...not like the flooding

The flooding throughout the country has been horrendous. I got my first taste of it yesterday on my way to a meeting in Worcestershire. The fields either side of the road were completely hidden under water and eventually I came across a road that was closed. This led to me being an hour late for my meeting. Although me being late for my meeting is nothing compared to the devastation the flooding has caused to so many people. Lets hope this weekends predicted rain doesn't cause the same problems.

...a 30th birthday, a family weekend and a trip to the Peak District

A lot has happened since I last posted. I've been so busy I haven't had time or energy to write anything. I suppose I should start at the beginning, which was about 1.5 weeks ago. Phil turned 30 this year and to celebrate I organized a surprise boys weekend for him. It really was a surprise when 7 of his friends from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland descended on Sandbach for the weekend. The boys had a fun weekend playing on the Wii, paintballing and generally catching up. Phil was thrilled with his surprise and I think all the guys loved having a weekend away.



I thought it was best to escape for the weekend and as it was also my birthday my good friend Cheryl came down from Scotland and we went off the Cheltenham for the weekend for some R&R. It was great to get away from it all and catch up with Cheryl.


Me and Cheryl

After we had recovered from the weekend we had an over night visit from our Uni friends Steve and Becky and their little girl Abigail. They stopped over on the Wednesday night on their way up from London to Scotland. It was great to see them and to meet Abigail.

Phil's birthday wasn't actually until this weekend past so I organized for his Mum to come and stay with us for the weekend. This was also a surprise for Phil and he was thrilled to see his Mum and show off the new house. We had a super weekend going to the Lowry and Imperial War Museum on Sat and then after Church on Sunday we drove over to the Peak District to meet up with Phil's sister Ali and her family. Andy (Phil's brother) also came over for the day. We had a lovely family lunch and a walk in the woods. Phil's mum and brother left and we stayed on for a few more days. Although the weather was awful on the Monday we still managed to have a wonderful time with Ali, Michael and the girls. Thank you Ali and Michael for letting us stay with you on your holiday.


Out for a walk in the woods


Jean and Lottie


Phil, Lottie and Hannah


Hannah on a bouncy castle for the first time

Now we are back to reality with a bump and work is hectic. Taking two days off doesn't really mean you get a holiday it just means you have to do a weeks work in 3 days. But it's nice to be back in our own house and we are looking forward to a few weeks without any weekends away. We might even manage to buy some furniture and get a bit more of the house unpacked. We'll see!!!

IKEA!!

We've had a great week in the new house and we are slowly regaining some level of normality. There are a few less boxes now and we are now looking at what furniture we need to buy. After nearly 4 years of marriage we are looking forward to setting up a home that many people can come and visit us in and that we can use to glorify God in Sandbach.

The compulsory trip to Ikea was in order, and bearing in mind how horrible a trip to Ikea is on a Saturday we decided to go after work. We actually had a good time, choosing new wardrobes, bookcases and chest of drawers. Sadly when we got to the check out the wardrobe we wanted was out of stock, but hopefully it'll be back in soon. We picked up a few other bits and pieces on the way round, so the trip was not in vain!



Phil had fun playing on the trolley!!



I was tired and glad to be going home.

This weekend has been so glorious outside that I haven't wanted to do any unpacking, however whilst Phil was out playing football on Saturday I did sort out the dreaded spare room and also managed to find some time to relax in the garden with my book. It was so wonderful and peaceful. I'm loving our new house.

...take photos sometimes!!

Below are a few badly taken photos showning the extent of our unpacking! We haven't done very much and we're off the Belfast for a wedding so we won't get anymore done til next week. Never mind, we're just thrilled to be in the house.

If you're passing or live nearby, drop in for a coffee (I can't guarentee there will be any were to sit, but I can guarentee a warm welcome)


Living room, not unpacked at all!!


Kitchen, looking down towards dining area.



I asked Phil to unpack important things and this appeared on top of one of the kitchen cupboards!!!

..the big house move

Well, we're in and very happy. Everything went really well this weekend.

