I wrote this for Blipfoto, over four entries, and thought I'd share here too.

Thursday: Welcome to Belfast

Straightforward flight over to Belfast, and good to spend the afternoon and evening with family. I was struck with amusement by this machine at the airport.

Friday: Farewell grandad

No photos from the funeral, but I wanted to share this one from happier days, a long time ago when Grace and Loudon were married at 18.

The funeral was good, as these things go. The vicar spoke well about grandad's life, his work and family and love of flying. The organist for the funeral parlour sang Abide With Me beautifully, for us to join in between the tears, and my cousin David read a beautiful poem about flight. Then we followed the coffin up the street with various family members taking a lift along the way, before a final ceremony up at the graveyard where grandma is buried too. The heavens opened and the wind blew a gale and it felt like a rather epic farewell!

And then, as the vicar put it, it was time for dor the living. There was a funeral tea at a local hotel with the family and friends, and then we moved into the hotel bar, and kept each other company until they closed, and it was good to be there and to share the time and memories with family and to be together in our sadness

Saturday: Five Go to the Beach

Down to Ballygally after breakfast at the hotel. Two of us paddled, and the other three tried to avoid getting caught up in the spring tide, and I didn't do a great job taking a photo but we were glad to be there despite the rain. Then it was time to gradually say goodbye as we three girls headed off over the course of the day to get our planes home.

Sunday: Mother's Day

Matthew was glad to have me home, and was ready to welcome me with a beautiful card and jigsaw. The flowers were a posy from the church, brought round by some of the girls from our street, and offered to me as a local mother, which was rather lovely. A quiet day of games and sunshine and relaxing, just what I needed.

[My mum's present has now gone *back* in the post, as I foolishly managed to get it delivered to my house instead of hers!]

It's been a funny old summer. Since I last posted we've spent 5 weeks without a childminder - one of those was on a fabulous family holiday to celebrate mum's birthday, but the others we've muddled through with Mike taking some days off and me taking others - ending up with me working just one day last week! During that time I've been increasingly desperately looking for childcare for when Matthew starts pre-school next week. This week he is back at Hania's for today and tomorrow and I think I may have *finally* found someone, though she's expensive and definitely only wants to do this for the short term as that many fixed hours makes an awkward dent in her availability for full-time jobs. We meet her on Friday anyway :)

Anyway, despite that stress, we did indeed have a brilliant week away at the start of August - we were staying in an amazing hobbity house in Somerset, within view of Glastonbury Tor. We had some lovely days out at the beach and Wookey Hole and we visited Em in her lovely house and had afternoon tea in the garden. We had a fab lunch out on Mum's birthday and a BBQ in the garden in the evening - there were lots of presents and cards and singing of happy birthday and both light up LED balloons and giant ones spelling 60 and it was a really lovely day. Mike and I took some long walks after Matthew was in bed and saw owls and deer and BADGERS in the lanes around the house. And we all enjoyed the hot tub in the garden and the swimming pool for guest use just up the lane.

The exciting news since then though is that I'm once again an auntie, with a brand new baby niece. Her name is Lillian Grace (after great-grannies on both James and Em's side) and she's beautiful, and I hope to get a chance to gurgle at her over Skype before very long. I suspect we shall be visiting Somerset again before too many months have gone!

Other than that the summer has contained lots of parks - especially Coleridge Rec with its splash pad and "wolf slide" and the ever popular ice cream van. Mike and Matthew had a trip to the zoo, but I don't think Matthew and I have managed anything more exotic than an afternoon at Funky Funhouse and a visit to the children's fair on Parker's Piece. There's been lots of sunshine and we even put up the tent as a den in the garden and had a barbecue on the firepit this weekend for the first time in a vary long time!

I'm taking Tuesday and Wednesday off next week to help settle Matthew in to Rainbow. He'll be going 9-3 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (when we're both at work) and 9-12 on Thursdays - so I'm going to have to find a way to amuse myself those mornings. I'm thinking of some refresher driving lessons so we can consider occasionally hiring a car. If we get all organised with childcare we're hoping to have a weekend over in Lydney to visit Evan and Gina before the end of September - and then possibly up to Mirfield at the beginning of October for a bike ride if we're lucky.

