This week: 4/10. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a rough first few days back at work after a holiday.

So, on Friday we drove home from the cottage, swapped cars and went onto another in one of our favourite places in the world, Combermere Abbey. It was as beautiful as we remembered and the cottage we stayed in, different to last time, was stunning. We then had a family bereavement, several nights bad sleep and it just didn’t feel like we had enough time to settle before we were packing up and going home again on Monday morning. It wasn’t quite the break I imagined. But, as you will see if you click on the link, we were in the most beautiful of places surrounded by dozens of blossom trees!

So, onto the rest of the week…

Challenge: Coming back to work on Tuesday was a struggle. My diary wasn’t full by any means, but I certainly tried to jump back in too quickly. I just have less energy now and I need to get used to that.

Drain: am I allowed to say ‘everything’? It seemed that lots of things that should have been easily solvable were much complicated than I expected. Meetings, Wedding ID checks, the five yearly report about the state of the church building, the Living in Love and Faith course have all caused stress, worry and have been a bit of a drain.

God moment: I loved standing in the nursery praying for the baby as I folded babygrows.

Ta-Dah Moment: Typing up the PCC minutes. This is a job I put off for as long as I can because it basically means sitting through the meeting a second time. So glad to have got it ticked off my To Do list though!

Mum moment: To be fair, we have done a lot of exciting shopping this week! On Monday we bought a car seat, a pump, a cot bed and a changing unit and this evening we went to Ikea to buy curtains. That was nice.

More next week, when hopefully I will be feeling less frazzled!