After a lovely Saturday celebrating my godmother’s birthday and a cracking Sunday morning talking about all things Lent and Fit For Mission, we went on holiday!

We like to get away some time before Easter if we can but taking a Sunday off in Lent can be problematic. So we took the inside of a week and squeezed an extra day in by sneaking off late Sunday afternoon once our work was done.

We didn’t book until last minute but after a bit of a Google, we settled on a cottage, Sugar Cottage, in Bakewell. It was absolutely perfect and I didn’t realise how much I needed a rest. I know I’ve only been back about five weeks but it’s been hard work and getting away for a few days was just what the doctor ordered!

We parked the van on Sunday night and didn’t actually touch it again until this morning. It wasn’t our intention, but we found that we loved wandering around the little town so much that we didn’t need to do anything else! Plus Chatsworth was closed so we really had no need to go any further.

Some highlights of the past 7 days:

Aunty Karen’s afternoon tea was just lovely. It was so nice to see people again after such a long time!

Making friends with some other parents in the swimming pool on holiday. It turns out that they go to a church down south and we had such a nice chat! We bumped into each other in the pub later on, had a drink together and exchanged details.

On Sunday after church we had a meeting about the changes that are coming to our deanery at some point in the future. I won’t go into the details, but as I stood talking to everybody I saw most of the faces soften slightly. I asked if Sophia had just smiled and they said in unison ‘yes!’. I then asked, ‘if I stand here with a smiling Sophia will you say yes to anything?’ ‘Yes!’ they replied with joy! It’s not true, of course, but it was such a lovely moment!

Just getting to spend time with Sophia and Nathan. I love being away together.

Going to bed at 8.10pm. That was a good day.