We picked up the keys on Friday night and had a quick look around our new house. It was just as we had remembered it which was a relief. Then we shot back home to finish off the packing. Saturday our two removal men were excellent and they had us moved by 3.30pm. It was great not having to lift any of the heavy boxes!! Just as we sat down with a cup of tea, Ben Griffen arrived with alot of shopping for us, which was wonderful and so kind...thanks Ben and Liz. We didn't do too much unpacking on Sat cause we were pretty tired, so we unpacked the kitchen and got fish and chips for tea.

Sunday was a lovely relaxing day, getting to go to Church twice was great and we had lunch with the McKenzies...thank you.

Monday we had great plans to unpack loads and sort the house out, but in reality we slept most of the morning (can't remember the last time we had that luxury) and spent the afternoon out and about checking out furniture stores and the local area.

Still no photos, sorry I'll try and take some tonight, and post tomorrow. We have no internet at home yet so I have to find 10mins at work to post (that's not always possible).

The main thing is we are loving Sandbach, the cows in the fields, the noisy birds and most of all our little house and the proximity to our Church.

...house moving

Well tomorrow is hopefully the beginning of a mad but wonderful weekend. We are completing tomorrow and moving on Saturday. Pretty good timing really cause our lease runs out on our rental property on Saturday and it's a bank holiday so we have an extra day to unpack. Things have been a bit hectic so I don't have any photos of the chaos of packing but it thought I would give you a sneak peak of the house. These are the photos from the website and I'll post more once we get in.



The kitchen/dining area



The living room (thankfully not our furniture)

...a little bit of packing

As the moving day draws ever closer we thought that this weekend past would be a good time to start packing. In reality all we did was repack the boxes that we have kinda unpacked over the last 18 months. So although it looks like we have done lots of packing we haven't really. However, we now have the removal men booked, boxes obtained and a extra boost of energy ready for a full weekend of packing this coming weekend. (Keeping Phil away from the FA Cup final long enough to help may be a struggle!!). Although at times dealing with solicitors, estate agents, etc has been difficult we are very excited about moving into our own home. We have great plans about what we want to do to the house once we get in, although these ideas are based entirely on the 15 minutes we spent in the house when we viewed it. I'm sure they will all change once we have spent some time in the house.

I'll keep you posted as things progress and if I get organized I might even manage to get some photos of the move uploaded.

...Belfast and London in the same week

Last week was a bit mad, but definitely a fun week. I had a brief but wonderful visit to Belfast on Tuesday night. Dad was being installed as the Arch Deacon (Demon) for Down Cathedral and the whole family was descending on Belfast for the night. Also as an added bonus my Auntie had flown in from Canada for the event. We had a wonderful evening meeting up with old friends and the service went very well.

Sadly on my return I got a cold and spent the rest of the week feeling sorry for myself. But then we had a wonderful idea about heading down to London for the bank holiday weekend. Ali and Michael were happy to have so we drove down on Friday night. We had a super weekend with the whole family. The girls have got really big since we were last there so it was nice to see them. Lottie is a little lady now, pottering around the house in all sorts of fancy dress, making tea in her cottage and generally making us laugh. Hannah is now really animated and still as smiley as ever.

Now its back to work for another week, although thankfully a short one. House packing begins in earnest this weekend as it is hopefully only 2.5 weeks til we move. Exciting times ahead.

Brumby's not sure what to think..

This is an interesting quiz and although I ran through it fairly quickly I'm still not sure what to think of the result. At least my mum will be proud and happy to know that I have a Methodist side!

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 86% Reformed Evangelical 79% Neo orthodox 54% Fundamentalist 46% Charismatic/Pentecostal 39% Emergent/Postmodern 39% Roman Catholic 32% Classical Liberal 18% Modern Liberal 14% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Brumby questions the importance of blogging...

I'm not really sure why I write this blog, nor am I sure why many other people write theirs. However there are many blogs out there that are primarily aimed at providing us with information that we find relevant to our lives. In particular I am talking about Christian blogs (of which there are many). There are a few that I read on almost a daily basis and find that what they have to say is often an encouragement or a challenge. I am finding more and more now that I am likely to pick up my laptop to browse the internet than pick up a book and curl up on the sofa. Of course there is nothing wrong with this but recently I have been questioning the use of my time. My way, in part, of addressing my use of time is to spend my time on the internet reading these blogs that at times are like mini sermons. I do however love checking the news headlines and reading friends blogs and going on bebo to see what friends have been up to.

