Plane Spotting In Cheadle

We've had a fairly hectic time in our first full week back in Blighty. After all going down with various illnesses, we then had to hotfoot it to central London for our 5 yearly tropical medicals. This took 3 hours for the whole family - deep joy! - and at one point involved trying to get a urine sample from Eli and having 2 nurses injecting the boys with 2 different vaccines at the same time in each arm. This was not nice, and unfortunately, has to happen twice more before our return!

We have had 2 interesting church visits. Unfortunately, Paula and Joel had to miss the first as Joel was so unwell, but Dean enjoyed it and felt that he was able to share well about our work in CNP. Yesterday's visit was St. Nicholas' in Burton On The Wirral. We had a really good visit and were encouraged by the level of interest shown in our work and the request for more information. The morning started disastrously as we were following directions from the AA Routefinder and they were complete rubbish! Eventually we ended up in Wales (at that point the service had been going for 5 minutes!), it was at this point that we both began laughing hysterically. Thankfully we found the church about 10 minutes later so were able to sneak in. Once settled, the boys had a fight which wasn't a great introduction. All in all this was a good visit and we really enjoyed meeting some new friends from one of our link churches.

We are enjoying housesitting in Cheadle this week. Joel is especially enjoying it as we are under the flight path for Manchester airport, so every 2 mins he is greeted by a jet. The novelty is not wearing off!! This morning Paula decided to start schooling Joel in earnest.... we decided on Mrs Muddle as her 'teacher name' and this seemed to go down well. She now has a new appreciation for his class teacher!!

This week is going to involve some serious family time, as we don't seem to have had much of this lately. We are also seeing several sets of old friends and are hosting an open house on Thursday evening. If you are in or near the Cheadle area, please do get in touch about this. The weekend is going to be very busy with 2 church visits on Sunday including preaching and presentations.




Joel on the top of a double decker bus


Eli gets some woodwork lessons from John..


..and thoroughly enjoys himself!


Joel in paradise, watching Charlie & Lola whilst playing with his castle at Grandad's


Enjoying breakfast at John & Tricia's (where we're house-sitting)