Just Five Days... home alone

It's a Bank Holiday for everyone today, but for me it's the first day of two whole weeks' holiday!  I love my job of course, but I'm ready for a break. 

Mick and Alice left at 5am yesterday and headed for Exeter airport and then to Lourdes in southern France with HCPT group 179.  They take a group of children with special needs every Easter.  The trip is life-changing... and not just for the children! 

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying a life-changing day home alone. 

I started with a 6am walk - Sidmouth is an amazingly beautiful place to live.  A glimpse of a big red sun as I turned down a previously unexplored footpath took my breath away.  A bit further on and the view over the cliffs and sea was even more beautiful.  I love this place.

 

On Friday I'm off to Norfolk for the annual Family Do, this year (our 17th) will be afloat on the Broads.  It's the first time I'll have been without Mick and I'm missing him already! 

Meanwhile, I'm beginning to prepare for my five days' Living Below the Line livebelowtheline.org.uk - I've weighed out my usual serving of porage oats and currants and am now contemplating if I can afford to add the fruit or whether I'll need to save the 4p for butter on my toast.  One of my sponsors has suggested I keep a blog so I'll do just that... watch this space!

Naughty by Nature

Mrs Goode started it, calling me Mrs Norty and telling the children in Reception that was my name.  Much later, long after my new name had stuck and even my husband was calling himself Mr Norty, I realised it's actually quite an appropriate name.  I am naughty, we all are.  That's our nature. 

I don't work at the infants school now, but now and again I still like to call myself Mrs Norty.  It reminds me of my natural naughtiness.  Reminds me that the God who created the universe and knows me inside out, the same God who put a towel around his waist and washed his disciples feet, is the same God who chose to die to save me from my sinful nature.

Norty by name, naughty by nature, forgiven by grace... humbling!