Journal your Christmas

I have signed up to take part in Shimelle's Journal your Christmas. I am hoping this will give me something to look back on in years to come and remind me of what we were doing in 2008. And hopefully I will take part in future years too.

Christmas has always been a favourite time of year, especially since having children. And even though they are now adults it is still a special time of the year. We very much enjoy each other's company (well I enjoy theirs anyway!) and have lots of laughs doing things together. Some years we go away for Christmas and other years we stay at home and have family around. This year we are staying at home.

I can't wait till December 1st arrives and I can get started on this project. I just hope that I can keep motivated for the whole time. Some friends on an online group are taking part too so we are hoping to motivate each other!

Weekend

For the first time in ages we spent a whole weekend at home!

Frank spent much of the weekend working on his model boat - he will need a new one soon! And I spent some time scrapping some of our US holiday photos. My big problem is deciding which ones to leave out of the layouts, consequently I end up putting most of them in and I think my 2 albums with extra pages won't be enough for the whole 3 week vacation.

The photo on the left is of the Lincoln Memorial from various angles, the one on the right is of the reflecting pool. The bottom photo on this page is of Frank trying to photograph his finger on the top of the Washington Memorial! It didn't quite work out as he planned.

So far I have got to the end of day 2 - 30th March. This was the first of our two days in Washington DC! We visited the White House, Lincoln Memorial and National World War II Memorial.

These two photographs are of the National WWII Memorial. The photo on the left is one of the gateways into the memorial. It took us ages to get the photograph of the fountain without anyone in front of it. The photo on the right is of quotes and carvings. The carvings depict different aspects of the war!

Saturday evening we had invited a work collegue around for dinner, and as he is vegetarian we had a no meat Indian meal. Frank cooked a selection of dishes - Bindi Fry, Stuffed aubergines, dahl, mushroom curry, coconut rice and we had some naan bread too. It was all absolutely delicious.

Jongleurs

This evening I went to see 'Jongleurs' at the Castle Theatre in Wellingborough with my neighbour, Jackie and a couple of her friends. I had no idea what it was, other than a comedy show. It was listed as 'alternative comedy' but there wasn't really much alternative about it! It was just pure comedy.

The evening comprised of a compere, Dominic Frisby and two comedians in the first half and the compere and another comedian in the second half. I didn't expect it to be very good but all the acts were very funny and I haven't laughed so much in ages. Sadly I don't remember the names of the comedians but it was an excellent evening of entertainment.

Peter's funeral

This has to be the saddest day that I can remember.

Lizzie travelled down to Southampton on Monday evening with Spencer and Frank and I also decided to stay overnight with Mum. We picked up the flowers from the florist near where we live, had some dinner and then drove down to Southampton.

Tuesday morning we delivered the flowers to the funeral directors and bumped into Frank's cousin Dennis, who was taking a look at the location of the church. Dennis is famous in our family for something called 'Eggs like Dennis'. When he later met Katie and Lizzie and Katie mentioned this, he had to have it explained to him as he never knew Frank's family had eggs like he did!

We went back to Mum's, collected Lizzie and then went to meet Katie at the station. Back to Mum's for a quick lunch, a change into our black outfits and then over to Caroyln's.

It was all ok until the hearse arrived and I then started to think that Peter was in that coffin. That was the start of many tears that were shed throughout the rest of the day. Frank, Simon, Ron and Maher carried him into church and just looking around the full church showed how popular he was. The minister took the service, Frank read from John 14, Anne-Marie read a tribute to her Dad and Simon read a poem. How they all held it together I don't know. Many paper tissues later and it was time to take him to the crematorium. After another short service they played 'The Carnival is Over' by The Seekers which was a very special song to Caroyln and Peter. This was the saddest part as you knew Peter was going to be taken away to be cremated. I think all the women and a lot of the men were crying by now. Everyone had special memories of Peter and there will never be anyone else like him.

The club that we went to after the crematorium was only partly full, and I think this was because a lot of people went home when we went to the crematorium. There were albums of photographs for us to look at and they caused even more tears. I got meet Peter's second cousins - Dianne and Gloria! His young life was so like mine in some ways as these were the only children in his family that he could mix with. My second cousins were the only ones in my life too! One of the sad parts of being an only child and it was that which made Peter and I understand each other so well.

There was still time for a little fun though, and as the immediate family had been driven to the church in a limosine there was no car for Simon to go home in. Jessica came with us and Simon hitched a lift in the boot. Just the sort of thing his father would have done!

I'll miss you Peter.

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!