New is our Word of the Week

Yes, we are giving ourselves the chance to have a go again, all shiny and new. Happy New Year by the way. We sincerely hope that 2025 will give you the chance to put your best foot forward, whatever you have to face. I feel great to have survived 2024. It was a very mixed year for us and our family. It started with Jo getting a job and starting in March to end the year losing one of our sisters. Undoubtedly, it was one of our most expensive years to date. But you know us, the glass is always half full.

I haven’t written a blog post in a good while, except about 3 weeks ago when I wrote about preparing the eulogy for my sister. So I’ll back up a bit and take you up to the present time.

At the time of preparing the eulogy, I had prepared to go up alone and read it. At the church, when it was my turn in the beautiful church ceremony, I walked up quite confident that I could present it. For the most part, it went well, recounting my sister’s life. Well, until the point where I was recalling the last day or two of her life… I was overcome with emotions and the tears flowed! Luckily, Leisa saw what was happening and jumped up to my rescue.

Like I said, the funeral in my opinion was simple and beautiful. The New Testament church pastor and leaders were very friendly and accommodating. They met with us just before the funeral and talked us through what to expect not just on the day, but in the days, months, and years to come. They tried to prepare us to prepare ourselves for life without our sister. That meeting for me was a very nice touch, and we let them know.

It was ‘nice’ to see a lot of faces that we hadn’t seen in many years. But most of all we are so touched and grateful to our cousins and uncles who still live in Jamaica! They did all the running around and on-the-ground preparations that needed to be done before we even got to Jamaica. I met a sister for the first time too, and that was interesting.

My sister’s favourite colour is blue so most of us wore blue. She also didn’t like to wear high-heeled shoes so we all went with flat shoes, mostly trainers.

After the busy hectic days in our family home, we went to the beach the following day (our birthday) for a well-deserved break where we could relax a bit. It was one of the nicest days for me. The memories of the funeral and the preparations for laying Jackie to rest were with us but for some reason we all found it relaxing to sit on the beach and chat, watch the kids play, eat ice cream, and talk about not only old times but also the plans for the future.

It’s been two weeks now since the funeral and we are back home (straight back to work the day after we arrived) getting on with things. Thankfully we had bought all the things except veggies that we needed for the New Year’s Dinner before we went to Jamaica. So we had our usual Feast on New years day. It was particularly nice especially as we had missed a proper Christmas dinner. We had stayed in an Air B n B for Christmas day and that just wasn’t doable. That was new for us as we usually prepare a big feast for Christmas day.

So what else is new? We have a new pastor at our local church. We haven’t yet met him in this capacity but we like that he likes children and likes getting them involved. That’s one of our passion too. Another ‘new’ thing was that we opened our Christmas and birthday gifts after Christmas when we got back to the UK. We also went bowling with two children from church who also celebrated their birthday in December. It was very nice and I enjoyed it a lot.

This year, for us, no new resolutions as such but I personally want to be more mindful of how I interact with others. I want to be real and not have to hide how I feel or think. So often I try to soften the ‘blow’ for others while I am dying inside! We’ll see how that goes.

Oh, today I also won £100 on the monthly NS&I draw! I haven’t won in a long time so that’s like new for me. If you are in the UK and don’t have an NS&I account, I can’t think of why. Can you? Leisa won £25 this month.

We are also thinking of making this year a no-spend year. This is where we spend money only on what is necessary. No frivolous spending, no overseas trips, and all that. Our breaks will most likely be local and very local in fact. We need to build up our savings as we have spent quite a lot in the past 2 months or so.

Finally, we want to say that we really do appreciate Anne who blogs at Raisiebay.com and who allows us to participate in this linky. Thanks to the other lovely ladies who also participate and thanks to our readers who have sent us some really kind messages here and on YouTube. We appreciate you all and hope we can get back into the routine of blogging now that the New Year has begun.