The iLee Bird Gets The Worm

I'm not wasting Christmas Day writing a huge long post, but I did want to wish you all a wonderfully Merry Christmas!!
And an equally wonderful, and even happier New Year!!!
Enjoy 2006 everyone, it's going to be the best year of your life!!

One particular Christmas season a long time ago, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip ... but there were problems everywhere.

Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule. Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her mom was coming to visit.
This stressed Santa even more. When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More stress. Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys. Needless to say Santa wasn't in the best mood.

Just then the doorbell rang and Santa went to the door expecting another problem. He opened the door and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree there just to cheer Santa up.

The angel said, very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas Santa. Isn't it just a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Isn't it just a lovely tree? Where would you like me to stick it?"

Thus began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

Well, we're half way from Wales to Canada, and by half way I mean we're in London. Well, it's kind of 'half way' because we've finished one flight and have one to go, sure the first flight was 30 minutes and the second one is 7 hours, but that's just semantics!



I write this from the comfort of the first class lounge, that's right, free peanuts, crisps, muffins, coco cola and any alcohol I want!!

Technically we shouldn't be here, but the nice lady on the door was in the Christmas mood and said we could come in anyway! Yay for Christmas cheer!

So I'm sat here, spread out on a leather couch, with Sarah sat across from me, feet up reading a book, and I'm people watching. What kind of person frequents lounges such as this?

In front of me is an Asian businessman, he's about my age but he's busy typing away on his Sony Vaio, apart from that he looks stylish, nice watch, nice shirt. I want to invent stories for these people, so I've decided this man commutes from Beijing, he's probably heading to some high powered business meeting first thing in the morning, then he'll be right back on the first plane to London and back to his desk in their London office.

Behind me are two Middle Eastern men, one looks a little like Said from Lost, the other is more like Hugo. Perhaps they're terrorists, heading back to Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere like that following their reconnaissance mission in London, but more likely they're heading home for Christmas.

Further across are a clearly 'well to do' family. They always travel first class. The Mother is all prim and proper, nicely middle aged and nicely turned out. The Father has had one too many mince pies already this Christmas, but is clearly enjoying the free food this lounge has to offer. They have three children, the eldest, a son, sits with his shirt sleeves rolled up, looking very much like Prince William, he's probably a good friend. The middle child is a girl, but clearly an 'it' girl in the making, wearing her designer jeans and neck scarf (even though we're indoors), clearly she knows what she wants and Daddy makes sure she gets it. I overheard her complaining about drinking water out of a plastic cup and how disgusting that was, I'm not sure why she was complaining about that, there isn't a plastic cup in sight. The youngest son is a smaller version of his big brother (what younger brother isn't?), he wants to be older than he is, but he's too short to look it. This family are probably heading somewhere warm, probably a swanky 5 star hotel in the Maldives, no boring, cold, London Christmas for them.

Things are quieting down now, some flights have been called and people are leaving. There's not many people to watch now.

The only disappointment of this lounge is the lack of free internet access. While I write this to you from the seclusion of the first class lounge, alas I can only post it when I reach Canada. I think this must be the only first class lounge in the world that makes you pay to use the internet.

All that remains is for me to head back to the free bar and get some more food and perhaps another glass of wine. my excuse is it'll help me sleep on the plane, and I'm sticking to it! I haven't tried the toilets yet, I wonder if they're like the regualr loos or if they have gold seats or silk toilet paper?


*Update*



I'm now in Canada, the land of Tim Hortons coffee and snow, it'll be my second white Christmas in a row, cool!!

This blog is in 2 parts, the first is...
We've moved into our house at long last! Yay!



We finally got the keys on Friday, with a bit of help I had all our stuff (including what furniture we've been able to accumulate) all moved in.
By the end of Saturday we'd unpacked everything too.
I now realise just how much more stuff we need to fill this house, it's so bare at the moment!
But at least we're in and we can start making it feel like home.
Well, until Tuesday anyway, then we get a holiday to Canada, we can't wait! So we'll be putting the house on hold and going away. Everything we need will be cheaper in the January sales anyway, so this helps keep me restrained.

The second 'done it' is...
The Christmas Tale! Yay!