I'm *so* looking forward to once we're actually settled into a new routine with this term, and then I can relax? Yeah, right :)

So tomorrow baby Matthew will be 6 weeks old. I've just booked our 6-8 week check ups for next Thursday - and 6-8 weeks is the point in time when we can hopefully begin to establish some routines - which means I should be starting to put him down in his crib or carrycot whenever he goes to sleep during the day - easier said than done when this always seems to wake him up! If we can manage it then it would certainly make life much much easier. At the moment he generally only sleeps on one of us, or in the pram if it's moving, which means i don't get much rest during t day. With that and the fact I'm still finding breast feeding to be a bit of a struggle at times I'm feeling rather worn out at the moment, but I'm sure it will all get easier with time. As it does I shall have to start getting out of the habit of relying on rather too much chocolate and cake to get me through the day :)

Looking forward to mum and dad coming down to visit at the weekend, and to some other visitors too: one of my oldest friends, Cathie, is coming by on Thursday with her two boys which will be fab, and I'm also trying to sort out times to meet Lindsey from my SW class, Stephen, Barbara and Paul from work (after a lovely visit to the office last Friday) and the others from my NCT antenatal group (we're trying to make a habit of it).

He's certainly a big strong boy anyway, starting to grow out of some of his sleep suits already, enjoying standing with his weight on his own two legs when held up, and beginning to hold his own head up too. Best of all he's beginning to smile - and when he does everything suddenly gets better :)

So, baby Matthew is one week old today. Time has definitely flown by!

( Labour )

We called Mike's parents from the hospital for a brief chat, and invited Mum and Dad to come in at some point during the morning to meet baby Matthew and to bring in the post-labour bag with clothes for me and baby. (Rather complicated by one mobile running out of credit and the other being unable to get any signal). It was lovely to see them, but when it became clear it would be a while before we were released we sent them home again to wait for us, and let us get a bit of rest. It was late afternoon before Matthew and I had our post-natal checks - and there was one thing they wanted to check with the paediatrician before they sent us home. Having a bit of a busy day it meant we spent a long afternoon and evening mostly waiting around - and after a shift change they decided they *didn't* need to come and see him in person after all, and we finally made it home around 10:30pm. Since then Matthew is doing really well according to the midwives, and although I've had to pop to the GP for some antibiotics for a touch of mastitis I'm doing pretty well too - and it's definitely clearing up!

Mum and dad stayed to look after us until the weekend, and we had a really nice relaxed few days. It's really strange getting used to trying not to overdo it though, and reminding myself to let other people do things instead of doing them myself! We all enjoyed getting to know our little boy though and there were lots of cuddles for everyone. It's definitely sad that we don't live closer, but having had Skype conversations using Dad's iPad with Em and with Steph/family we shall definitely have to make a point of setting ourselves up to be able to keep in touch that way so Matthew gets to know the rest of the family better. Mike and I had the house to ourselves on Monday which was novel, though perhaps appreciated less then it might otherwise have been if Matthew were a little more inclined to sleep during the night, rather than during the day. He has a tendency to feed non-stop overnight for a long while, which is a bit wearing, but we're pretty sure he'll start to adapt before long, and we'll just have to get better at taking naps during the day. Mike's parents have now come to visit for a few days, though they're staying in a B&B. Granny Gina in particular is utterly delighted with he new grandson - and so is Evan though in a rather calmer way. Joanna popped in today to drop off a card too, which was nice. We had a first little outing in the pram today - to the shops and back to buy a rather late lunch from the Deli. All bundled up in a rather-too-large sleep suit :) Tomorrow Mike and Evan are going to go and register the birth so he can be all official before Evan and Gina head home, and Emily's hoping to visit on Friday on her way North from Somerset (a bit of a detour!) - then I think we'll be ready for more local visitors to pop in during the day later in the weekend or next week.

