MIA again

I have just looked back at my blog and it appears that I have been missing in action again for well over 2 weeks.  Time flies when you are having fun!  Time flies when you are busy too but I have had some fun along the way.    So where to begin with my update?  You know me, I won't possibly be able to remember the whole 2 weeks.

I guess Jackson is a good starting point as my last blog was about him being back in the NICU.  He is now 5 weeks old.  Incredible.  Of course he wasn't even due to be born for another 5 weeks yet.  He is doing really, really well now.  He was moved out of NICU last week on to SCBU.  He is now out of his incubator and just in a "hot cot" which they are turning down day by day.  He only has 2 wires now, a heart monitor and a temperature  monitor.  He still has his feeding tube although he does now have a sucking reflex and is beginning to feed from Mummy.  It is slow progress as he finds it hard to suck and breath at the same time. He weighs 4lbs now. All his test results are now fine. The heart specialist is pleased with him.

Here are the latest photos of our little guy.

These next 2 were just taken yesterday.

Last week was the school half term break in Lincolnshire.  As always it was really busy.  Simon spent one complete day moving cars around.  His truck has gone to someone to do some work that for some reason he can't do. His dragster is now residing in the garage. We had dentist appointments, several meals out, a day in Lincoln,  an evening out with staff from the old Walton school, a trip to Stevenage to collect my Dad, then to Stamford station to collect Saskia. We had a day in Leicester at the fabric shop, lots of kennel visits and we saw lots of the grandchildren. It was busy.

Alfie had a day at the vets for more scans and X-rays.The good news is that his very large bladder stone has broken down into much small pieces and they were able to get some of them out. He has been given more tablets which should hasten the process. The bad news was his arthritis is looking pretty bad. More bad news was received in a letter........our insurance will not cover the cost of his very, very expensive prescription food.

I am sure I have missed stuff out.  I don't seem to have any photos though.  How about one of Alfie the evening he got back from the Vet.  He is still very drugged up.

Here is a  recent one of my 2 gorgeous boys.

Photo blatantly stolen from Coralie's Facebook page!

We had a good few days with my Dad. He saw 4 of his great grandchildren and he enjoyed that. He came and had a cup of tea at the dog rescue kennels and he got to see Jenson the Dalmatian.  He took a walk down to our village church and lit a candle for my Mum.  That seems to have become a regular thing when he visits here.  I'm not sure why as he doesn't do that anywhere else. On Sunday we took him to Leicester to the Fabric Guild.  He has wanted to go for ages. He is really into his sewing now.  He has made me 4 tote bags for the fund raiser for the doggies and also this table runner for me.  He has made a good job of it.

The Fabric Guild was disappointing.  They had a sale on, which was good but they had less than a quarter of the stock that they would normally have.  Also I thought they closed at 2pm and they close at 1pm so we only had about 40 minutes there.  It was a good job that we had combined it with taking Saskia home otherwise it would have been very annoying.  My Dad still thought it was a fantastic place and I still managed to spend lots of money!

We had some good news on Sunday evening.  My niece Carly has just had her first baby.  A little girl named Annabelle Iris. Both are doing well.  My Dad was so thrilled.  He especially liked that she has Iris in her name as that was Mum's name.  He can't wait to see her.  He now has 6 great grandchildren, 3 boys and 3 girls. She is my sisters first grandchild so they are all very excited.

Simon took my Dad home yesterday and he is now back at school so peace and quiet is here again.  I will probably be spending the next few days getting the house back to normal.  It deteriorates rapidly when Simon is on holiday!  I get out of my routine.

Today, I have washing, ironing, cleaning etc, etc. Hopefully I will find some sewing time too.  I have done lots of sewing the last few weeks and will do a show and tell soon.  Right now, I am having a coffee  before hoovering my bedroom.  Our lovely cuddle arm chair is being delivered this morning.

Well my coffee is finished so I suppose it is time to move myself into gear.

