Luminarium

Today we went down to the cathedral to see the luminarium that has been visiting Sheffield this week.

The light shining through the walls produced lots of lovely colours

and there was tranquil music playing in the background so it was really nice.

Levi said he enjoyed it but it was rather expensive for what it was.

Let there be light

My new house has good sized gardens front and back but the previous tenants filled them up with twelve trees, six of which were planted directly outside windows or so close to the house that they blocked out the light. Last night Craig and his son Ben chopped four of them down and drastically pruned another one so I can now see the sky from every window and the house is much lighter.

LDS youth

As the mother of a 13 year old boy I always worry about the different influences around my son. When I see things like this I'm reminded how blessed we are to be in the church.

Theo turns 18

18 years ago Theo came into the world. He weighed 8lb 9oz, he was 56cm long, he had a full head of red hair and he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

It never occurred to me that he might have red hair but I'm so glad he did. I hated my hair when I was a child. My mum used to tell me that it was beautiful and that people used to stop her in the street and say what lovely hair I had but I didn't believe her. Then I had Theo. When we were still at the hospital I came back into the room after having a shower to find all the midwives standing round his cot saying how beautiful he was. He got the same reaction from all the visitors that came to the ward. When I started taking him out in his pram it was a nightmare, it used to take me so long to get anywhere because everyone kept stopping me to say how lovely he was.

Being a single parent at 17 wasn't easy and we've had our ups and downs over the years but if I had the chance I probably wouldn't change a thing. Anyway I decided to mark his birthday by sharing some of my photos of Theo from birth to aged 18.

You'll have to excuse the quality of some of these pictures as they are proper photographs (They didn't have digital cameras when you were born Theo) I wanted to scan them but for some reason my scanner won't work today so I've taken a photo of the photo.

He was about 7 months old in this photo. He loved the sound of Granddad's drums and used to sleep soundly next to him when he was playing. As soon as he was old enough he'd sit on his lap and have a go with the sticks.

This was taken at his first birthday party.

He loved this rocking horse.

He used to wake up every morning, take all his clothes off and put on his Postman Pat mac.

Opening presents on his second birthday.

Playing dress up aged 3 and a half.

Preschool Christmas show.

They sang a song with actions -

I'm a little snowman short and fat,
Here's my pipe and here's my hat,
Count my buttons one two three,
Won't you sing along with me.

I remember this song so well because as he got up to sing the song one of his buttons fell off. As he sang one two three he was supposed to point to each button. He sang one two and spent the rest of the song looking for button number three. As you can imagine everyone was in stitches.

This was the miniature garden contest at the summer fair. Somebody mixed the labels up so although Theo's garden won they gave the prize to someone else.

He was always such a good brother to Levi when he was younger.

He was about 6 in this picture. He used to spend hours making things at his little desk at the top of the stairs. In this photo he's made himself a sword, a gun, a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and a hat.

Theo with Elder Copeland on the day he got baptized.

With his best friend Killian doing some fencing.

Theo being thrashed at skittles.

On the train coming back from London.

Playing guitar with Gonk.

This was the Scout pioneering competition at the Butchers Coppice fun day. They gave each group a collection of poles, lengths of rope and a picture of what they had to make. Theo had his structure built before the other teams had even worked out how to start so his team won first prize.

This was taken at the Thai fair in Boscombe.

Cataloging his rock collection.

Theo being an accident victim so we could teach the Beavers to do first aid.

Theo's first band playing at the Rendezvous festival in Bournemouth.

This is one of my favourite pictures of Theo.

This is one of my worst pictures of Theo (He probably won't think pulling that face was so funny when he sees this).

His first shave.

Leaving home with Mr Badger.

Unfortunately Theo developed an interest in dead things. His room was full of dead bugs, frogs, bones, skulls and fossils. At 13 he became the youngest member of Bournemouth Natural Science Society and they very kindly gave him this taxidermied badger. I was very glad when he took it to his new home.