Badge testing at gymnastics!  11 challenges of which the granddaughter had to complete 8 to qualify for her first certificate and coveted badge. She had listened really carefully to the instructions, practised at home and warmed up enthusiastically so she was ready and prepared. I watched as one by one she did her stuff on…

At a recent prayer meeting, someone said that a better translation for the word ‘love’ in John 3:16 would be ‘cherish’. I only have a smattering of knowledge of Biblical Greek so I can’t be sure of the accuracy of the translation but I do know that when I substituted ‘cherish’ for ‘love’ in that…

You may remember a few weeks ago I explained how Granddaughter senior would be attending a gymnastics trial. She loved it. The coaches were all very young (a sign of my age!) and very patient. She moved from activity to activity under their watch and gentle guidance. When we collected her for her second session,…

I went to a meeting at the weekend about Christians from different denominations and churches working together. It was an amazing experience and very challenging and encouraging to learn about other places in the country and the world where things are changing for the better because Christians are pooling their resources and helping each other…

Tomorrow will be a whole new experience as granddaughter senior goes to a trial gymnastics session. She has been obsessed with bouncing and being upside down for some time now. For her birthday she had a beam screwed into her bedroom floor to enable her to twist and twiddle round it. I’ve never really understood…

Back after the Christmas break, the Mothers and Toddlers group were making calendars.  Granddaughter hastily and clumsily donned a plastic apron, scrambled onto the dauntingly high adult chair and surveyed the scene on the table. She gleamed over to me with a look that said “Really Grandma? Accessible plates of coloured paint? Are you sure…

I’m not a great fan of fireworks but this year we started to hear bangs and squeals just before midnight and opened the bedroom window to an amazing display from as far as we could see in all directions. For the best part of thirty minutes we watched sparkles and colours and heard explosions and…

As we left the Mothers’ and Toddlers’ Christmas party, my granddaughter, strapped in her buggy, was given a purple balloon to take home. How she loved this purple balloon! ‘Purple’ being the latest word and concept added to her vocabulary, she hugged it to herself so tightly I thought it might burst. It had a…

I’ve just returned home from the final Mothers and Toddlers meeting for the year – the Christmas Party. Our little ones watched puppets telling the Nativity story, had a lovely selection of finger foods to eat and sang Christmas songs. They had done a mini tour of the Church looking at the various Christmas displays…

For about six months now, I’ve been taking my granddaughter to Mothers and toddlers on a Wednesday afternoon. I remember the first time we went through the doors of the hall and I tried to get her to come out of the security of her buggy. She shook her head vigorously and turned with her…