The House of Roses

There is a house on the edge of Leeds, where roses frame the front door. In fact there are probably many such houses, but those other ones don’t mean nearly as much to me as this one does, even though the roses were at first on the verge of dying. Also lining the garden are a wide variety of flowers, but my favourites are the blackberry bushes which are currently heavy with fruit. They, and the greenhouse in the back are the beginning of a new hobby.

We have lived in this house for almost a month now, and still haven’t got over how much we love it and the surrounding area. We love having so much space, especially when it comes to throwing around our increasingly hysterical baby boy in the living room. He isn’t crawling just yet, but has already managed to get up to all sorts of mischief like pulling a small piece of furniture onto himself (no tears, and no harm done though!) and poking Bandit the rabbit in the eye when grabbing a handful of his head. Luckily, Bandit if anything seems to really like Josiah, and often hops up to him when we have him in the living room. We have also been enjoying exploring our surroundings, and I am glad to say I am again discovering my love for the countryside. Not that I would really call this area countryside, as it is very suburban and there is a lot of litter caused by irresponsible youths, but it is still a huge joy to see horses on the walk to the village centre. In fact, I love it so much that I’m going horse riding on Wednesday (YES!!!!!!). I’m also planning on taking Mark and Josiah on a nature walk soon to find out what sort of native plants and insects are in the area. It may take some persuasion.

Josiah is still growing at a very fast pace…you can tell just from his hair, which to me seems to currently resemble the top of a leek. It sticks straight up and is still white blonde. He is also still very tall… In fact when I took him to the doctors the other day she asked if his Dad was tall. I said not particularly, so she then asked how tall the postman was. While rather amused, I wasn’t very impressed.

I think it took Zi a while to get used to England. At first he grizzled a lot while out in his pram. I think he hated the freezing wind and having to be behind plastic when it rained. He never used to cry in his pram with the sun beating down on him. Luckily it’s finally acting like summer, and Josiah seems much more used to the walk past the church instead of the monastery. It wont be long before he is toddling down to the park holding my hand rather than sitting in his pram.

Since we have been home we have been able to take part in a lot of events where we have rekindled old friendships and spent time with family. I won’t go on about all of them, but today I will mention two. The first is the blessing of a new niece on Mark’s side. The first thing that struck me was the volume of the singing in the meeting. It was beautiful, and then I realised that a large proportion of those at the meeting were family members attending the blessing, and a lot of these were children. It’s kind of hard to describe, but it was at that moment that I really felt part of something big in Marks family. Something very special. I got the same feeling when I spent a morning in the temple with some of my family, doing baptisms and work for dead ancestors. I had the opportunity to act for my Nans sister, who spent most of her life separated from her family in a mental home. She lived for 70 years there, probably without receiving any visitors from family or friends. But now I was able to help bring them together again, in the life after this.

I love the temple, and I hope to bring a little of what I feel there into this new home. I am hoping it will be a place that will bring out the best in us. A home where people will feel welcome and loved, and where we will continue to delight in family life.