Sempringham Church

My blog on grave cleaning on Monday reminded me of another church that we visited back in the summer.  It is called St Andrew's, Sempringham and we found it by accident.  We were just coming back from somewhere, I forget where now, when we saw signs to this church.  It is  not too far from us. Just past the village of  Pointon and before you reach Billingborough.  Sempringham was a hamlet that was mentioned in the Doomsday book.

Anyway we saw an old sign pointing up a track seemingly into a field which said Sempringhma church and something about a princess. We were intrigued as there was no sign of a church. We decided to investigate so headed up the bumpy track. Once around the first bend we caught our first glimpse of a church in the distance. It is the most lovely place. It is actually nearly 1 mile along this track before you arrive at the church. It is an idyllic spot, so peaceful. It is surrounded by fields. I have posted a Google map on Google Plus which will show you the location.

This is part of the track.

The church is the church of St Andrew and it is a Norman church. It is built adjacent to the site of the old St Mary's Priory founded by the crippled priest St. Gilbert in about 1139 The priory was destroyed in 1558. The church was originally larger but a Norman chancel and transept were taken down in 1788 after becoming dilapidated, leaving the tower unusually at the east end of the building. A priest's door was also removed and in 1899, the arch was returned and incorporated into a new porch that was designed to protect the original Norman door, a project that was carried out to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. It is a very pretty church. Unfortunately we were unable to get inside. They do have a service there about once a month and it is also possible to arrange to meet someone there with the key so you can see inside. We had planned to do that but I guess it is something for next year now.

The other claim to fame is the link to the mediaeval Princess Gwenllian, daughter of Llewellyn, the last true-born Prince of Wales, and the only grand-daughter of Simon de Montfort. She was held captive here for more than half a century. Gwenllian was born at Abergwyngregyn in Wales on 12th June 1282 but when she was only 17 months old, Edward 1, fearing that she was a threat to himself, wrote to the prior and prioress at Sempringham, the Gilbertian Abbey asking them to admit her to the order and habit.

Gwenllian died on 7th June 1337 after 54 years of virtual imprisonment by the order.

In 1993 a stone and slate memorial was erected as a tribute to the princess. It was financed by the Princess Gwenllian Society of Wales. Apparently it is regularly visited by Welsh pilgrims and was even blessed by the Bishop of Bangor.

The history of this place is just amazing. Trying to picture it back in the days of the imprisoned princess is hard. It would have been very isolated back then. As we stood looking up at it and then looking round at the surrounding countryside we tried to imagine the lives of the people that would have worshipped there. Imagine..... they had to trudge over a mile from the main road along a dirt track in all weathers. Probably a lot further as there is little housing nearby. Amazing.

Phyllis and Cindy you would just love this place.

Ok, off to do some jobs now.

Grave cleaning

OK, so after yesterdays quite negative blog ( those outlaws do wind me up!) I thought that I would post some stuff  from back in the summer. Strangely it actually relates to Simon's family.  These are his ancestors though so nowhere near as irritating to me as his current family.  I didn't have the "pleasure" of meeting these!

His ancestors on his fathers side came form Horbling and Billingborough which are villages just up the road from us. How odd is that?  We end up living in the same area as they did. Horbling and Billingborough are both quite nice villages.  We visited them many years ago when I first started out on the family history trail.   In fact, we have lovely memories of that first occasion when it was our son Samuel who found the first "Glenn" grave.  I vividly remember him jumping up and down and yelling across the grave yard that he had found a Glenn!  He was more or less dancing on the grave!

Since then we have visited the churchyard several times.  We went back again earlier this year as we are now so close.  The graves had deteriorated quite a lot so we made a vow that we would go back in the summer and clean them up.  We had to wait for a rain free day but we did eventually make it there with bottles of water, a pile of rags and some brushes. We went to Horbling church first which has the most Glenn graves.