In the meantime we just need to get a bit more sleep :)

Here's some ( photos )

So on Sunday night afternoon last week it started to snow quite heavily, and Mike and I went out for a fab walk in the snow - which cunningly lasted just long enough that our roast lamb had 2 minutes left to cook when we got in :) Having gone out after dark we didn't take the camera, but were amazed at how much light there was. Walking around nine wells nature reserve we even turned the head torches off, and it was like wandering round in a black and white photo. Beautiful. Monday morning the roads were well covered in snow - a good couple or three inches probably - and it was obvious that even the main roads wouldn't be very clear yet, so rather than push the bike to the end of the road and then cycle I decided to walk and get public transport. At least some trains were cancelled and others late, and the buses were reporting severe delays, so rather than the nearly a mile into the village for a one-every-20-minutes bus which is unreliable at the best of times I decided to take the longer walk to Addenbrookes, where there are *loads* of buses into town to choose from. It's about 2.5 miles, and even with 5 minutes stopping to take photos it took about an hour, which isn't bad! Took Mike's hiking walking stick, which has a nice spike on the bottom, but still had a rather scary moment crossing the road on Macaulay Avenue, where the cars had started to polish the snow into ice already. The photos have all been added to my snow album on Facebook, but here's a quick preview:

Tuesday I decided it would be too icy to be safe, and worked from home. By Wednesday morning it was starting to look a bit clearer outside, and the bin men turned up having failed to come on Monday, so I thought I'd make an attempt to get the bike as far as Hinton Way on foot - and ended up giving up in under 100 yards - it was just *too* slippery to be safe. The road on Macaulay Avenue was like glass, and the pavements were only slightly better in being lumpier! So another day working from home was called for - once I'd got over my fright :) It thawed a bit during the day though, and with the help of my trusty stick I did manage to make it out on Thursday and Friday - with quite a bit of walking on the road where the pavements were icy - and only 20 yards of really difficult stretch on Thursday and 10 on Friday. And despite the forecast there was no more snow overnight, and now the sky is blue, the sun is shining, it's well above zero and hopefully by the time the weekend is over it will all be gone and we can get back to normal :). It has been very beautiful at times - but just a bit too treacherous.

Bump is now 34 weeks old - 2.2kg which is about the weight of a cantaloupe melon, and 45cm long. Next midwife appointment is on Monday - must remember to ask about the whooping cough jab, since they haven't mentioned it to me yet! Our NCT antenatal classes are 10 til 4 next Saturday and the one after - which actually now turns out to be a bit of a nuisance, since we were hoping Evan and Gina could come and visit, and mum and dad wanted to pop down too - and do us a huge favour and bring some baby things from Steph and Dave. I'll be on leave by then though - since this week will be my last week at work - so perhaps we can work something out.

Speaking of work it's been another pretty busy week - some useful scripts written, some more showing Julia of various bits of the postmaster job, some fixing of people's broken email programs (I've gone off Eudora even more than usual) and some success in finding good ways to make other ones work (getting Thunderbird to display more information from our LDAP email directory than previously thought possible). Lots of things ticked off my to-do list, and only a few items remaining - one of which is to have a go at some of the interview questions they're planning to ask my maternity cover! Could be fun, but mildly intimidating :) Apparently the advert should be out early next week. I've also been tidying out my desk and starting to fetch things home - bit of a panic as I thought I'd lost an important key but it turned up again in one of the things I'd brought home. I've been tidying my desktop computer too - and am now busy downloading all the odds and ends of personal stuff that has accumulated at work over the last nearly 11 years. Only about 40 minutes download time remaining :)

Mike and I are still ticking along nicely enjoying the easy life - Les Mis was great last weekend, and we had a nice dinner out too - though it ended up being somewhere else and with a long wait. It turns out all the chain restaurants on the leisure park are insanely busy at around 7pm on a Saturday - who would have guessed! Planning on taking it pretty easy this weekend - some bird watching in the garden for the RSPB, and someone coming to pick up the two bedside tables that have been lurking in the living room for the last couple of weeks :) I bought haggis for Burns Night, but we ended up having something else and it will be our tea tonight instead - yum. All in all life's pretty good.

