Harvest Festival

Today was the Harvest Festival in our village church. Rob was singing in the choir so Ted and I went along for the service. It's always a bit of a lottery bringing a small child to church, we've done it many times but you can never quite predict how they'll behave! I brought along a bag of books, toys and snacks but there's a great selection of things for children at the back of the church so he was really happy to play with them for most of the service. He was particularly keen on doing the jigsaws which was wonderful - quiet and sitting still! He began to get noisier towards the end of the service (an hour is a long time to be quiet when you're 2) so I did resort to some chocolate bribery at that point. I don't care; it worked! Lots of compliments about how good he was from the rest of the congregation which made me feel very proud. And breathe a sigh of relief!

Happy Harvest all!

A gorgeous morning here today. I was up early as my friend and I wanted to do a practice 10k run before our Tidworth 10k next month, so she picked me up at 7:30 and we drove over to the next village to run the route of the Chalke Valley Challenge, a 10k race that's happening next Sunday. It was glorious - glistening frost, sunshine punching through the misty river, just breathtakingly beautiful. But of course it was also FREEZING cold!!! We were both in t-shirt tops and spent the first 4k unable to feel our hands and arms. Only when the sun rose high enough did we begin to regain some feeling in our frozen limbs, and even when we got back to the car I could barely fumble the key from my pocket as my fingers were numb. Despite this we really enjoyed the run, and the huge hills didn't seem too bad with a friend to chat with. We finished in 1:06 which I was really pleased with. I think I'm going to enter for the actual run next Sunday! It's good to have practised the course, and I think I could get closer to an hour if I pushed myself a little harder.

Rain is forecast for the rest of the week which is a bit miserable, especially as the builders are coming to start on our extension tomorrow morning. Eek! The reality of having building work going on for the next 3, 4, 5 (?) months is just beginning to hit me now. I'm dreading it. Still, it'll be worth it when it's done.