Me and Mine - A Family Portrait Project June
I have never ever in 3 years been quite as dramatically late with my monthly Me and Mine post and it's a horrible feeling that has eaten away at me all week. The whole point of the Me and Mine posts is to nudge us all to capture a family moment and for us June has been full of them.
This week we've given Ollie an early birthday to remember, a whole weekend with almost all the people he loves and time stopped for everything else. So I hope my co hosts, who I have spectacularly let down this month, will forgive me for being so dreadfully behind.
It's like I have two worlds. One when I am in amongst the blogging community and then one I drive home from the station or from the motorway and weave my way down the country lanes and the world slows down. It's like having the best of everything, even if sometimes, like this month, blogging has meant more time with people than writing about people, if that makes any sense! I came home from a press day in London on Wednesday and felt giddy from seeing friendly faces, high from conversations that sparked a hundred ideas.
I've had some incredible experiences in the last few months. A weekend at Sisterhood with the most inspiring group of women I have ever had the pleasure of sitting around a camp fire with, a day with one of my absolute favourites and her new tiny Lucy at Blogtacular and an evening celebrating the amazingly talented people who continue to make blogging a profession to be proud of and the most remarkable hobby which connects ordinary people together in an extraordinary way. I may not have come home with an award at the Brilliance in Blogging Awards but I wouldn't have missed hearing my name called out and cheering for every single one of the bloggers illuminated on the big screen.
Each of those times deserves to be written about so for my Me and Mine I wanted to share a special day from June, when our sleepy village became washed in red, white and blue.
There's a lot of love for the Royals in this village, especially for Her Majesty. We had commemorative mugs, bunting that's been stored in garages and lofts since the Royal wedding and the 80th Birthday celebrations. As you drove through you couldn't help but be washed in a wave of patriotism and absolute pride for the collective spirit of a community. Flowers grown in gardens for the small glass jars on the tables, china plates bursting with cup cakes and generous smears of clotted cream sandwiched between pastry and strawberries.
In cities, in schools, in churches, in sports centres and in streets there was this incredible sense of belonging and togetherness. The exact same feeling I have when I stand in a room of bloggers.
Here are mine. My two little kings who lap up everything life has to offer them. On Thursday they break up for the summer and as much as I imagined I would be dreading it, I actually can't wait for them to have a rest. Ollie is falling asleep in the car on the way home and although he's grown up so much since starting school, he's still so small when I look back at his nodding head and droopy mouth in the car seat, snoring away. I want them to have the carefree school holidays you read about in Enid Blyton books. To pack picnics, ride bikes, see friends, go to bed with grass stained feet.
I feel like I don't see them. Everyday is a race against the clock, a battle to get dressed, frustrations over school socks that ruck up in their scuffed black shoes that are destined for the bin on Thursday evening! To give them later bedtimes, pj days and ice creams that melt down their wrists. Well, if we get any sun that is!
We have booked a special family holiday and leave on Saturday for a week in Rhodes with Mark Warner. We loved it so much last year, felt totally spoilt and honoured representing them as family ambassadors with a week in Kos at the Lakitira resort, that we booked to go this year in an unofficial capacity!
Time is the most precious thing we have. I listened to Lisa Congdon speak at Blogtacular and felt like she was talking just to me. She had this incredible way of resonating with the whole room and hearing how her success story had times of great stress on her relationships, her health made me realise that it's more important to keep in mind the reason we work and blog and take a moment to breathe when you need one. That you can get on and off this crazy ride, without a fear of slipping off a hamster wheel and not being able to get back on.
Take time to live well.
Happy July everyone, we are ready for the next adventure!