Tuesday

I am not looking forward to Tuesday at all, which I suppose is only to be expected. It is the funeral of my brother-in-law. To be perfectly correct he is Frank's brother-in-law but I think that makes him mine too!

The last time I saw Peter up and about was at Anne-Marie's house when we went down for the day to celebrate Simon's 40th Birthday. He was still getting over the treatment he had had for prostate cancer but was chatty and good company as one might expect. Even then though, Carolyn knew he was not well and things got much worse over the next few weeks. Carolyn and Peter, Anne-Marie and Maher went to Greece at the end of August and it was after that holiday, when Peter could hardly walk, that things started to go downhill rapidly.

A short stay in hospital revealed Peter had cancer in every organ in his body (apart from the liver) and that he had a very short time left to live. He went home and Carolyn nursed him, with the help of her family and nurses until he died on October 16th at 11.50pm. He was 68. I will miss him so much as he was such lovely company.

He was brought up as an only child and like me, was used to being with older people for most of his young life. We could take the piss of each other and wind each other up, knowing we were not being serious. We played many games of cribbage together when Frank and I were in Southampton and I remember the games of sardines that the family used to play when Frank and I were first married. So many happy memories.

The holidays we spent together as a family were always great fun. Peter would go fishing but rarely caught anything that I can remember. When we were in France before Katie was born Peter and I would sometimes walk down to the bakery together early in the morning to buy bread for breakfast. He was always an early riser! During that same holiday we took a day trip over to Jersey and we hired a minibus which Peter drove around the island. He showed us all the places that had been important to him as a child and I was sat in such a position that I could see him in the rear view mirror. The look on his face showed just how delighted he was to be showing us all his island. I can also remember the beach at Val-André! That was one of Peter's favourite beaches and we spent quite a few days of our holiday there. There was to be another family holiday next April - the first that we had had since Tunisia in 2000 and I was so looking forward to spending some fun times with Peter again. But sadly it was not to be.

Thankfully we got to spend a little time with him in the few weeks before he died and the cancer did not take away the old Peter. He knew who we were and was still able to joke with us from time to time. Tuesday will be a very sad day for us all. Frank has been asked to do a reading and that will so hard for him! But I am glad he is going to do it. And at the crematorium he is going to be one of the men carrying the coffin. I can't imagine how horrible that will be for them all - knowing Peter's body is in there.

He will always have a very special place in my heart as he was the best brother-in-law anyone could have wished for. If there is an afterlife then I am sure that he will carry on being the life and soul of the party and if he is reunited with his father-in-law then I am sure they are having great fun together again.

Rest in Peace Peter!

Wednesday

It was a strange 50th Birthday. I'm not one for big celebrations of birthdays, other than for children and 18th Birthdays, as it always seems silly to be making a big thing of reaching something like 40 or 50 or 60. Getting to such an age is not really an achievement as quite a lot of people do and it doesn't take much of an effort! Now special anniversaries are worth celebrating! Being married for 25 or 30 or 40 years IS an achievement. It is something you work at and lots of people give up long before that.

Anyway - my birthday! I was called early (as usual!) by my parents and my aunt. Katie had made me breakfast of chocolate croissant and fruit salad with yoghurt which was delicious. Then I had a call from Lizzie who was at the airport in Newark waiting to come home. It was 5.15 am her time. Frank got home from Wales in the afternoon and I opened my presents. A daylight lamp from Frank, which was just what I wanted so that I can scrapbook later into the night! And jewellery and chocolates from Katie. I had some more earrings from Lizzie when she got home.

We left here at around 6pm and got to the airport in time to meet the 8.00pm plane. At 8.45 itwas announced that the baggage was in the hall, but at 9.30 there was still no sign of Lizzie. She did send us texts to keep us informed of what was happening and at 10.30pm we finally left Heathrow. One of the baggage trolley's had got mislaid in the airport and it took them a while to find it! But eventually they did! It was lovely to have the family back together again after more than 12 months.

The worst part of the day was waiting for news about Peter, my brother-in-law! He has cancer and we were waiting to see how far it had spread. Sadly it has spread to his stomach and his spine and also his brain. We should find out today if anything can be done!

Scrapbooking

I have been trying hard over the summer to get some of my albums finished as I want to start scrapping our April trip to the USA. I have been completing challenges on various groups and forums which has given me the push I have needed to get more pages finished. I will try to post more to the blog in future!

This is the most recent page I have completed. It is for the September Week 1 challenge on UKScrappers. I had to include a BeeGees song in the title, use the colour red, ribbon, bling and buttons. They all have some connection with the first week in September - 1st September 1946 was when Barry Gibb was born; 2nd September 1994 Roy Castle died so the ribbon is for this; Dallas was first broadcast on 5th September 1979 so that is the bling; Buttons because that is the name of the group setting the challenge and the red is nothing specific. Here is my layout anyway!

Maze Album

I have created a little Maze album for my mother-in-law. We are going to Southampton next weekend to see the family and will give it to her then. It has 27 photos in it - all of them are her children, grand children and great grand children and some of their spouses. I hope she likes it!

Lizzie and Katie

Katie has been home from the US about a month now. She has had a fabulous time studying in Purdue and then travelling around the States. She managed to visit 47 of the the States and also saw a tiny bit of Canada. Her photos are fantastic and I want to go and see more of the country!

Lizzie arrives home on my birthday which will be nice. She has also been to Niagara Falls so this year we have all been there but all at different times! She is now in NYC for a few days and according to Facebook, she seems to be having a great time.

Walking

I am trying to do more walking! It is not something that I could say I enjoy as I would much rather be scrapping but I know I need some exercise and need to get fitter.



I recently bought some new walking shoes and just over a week ago Frank and I decided to go for a walk! We did a circular walk that started and finished at Welford. We timed it so that we could walk and then finish at the pub in Welford for lunch.







The walk started along the canal bank - along a branch of the Grand Union that only went to the pub!

Then we walked along the main Grand Union towpath for a while before cutting across the fields to end up back at the village.






It was a little under 5 miles in total and a very nice walk.







We stopped at the pub for a lovely lunch. I had some absolutely delicious mushrooms and Frank had a ploughman's lunch that was big enough to feed a family. I chose cider to drink but the beer Frank chose was delicious. I would love to go back there so that I could have the beer. It tasted like butterscotch! Wonderful.




The following Tuesday (1st July) I went for another walk!

This time with Ron Annies (Biology teacher from work). Now he is a big walker and much fitter than me so when he told me we were to go a circular walk that was about 8 miles I was a little apprehensive. We started at Brigstock Country Park and then saw the sign that said the Lyveden Way walk, which was the one we were doing, was actually 9 and a half miles. I did have the option to turn around but after about 4 miles I was still feeling fine and we were nearly at Wadenhoe which is where we planned to stop for lunch, at the pub!

I was really pleased to find that the following day I didn't even ache! The next walk, weather permitting will be next Tuesday (15th July!).

16 week challenge

I finally decided not to carry on with this challenge. The opposites were not things that I would normally scrap and as I have hundreds of photos that need scrapping I decided I could better use my time working on other albums.