Wow, it's been a long time since my last post! Time has just flown. It's not that I haven't wanted to write on here but we just came into our busiest period at work and I am absolutely flat out from the moment I arrive in the morning until the minute I leave and so the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit at the computer, even if it's only for a short time.
I also received some extremely sad news about 5 weeks ago which has really made me reevaluate a lot of things that I do with my time and it made me realise the truly important things that I need to focus on, my home, my family and my friends.
A close friend of ours was diagnosed with ocular melanoma about 3 years ago. Unfortunately they had to take his whole eye in order to remove the cancer, but that wasn't so bad, he had a glass eye in it's place and everything was 'fine'. He started experiencing some chest pain recently and so went to the doctor and unfortunately found out that the cancer had returned and this time was in his lungs. Secondary cancer was a huge shock but something that was treatable, until they found out that he had 27 lesions on his lungs. Not good. And after further testing they have also found that he has the first stages of cancer in some of his bones also.
The news completely knocked my socks off. When I heard about it, the wind was simply knocked out of me in exactly the same way as it was when I found out that my mum had cancer. He's a happy go lucky kind of guy, has a heart of gold. He's my age, only 33 and has a little boy just three months older than Ella. I think that makes it harder for me to digest as well. It breaks my heart that he will not see him grow up. He has opted not to have any treatment at this point because it would mean that he cannot interact with his son the way that he wants to. An admirable, but again heart breaking, thing to hear.
That kind of news really makes you stop and think about life and what's important and I've been consciously focusing on those things alone.
This is what I've been up to:
Making lots of cakes! This was a wedding cake for a friend's brother. I really love making cakes, it's one of my passions and although it's hard to fit in the time to do it, I need to because it makes me happy.
After years and years of saying that I want to learn to play the guitar, I finally am! After picking up Tim's old electric guitar and learning a song on it, I decided to buy my own guitar. Happy to report that I am actually not bad at it considering I don't know the first thing about playing but YouTube has taught me a lot! And when Brian Adams sang "...played it til my fingers bled", he wasn't kidding! Ok, so my fingers haven't bled, but they blistered and peeled after the first day of playing for a few hours!
Spending lots of quality family time together. Not necessarily going places, but just being together and enjoying the simple things.
Spending time in the great outdoors! Fixing up our garden so we can enjoy it this summer.
Catching up with great friends instead of just saying "Let's catch up" and not actually doing it.
Tim and I have also have initiated a weekly "date night". We don't necessarily have to go somewhere but each saturday night we take turns in organising something or cooking a special dinner together so that we can spend meaningful time together, instead of just getting caught up in the hum drum of everyday life.
So, date night seems to be working wonders for our relationship! I found out two weeks ago that I am pregnant! Planned but still a surprise at the same time. All happened very quickly but we are over the moon. It's only very early days yet (I'm almost 7 weeks) but fingers crossed everything continues smoothly.
