Category: Daily life

Jean-Baptiste’s birthday party

On Wednesday, Jean-Baptiste will be 5. To be honest, I am not a big fan of parties. Especially when I have to organise them. I am rather of the boring kind who just enjoy sitting down with a coffee and chat for hours. As a consequence, we had not put much thought into organising a party for him, but last week our friends Alessio and Katy kindly offered us to use their garden if we wanted to do something for him.

So we did prganise something. We invited a handful of friends from school and church at the last minute and had a simple birthday party in their garden, with a couple of games and a few magic tricks by Alessio. It was great, and relaxed, the weather was hot and sunny. The children seemed to enjoy themselves running around and jumping on the trampoline. I even enjoyed myself, chatting and playing around with the kids.

Bike Scheme

Since September 2009, a bike hire scheme has been available in Cardiff, following the lead of several cities in Europe. I have never used it, but think it is a great idea. The first 30 minutes are free, and it would take less than that to travel around the town centre. Well, I’ve just discovered that there is a rental spot just around the corner from us, on Station Road in Llandaff North. Typical, we are moving in 3 weeks time and that’s when they set these up.

A relaxing weekend.

One needs a relaxing weekend from time to time. This one was most relaxing.

On Saturday morning, we went for a long walk from our house to the other side of the River Taff, some parts are very wild, and you’d almost forget you are in a city with over 300 000 inhabitants. I’ll post a couple of pictures later. Then, Esther and my mum did a few boxes before going to the church BBQ in Porthkerry country Park, Barry.

Getting to the BBQ was quite a challenge for my map reading skills. I am usually quite good at reading maps, but this time I failed miserably. We got lost twice before finding our way and it took us an hour to arrive instead of 30 minutes. There was a good group of people, lot of youngsters, good food, good fellowship. The gospel was clearly presented by one of our elders. One the way back, we had a quick glance at Barry Island (my first time there), and went home in just under 1/2 an hour.

Sunday was nice and warm. I took my parents to the station, and we went to church. Then we had a great afternoon in Pontypridd with our friends the Pikes. We were in the garden all the time, chatting away and playing around with the kids. It was great to leave the stress of moving behind for an afternoon, and just enjoy life.

The coming week is busy with the commissioning service tommorrow, and lot of admin to prepare the move. Then I finish work officialy on Thursday.

Getting Back on Tracks

Over the last few months, I’ve let a lot of things to do slip through the net. But today is the day to start getting back on track. Jean-Baptiste is in School, Esther is out for the morning, so let’s make the most of it. I am a fan of GTD (Getting things Done), a “method” with the goal of streamlining your worflow and capture all your commitments so that you can start getting things done and stop worrying about it. The first phase is collecting: you get everything from around the house into one place, before processing it one item at a time.

I’ve already packed some of my books, so there is plenty of space on the shelves to collect. Let’s get started.

Another rather good weekend

We had a rather good weekend again. We spent Saturday in Shrewsbury for a Family reunion. All the family on Esther’s side was present, the sun was shining. We enjoyed each other company and good food. The children played well together.

Thanks to the wonders of technology (and my online backups), I was able to retrieve the presentation on Brittany I’ve given in Churches in order to show it to those who had not seen it, in spite of the fact that I had not taken my computer with me.

On the way back, a bad accident on the A49 reminded us to be grateful that we have been kept so far.