So i still don't know why I write mine but I want to thank all the people who continue to write their blogs to help and encourage other people.

...the weekly weight in

Yipee!!!....I've lost 2lbs, which I think is pretty great since I had a weekend of bad food that I couldn't avoid. And my BMI is now 23.4 :)

Had a great weekend even though I did slip up a little on the food. Pilco and I cleared the garage in preparation for the move, its amazing how much junk we have gathered in only 2 years! But it felt good to start the clearing and packing.

Saturday night we went out for dinner at the home of a lovely couple from Church, it was really lovely to get to know them a little better and learn more about the Church.

Sunday was a super day. Church was followed by a Church lunch and then a Q&A for our potential new Assistant Pastor. We are now desperately looking forward to moving down and getting more involved.

...rabbit food

Lunch for the next 6 weeks :(



We're out for dinner on Sat night and we have a church lunch on Sunday and I'm worried about my dietry requirements. I'll just have to do my best and eat what I can without being rude or offending anyone.

The diet is not good when you wnat to have a social life, unless nice people like Jess come for tea (shes also on the Juice Diet).

...the Juice Detox/Diet

Computer just crashed after a lengthy description of my juice diet, so sadly you are now getting the short short version.

-I have a wedding in 6 weeks
-need to look super sexy
-need to lose at least a stone!!
-juice diet works a treat
-juice for breakfast, salad for lunch, fish/chicken and veg for tea
-no carbs, no dairy, no alcohol

Sorry I've had to crop the text but gotta go work. I'll keep you posted on the weekly weight in's.




The green juice that my colleagues think looks like liquidized Kermit!

...Belfast

I know it's been a while, but I'm a busy girl....most of the time. Easter is a special time for our family, especially when we remember the significance of Jesus dying for us and then being raised to life. How wonderful and humbling that he would do that for us. We had a lovely long weekend at home in Belfast with my family. It was also mums birthday so double celebrations. We didn't do our usual mad dash to see alot of friends and just had a relaxing time with family and a few friends, it was a really nice time and just the break we needed.

On Easter Monday Pilco's brother came over to visit us with his new girl friend, she's lovely!!! and we all had a great evening.

Back to work on Tuesday, yuck, it was far to sunny outside to be at work. So on Saturday we took ourselves off to Arley Hall for a stroll in the grounds following buy a little tub of ice cream. We then decided to go out for tea and treat ourselves, after all you're only young once...super day.



Me at the Tea Cottage



Pilco in a tree!

That's about it, I'll try not to leave such a large gap between my entries in future.

Monday 2nd April

I was in London at the weekend with 3 of my friends from Uni. We try to meet up once a year and have a girlie weekend, full of good chat, luxury hotels, good food and a show. Although we haven't done it for a while this weekend was as good as expected. We stayed in the Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch, a very luxurious hotel with excellent service. All four of us were as exhausted as each other so we spent a relaxing weekend chatting and stolling along Oxford Street. On Saturday night we went to see 'Avenue Q' which is a puppet show for adults, it was hilarious. All in all it was a lovely weekend.

Thursday 29th March

I thought this made for very good reading and was a welcome reminder of how I should be living.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2007/2032_Things_I_Have_Learned/

On a completely different note I want to wish Smurph a very happy birthday!!!

Off to London tomorrow for a girlie weekend of chatting, chatting and more chatting, think we might try and fit in a show aswell. Had a mad week at work trying to get drawings finished and also outside of work sorting out house stuff, but everything seems to be moving in the right direction.