We spent several hours  cleaning up and they looked so much better when we had finished.  We even found 2 new Glenn graves which we had never found on previous visits.  While Simon was cleaning I was just kind of kicking around and as I did so I uncovered what I thought was a GL.....  I got Simon to come and clean and hey presto... 2 more Glenn's.  They were grave stones that had fallen over and so were pretty much covered up. It is a shame that they can't be re-erected. Still we did our best to clean and preserve what was there which seems important somehow.

While Simon was doing more cleaning I had a wander around and came across a strange sight.  It was a fresh grave of about a week old.  It was a 15 year old boy and in fact we remembered reading about his death in the local paper.  He had died in a motorcycle accident even though he was not old enough to legally ride a bike.  What was odd was that amongst the flowers was a really large teddy bear, about 3 foot tall.  The teddy had a giant cigarette in one had.  I don't mean a real cigarette.. it was all part of the toy.  Very odd.  The teddy also had a bottle of beer in it's other hand.  It didn't seem at all appropriate for the grave of a 15 year old lad who had died in a bike accident.

Anyway, here are some of the Glenn graves.

After we had finished cleaning we went to the vicarage to ask for the key so that we could go inside the church.  That was something we hadn't done before.   It is a lovely church,  really interesting..  There are graves inside that date back to the mid 1600's.   I do quite like old churches.  They have an atmosphere. I guess it is the centuries of history.  There is some nice stained glass at Horbling church too.

 Churches and Cathedrals are the only place where I like and can appreciate stained glass.  I do not like it anywhere else.  I really do not like modern stained glass. Simon's mother rather fancies herself as a stained glass artist and once gave us a circular piece in red, blue and yellow.  It was pretty revolting.  However it hung in our upstairs landing window for years before we moved.  Somehow it seems to have got lost.  I think it was never taken down from that window and therefore got left behind.  I certainly never took it down and Simon can't remember.  How lucky is that?  Since we moved here she has presented us with yet another bit which is of trees.  In other words modern.  Just the kind I hate.  I didn't want that adorning my house so Simon has it in his garage which is fine by me.

Back to the grave cleaning.... once we had finished at Horbling we moved on to Billingborough.  The villages of Horbling and Billingborough more or less run into each other and I think they did even 200 years ago.  The Glenn's originate form Horbling but there are several buried at Billingborough and in fact we know that one of them was the school master at the village school too.  We spent the rest of that day cleaning up the graves at Billingborough church.  We were unable to go inside there so that is something for another time.

I hope that you enjoy looking at the photos. They remind me of one of the better days of the summer. A day without rain!  If any of you are interested in your family history and have ancestors from this area then I would be quite happy to check things out for you.  We are able to visit churches and grave yards in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and probably other counties too.  Just let me know if you need some information  or have a church that you would like us to visit and explore on your behalf.

Memories of summer past

Today is horrid.  AGAIN.  Yesterday it was cold and it poured with heavy rain all day.  Today it is even colder and the rain is still falling.  I need to go into hibernation.  Many areas of our country are flooded again.  There seems to be a pattern emerging here.  Around the last 8 summers have been terrible.  Each year as spring dawns I am hoping desperately that lovely warm, sunny days lie ahead. I have been wrong.  In fact the last  few years have just been getting progressively worse.  This year summer was non existent.  The last few winters have been harsh.  The rain just seems to go on and on.  I fear that this is the way it is going to be from now on.  I don't do cold.  I am a summer girl. This is the rain on my window.

Anyway to cheer us all up I thought I would post some photos of a picnic we had back in the summer.  I never got around to posting these ones.  We did manage to fit in several family picnics in between the rain and this one was at Ferry Meadows in Peterborough.  It was just the family members that live locally.

Don't you just love those last two?  Evan went first and Flynn copied him.  monkey see, monkey do!

Now winter is pretty much here and we have got all this rain my garden is looking sad and bedraggled. here is another summer memory.  The lilies that were in a pot by my front door.

Just gorgeous.  And the best thing of all?  They will come back again next summer.