Having a fab weekend so far:

• Day off on Friday, pottering round the village shops and baking
• Em and mum and dad came to stay on Friday night - proper birthday tea with cake and scones - stayed up late talking
• Waved Em off early on Saturday to get back for John's Tae Kwon Do 4th Dan grading (he passed)
• Lovely day pottering about with mum and dad - Audley End house shut, Mountfitchet Castle shut - but Thaxted and Saffron Walden both very pretty to drive through. Takeaway curry for tea
• Sunday morning visited the craft market in Stapleford and then off to the King William IV in Heydon for lunch, and another lovely drive back in the sunshine
• Waved mum and dad off home - but they've just texted to say we won the raffle at the craft fair - they'll have to post us the ticket to go pick up their prize

It's been very chilled out, very well fed, and with lots of lovely company. Brilliant! And it's not even my birthday til tomorrow so there's more left to come :)

Since we were away with the family at the end of May I have:

• Been away to Manchester for UCU Congress - which was fantastically interesting.
• Been to Alison's hen party: chocolate making, night punting with a bat expert and cocktails.
• Been to Mobbsy and Alison's wedding: a very happy couple and very happy guests and lots of dancing. (photos)
• It was lovely to have Chris to stay for a few days for the wedding too, even if we'd rather he hadn't been delayed by having his car written off!
• Had a weekend off! Played lots of Diablo 3, watched football and tennis and didn't do much else.
• Visited Mike's parents to celebrate their Ruby Wedding anniversary. (photos)

I've also been logging exercise on Fitocracy and I even joined MapMyRun and went for a run. I'm still not convinced about running.

Looking forward to Laura's Cambridge hen party in a couple of weeks time - and sad to have missed the Edinburgh leg. Then after that I think I'm pretty free until late August when we're off to the Lakes for a summer holiday. Fingers crossed there's a bit less rain by then, but we're determined to enjoy it even if it tips it down :)

So I don't seem to post here very often, do I? Generally Facebook gets the day-to-day comments and photos, and I post our walks on Everytrail. I do still read LJ though, and it's only fair to contribute a bit too! Anyway, so far this year we've:

• Baked brownies (which were a bit underdone), and a chocolate cake (which was a bit overdone) from Mike's rather fab Green and Blacks cookbook.
• Walked from Ely to Waterbeach on a very windy day at the end of January.
• Spent a weekend away in Stamford where we walked round Burghley Park and along the river Welland and stayed in a lovely hotel.
• Walked two more sections of the Icknield Way, from Stetchworth to Kentford and then from Kentford to Thetford - with the help of some trains.
• Had mum and dad visit for St Patrick's Day and Mother's Day - with a visit to Wimpole Hall and an excellent lunch out at Alimentum.
• Had a bit of excitement with the neighbours blocked drains causing flooding in our garden due to the cruel nature of gravity.
• And generally just hung out - gardening, decluttering, playing computer games and so on.

Next weekend for Easter we're planning another 3 day stretch to finish off the other end of the Icknield Way between Ivinghoe Beacon and Baldock. With some live music at our hotel on Saturday night, which should be fun. We're also looking forward to a weekend away for Mike's birthday (as yet unspecified) and a long weekend in Northern Ireland with all the family in late May. And the next recipe will be cheesecake - but not until after Easter.

We had a lovely weekend away for my birthday, staying in Culloden Tower in Richmond - an 18th century folly converted into a holiday cottage by the Landmark Trust. Mum and Dad treated us to the weekend's stay, and very kindly let Mike and I have the double bedroom on the top floor: I don't think the 66 steps between it and the bathroom had anything to do with it. It was a fantastic place to stay, with stunning views from the rooftop across to Richmond Castle and down to the river. And to top it off Steph, Dave, Oliver and Isobel came to visit us on the Saturday, and we had a proper birthday tea, and then they stayed over nearby so we all visited the Castle together the next day before Em and John came over for lunch on Sunday. Couldn't ask for a nicer time. At some point I *will* upload the photos.

Since it's now (some time) after my birthday it's permitted to start thinking about Christmas - so Mike and I have had the day off today to go and do our Christmas shopping. The plan was to hit the shops after a late breakfast, and then have a proper afternoon tea, and after much research we were planning to head to the Doubletree hotel. They don't do afternoon tea until after 3 though, and at 1:45 were were done with the shopping already, and decided we couldn't wait that long, so in the end we went to Patisserie Valerie - who don't do an afternoon tea, but do have a great club sandwich (for Mike), a rather tasty croque madame (for me) and a double chocolate gateaux and a mixed berry tart (shared). We'll just have to have our afternoon tea another time! Barring one parcel which is supposedly "out for delivery" right now, and one which is due to arrive tomorrow I think that's the shopping pretty much done though - hurray!

Definitely looking forward to Christmas with Mike's family, and then New Year with mine celebrating my dad's 60th - it's going to be fun.