right when we’re expecting it, because that’s how it works, isn’t it?

Anyway, I should finish now as I need to wee. Again.

Before I start, I would just like to say that I absolutely love reading and remember walking round the house as a child with my nose constantly in a book. I would read books that were way above my real reading level, but would equally read books that I had grown out of years previously, just because I love to read. By making a list of five books that everyone should read I am by no means suggesting that these are the only five books you should read and the list would probably be different next week.

Right. Five books everyone should read.

1. Love in the Present Tense (Catherone Ryan Hyde) – once you get over the way bits of it are written with poor grammar in order to mimic the way that character speaks, it is a beautiful book about love (surprisingly!) but not the soppy romantic type, the real, heart-felt most-precious-thing-in-the-world type. Or, the book puts it, “forever love”. Just gorgeous.

2. The Time Travellers Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) – It’s not often that I read a book and instantly want eveyone I know to read it too, but that happened with this one. I even went to the extent of buying three extra copies so I could give one each to my mum and sisters. I was excited to see that they had made a film of it, but then remembered a) that books are always better than films and b) how much they had changed the ending (and therefore the point) of My Sister’s Keeper and have decided not to risk it.

3. The Mitford Girls (Mary S. Lovell) – OK, so this is a very personal one as I love historical books about real people that are written almost like novels and I particularly love how exciting and interesting these girls’ lives were. Another book in the same category is Black Diamonds, which is about the coal mining industry in and around Rotherham and the mine at Wentworth in particular. It’s amazing how engrossing factual books can be when they’re well written!

4. How to be a Domestic Goddess (Nigella Lawson) – I love reading cookery books. When I lived with my sister we used to sit and read cookery books in our spare time. Sounds a bit weird but actually it’s really enjoyable, especially if you love food and cooking as much as I do. Nigella Lawson is very good at writing little snippets about each recipe as well that are just fun to read. Nigel Slater is also excellent at writing entertaining cookbooks.

5. The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle) – I was very happy to see that other people had included children’s books in their lists and may I just commend Lynsey on her recommendation of all things Enid Blyton. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Magic Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair books were all big favourites of mine as a child (although I couldn’t read the Famous Five books at night when camping out in the back garden – far too scary). However, no childhood is complete without the Very Hungry Caterpillar, whether in the cardboard baby version, or the floppy big-kids version, it is a lovely, simple story with gorgeous illustrations and I love it.  The Gruffalo is also fantastic and lovely to read out loud.

That wasn’t so hard. I don’t know what the rest of you were complaining about. Although I have just realised that I have actually recommended eight books…

I hope to join the blogenge if I am allowed but thought it was rude to start my blog by hijacking the blogenge, so here I am, doing  a normal post first.

I have lots I want to say but now is not the time. My blog’s not going anywhere yet so this is just a little hello.

Hello!