Hols

Well, hoorah! It is the summer holidays! 2 local schools have been given days off this week as it is 'too hot' for the students... hhhmmm, I wonder how many of the teachers popped down to Brighton on the train!

I am enjoying the hot weather, even with my bump, which is developing nicely by the way. There have been lots of fun things happening recently, both at work and play. A few weeks back, the youth club went on a summer camp to Gilwell Park. It was generally a great weekend, although was really really hard to get some of the young people to do their chores. I know it sounds like a little thing but I find it quite disheartening when they make such simple things such hard work and when they are disrespectful. To their credit, the second half of the weekend was loads better and great fun as well. A particular highlight was the camp fire - it was great to see different groups mixing, chatting and having fun. It had been a struggle to get people to come along and sign up, though. It would be interesting to hear if other youth leaders struggle with this. Our church is quite middle class and I wonder whether it is partly to do with the amount of opportunities available to them - maybe once, the weekend away would have been a big deal, whereas now it is just another activity to plan in???

I had alovely day in London a couple of weeks back, celebrating Neil's mum's birthday. We went to Fresh and Wild in Soho for lunch, Mildreds for dinner and visited the National Portrait Gallery. I have been once before to see the World's Most Photographed Exhibition, but had never seen much of the main gallery. I really enjoyed it, especially as it gave a great overview fo British history.

After a lovely break in May half term here, with Neil's family, which I forgot to write about but was wonderful, we are off on hols again, this time to Malta. We are staying here and it should be lovely, sunny and relaxing. I was really excited about the prospect of swimming with dolphins while we are there, but I can't because I am pregnant. We will hopefully come over all Godfather and visit Sicily though. When we get back, we are then off to the Big Chill, which looks to be awesome and is prob going to be the last music festival we get to in a while. I am really looking forward to it, aside from the toilets and showers... I am hoping that my bump gets meto the front of toilet queues and they are not too unpleasant! Ooh, I have just seen that Arrested Development are playing - cool!

To round off the summer, I am trying to organise taking the youth group to Greenbelt for the day, which has an added bonus as I really wanted to go but it looked unlikely this summer. So, lots going on, and in the middle of all that, I need to write an assignment, plan a research project and sort out the nursery...