Good morning!

The sun is shining, the wind has dropped somewhat, and it looks like it might be a lovely day out there today!

We are off to chapel this morning, where I am leading a service based around All Saints' Sunday, and I am just finishing up preparing some of my "props" for the service - I have a thanksgiving tree, which is actually more of a twig, which I will take a photograph of later, when it is in full leaf.  The idea and the printables came from Ann Voskamp's A Holy Experience website, and I thought it would be perfect to use in my service.  It is also a fabulous idea to use at home.

Here's the photo, edited in tonight.  The congregation shared thanks and wrote them on their leaves.

The girls are back to school tomorrow, so there has been much scurrying about doing homework these past few days, and yesterday the YFG let me know she needed to read Act 1 Sc 2 of Romeo & Juliet, and where could she find a copy?  I don't have a copy, strangely enough - I can do King Lear, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream, but not the star-crossed lovers!  We had to go to the library, amid much muttering, where 30p bought us a photocopy of the necessary pages from a Complete Works.

There was also some not-quite weeping but almost last night as the YFG realised how much work she needs to do on her three piano pieces ahead of her Grade 2 exam on the 7th December!  There are some tricky bars in all of the pieces, and I think she plays the ones she can play and then stops when she gets to the ones she struggles with, and then goes back to the beginning, so I need to encourage her to Keep Going through the harder bars, so that she does actually play through them instead of stopping.....It's going to be a long month, I hope!

The EFG babysat for neighbours over the road last night, and came home with £25, so she was very pleased!  The going rate for babysitting has gone up drastically since I last did it as a teenager and she is finding that these particular neighbours are going out once every six weeks or so and supplementing her pocket money nicely at the moment - they have had long spells of not going out, when she thought the work had dried up completely, so she is quite pleased with their sociability at present!  It will help with her savings fund for uni if they carry on a while longer...

The dongle has signal right now so I am going to publish and hope to come back later with thoughts about our plans for the month, and my savings goals and aspirations......Hope you have a lovely day x