Sunday 25th March

Yipee!! Our offer has been accepted and we finally have a house. Now I know that things aren't always that smooth and things in England aren't as easy as in Scotland but we continue to pray that if this is Gods will then everything will go as planned. Tomorrow we start to put things in motion and if all goes to plan we could be in our new house by the end of May :)

What a wonderful weekend

Saturday 24th March

Well if I thought last week was a bad week, then it was nothing compared to this week. Firstly I went back to work and felt like I was treading water for a few days whilst I tried to catch up on the week I had missed. We had an important meeting this week at work and even though I knew my project leader was off I knew that the Director was coming to the meeting with me. That was until he told me on Wednesday that he wouldn't be going....meaning I would have to not only attend this meeting but chair it and explain all the projects by myself. I didn't sleep too well on Wednesday night and had a long nervous morning. But thankfully with a lot of people praying the meeting went well and I don't think I said anything too stupid.

As if that wasn't bad enough, we got the dreaded call from our landlord on Monday saying that they had accepted an offer on the house we are renting and we would have to be out in 2 months. Fear and panic set in as we have still not been able to find a house yet. Never one to give in we trawled the property website and found the last 9 houses with 2-3 of them being serious contenders. We had decided that this Saturday we were going to find a house and buy it. Failing that Plan B would have to kick in and neither of us wanted to have to rent again.

So after a worrying week we set off this morning nervous and excited :) About half way through the day we had only seen one house that we liked and sadly it was at the top end of our budget. One of the houses we thought was a possibility was awful, so we plodded on in the hope that the other 2 would be better. Then I received a call from an estate agent saying that a new house had been added and would we like to see it. Now, normally when we get these calls we say no thanks and have a look at it on the internet first (they usually are horrible), but since this was are last weekend of looking I thought 'Why not'. So it was arranged to be our last viewing of the day, but to be honest we thought nothing of it because we still had 2 other possible houses to see. Sadly one of them was in a not great location but we would have compromised and bought it if all else failed. Then we went to see our last possibility (which we had seen before and knew we liked). This one was to be a real winner as the owners weren't in a chain, however upon arrival they informed us that their chain had fallen through only 3 weeks ago. We left this house very low and thinking that Plan B was far too close for comfort.

So two little sad people entered the last property which looked nothing special from the front and maybe a little too small, but once we entered the house and saw the amazing view out the back to open fields and farm land we almost instantly fell in love with it. Everything about this house was perfect...the location, the views, the interior. I suppose the only downside was that it was smaller than some other properties we have seen. But as the reality of the situation set in we knew that we could make this into a lovely family home and although we wouldn't live here forever it would be a great little home for the next 4-5 years.

On the drive home we had a mixture of relief and excitement. We both loved it but worried that we were being pushed into it. However by the time we got home we knew it was the one and we have put in an offer...so watch this space.

It was an amazing answer to prayer and it's great to see God's hand in this whole process. Thank you to all of you who have been praying for us. Points for continuing prayer would be that the offer is accepted, the whole process goes smoothly and that the timing works out with us leaving our rented accommodation.

Thanks you

The View

Tuesday 20th March

Below is a map showing all the countries I have ever visited. What a priviledge to have have been able to do this. Check it out for yourself.



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Sunday 4th March

What a week it's been! I've been off all week sick and spend most of it in bed. Thankfully I am now feeling much more like myself and was able to entertain Cheryl and James last night. We had a great time watching the Rugby (until Ireland were stripped of the title) and playing the PlayStation. Both Cheryl and I have become a little obsessed with Bebo, its a great way to meet up with your friends and people you haven't been in touch with for a while. Check out my Bebo page (link below). It was great to see them again and we are looking forward to getting up to Glasgow to see their new house :)

Another unsuccessful weekend of house hunting has left Phil and I feeling rather deflaited but we are encouraged to know that lots of people are praying for us and we know that in Gods time we will find the right house were we can serve him. Sadly I may have to come down off my Architectural soapbox and buy a NEW BUILD, my most dreaded thought. But if it means we can get moved to Sandbach sooner and become more involved in our Church then maybe thats what we'll have to do.

Well work tomorrow, not really looking forward to it cause I have to do a weeks worth of work in a morning so that some drawings can be couriered over to the planners prior to our meeting later in the week. I think it'll be a few late nights this week until I catch up, not ideal when i'm still totally exhausted!