Maddie (my 3yr old niece) has come to stay tonight! I painted her toenails and fingernails, we read stories, she used my bath confetti, drank milk and ate chocolate on the sofa and snuggled up in bed to more stories and songs. I had to take the clock out of the room because it was too noisy and change the light because it was buzzing. She wouldn’t go to sleep unless I stayed with her. She fell asleep just after 9pm.

I’m sleeping on the floor next to her so lets hope she doesn’t fall out in the middle of the night! I’m hoping I don’t sneeze and wake her up. Also hoping she has a lie in in the morning…not expecting much though!

Last night Lois stayed over and we had a proper girlie sleepover. It was wonderful! I loved chatting and giggling with her…she totally understands me, its great! She went at 9am this morning and then I’ve had a bit of a lazy day. Went to visit my nan in Braintree and then off to meet Tim at Costa. We haven’t seen each other in probably a year and it was great to catch up and talk about anything and everything!

I miss having conversations with friends outside of Viz. Especially talking about Jesus and Church and opinions on things. I guess I get a bit wrapped up in Viz and everyone there…it’s really good to talk to people out of the bubble!

Tags: Costa, Lois, Maddie, Sleepover, Tim

Ambergate was brilliant!! The kids were just amazing, so friendly and just wanted to do anything to help you. They absolutely loved having us there and wanted to spend time talking to us. We saw everyone for at least 4 lessons so got to know them quite well. They all saw Abi, the year 10s and 11s being particularly vocal during the play! We did a gig for them today before lunch, about 40 of them squashed into the room, got pretty hot in there! They got involved and had a really good time and a lot of them gave us letters after which was really sweet, I’ll put up some highlights from them later.

We had lunch (the dinner lady was the best ever because each day she saved me a small bowl of salad without onion in!) with the kids and then packed down all of our gear, finally sweeping up and leaving just after 3. Then for our daily visit to Asda (I bought some new boots yesterday) and a Vanilla Latte in Costa.

Tonight we were at the youth group in Grantham Baptist, playing some games and doing a condensed version of our Values Lesson. Tomorrow we are running a Check It Out group in the morning and then heading to Nottingham for a chill out!

Tags: All About Abi, Ambergate Sports College, Asda, Costa, Gig, Grantham Baptist, New Boots, Values Lesson, Vanilla Latte, Youth Group

The idea was that I was arranging a team trip to the cinema to see Fame. One of those occasions where you mention it and everyone’s like ‘Yeah!!’ and then the excuses come in when it actually comes to it. (I’m totally usually one of those people!) So Saturday Me and Keel went to Chelmsford. It was crazy!! I forgot how much I hate town centres on a Saturday anyway, but there were loads of weird and wonderful things going on. Photos here: Street Diversions show a little bit of some of the things. There were some builders performing outside the old Woolworths which was quite good fun. So we wandered round a bit, I went to O2 to try and get my phone sorted, got a coffee from Costa (poor girl wasn’t having a good day!) and spent much of the afternoon in the park watching a sculpture which breathed fire and water! Went to see Fame at the cinema in the evening…hmmm. I was so excited, but actually left disappointed. I really enjoyed the film while it was happening…but when it finished I realised that nothing had actually happened, and they didn’t even do the song!

Sunday I went to LWCC again with Tricia, and really enjoyed it. They have custard creams at the end of the service…always a good thing! We had roast dinner and plum crumble…can’t remember the last time I had a roast and crumble, good times! By this point I had spent much of my time texting round people to try and organise some sort of gathering. So i headed off to Lake Meadows in Billericay, met Keel, Becca and Ben and we spent a couple of hours in the park. Ben climbed a tree…that was about the height of excitement. Then he went home and the three of us went for cranberry juice/J2O/Orange and Lemonade/Chips/Chocolate Fudge Cake/Pepsi/Coffee at Wetherspoons!

So overall I enjoyed my weekend. Now for rehearsals and preparations for Grantham. And we’re off bowling on Tuesday night.

www.85design.co.uk is now up and running. Very exciting!

Tags: Becca, Ben, Bowling, Chelmsford, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Costa, Custard Creams, Fame, Grantham, Keel, Lake Meadows, LWCC, Plum Crumble, Roast Dinner, Street Diversions, Woolworths