We performed our Christmas musical on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
It wasn't quite to packed houses, which was a shame, but there were still lots of people there, and lots were impacted by the message, so that's what matters!
We did a preview show the Sunday before for the church, and they were all supportive and encouraging, but when we stepped out on Thurday night we were hit by a wall of resistance, it was horrible.
But once we'd come to terms with that, we began to break through, it was great to see the people warming to us as the show went on.
Some people actually thought we were a professional troupe hired in especially for the production!
I'll be posting a video of the production as soon as I have chance to edit it, we had a couple of cameras running so hopefully it'll look pretty good once I mix them together.
The feedback we received from everyone was fantastic, the only problem we'll have now is topping this next Christmas!!

On Friday Sarah and I will FINALLY get the keys to our new house!!
I paid the deposit today, so now I'm officially skint again, I enjoyed having that money in my bank, it looked so good every time I read a statement, but now it's all gone.

Still, it's totally worth it, we have a house!!

The first job will be giving the place a good clean, the previous owner had a cat so I need to get all the cat hair out of there before it drives me nuts.

Then I have to start moving the furniture in. We have bought a lot of stuff online already, it's sat at the caravan park, just ready to move in. We don't have our sofa's yet, we've ordered them, and Marks & Spencer said delivery would be before Christmas, but don't believe anything they say! I got the confirmation back the day after paying for them saying they'll deliver by the end of January! Ggrr to you M&S!!

Still, it doesn't matter too much, we'll (hopefully) be winging our way to Canada on Tuesday and we won't be back until after Christmas!!
Sarah's visa has finally been approved and her passport is currently winging it's way back to us. It should arrive tomorrow.
So, all being well, it'ss get here in plenty of time and we'll be flying next week. So we only have a few days to get the house organised.
The rest can wait until we get back.

I've spent most of the evening putting most of our recent photos online.
I like Flickr, it's a good little website.
The great thing is I can upload the full quality images, so if you want to print a photo you can get it top quality!

All our wedding and honeymoon photos are online now, so if you've been waiting to get a copy of any of them, you can download it from Flickr and print it yourself!
Cool!!

I've also added some other family photos from Woodstock, check out my cute little niece!

If you have a Flickr account let me know so I can add you to my contacts.

Click here to visit my Flickr site.

Tonight was the preview show of 'A Christmas Tale'.
The idea is we previewed it for our church, so that they would know how great it was and then they'd bring all their friends on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.
We were all a bit nervous before the show, but it went really well.
Everyone remembered their lines, the musicians all hit their notes and the lights and sound were terrific!
We got some wonderful feedback from those who watched it, and we're all looking forward to the next performance.
Hopefully the Saturday show will be recorded, so I'll try and post it here so you can all watch us!!

*Update*

Well it would seem someone filmed a short clip from our performance last night on their camera.
It's low quality and unfortunately the mic on the camera makes us sound out of tune (we sound good in real life! I promise!).
The clip is a minute long and the file is about 9mb so please be patient as it loads.
To view the clip click here.

Inspired by the wonderful photos of Christine Gill, I have signed up for a Flikr account, to display my photos.
You will probably have noticed the flashy link on the left hand side, just below my profile.
Check it out!
Or if you're too lazy to do that, just click here.
There's some photos from the Delirious concert!

Yesterday Sarah and I had a full day, we began by going to Manchester and doing a bit more shopping.

We went a couple of weeks ago, but forgot to shop for each other! So back we were, in the crowds and the pushing and the lack of parking spaces, but we did it, we shopped for each other and I think we did well, except Sarah won't tell me what she got me, but I'll find out soon enough, Christmas is nearly here!!

Then it was on to Bradford and to Abundant Life Church, where we had tickets for the opening night of Delirious' UK Tour!
Woohoo!!




There were probably between about 2,000-3,000 people there. The disappointing thing was that you'd think a Christian concert would mean a bit of consideration for the others there, not so much of the pushing and shoving, but no, it was almost like Christmas shopping all over again!!
But Sarah and I found a good spot near the back next to the sound desk, where we had a good view and room to breathe.
As it turns out Delirious have a new CD out, something we only found out on the night, and they did a lot of songs from it, but they still did some of the classics too, I think my favourite was History Maker.
I've wanted to see them live since I got saved, but it's never worked out before, so I loved it!
I think my favourite new song was one called Miracle Maker, get it!

Over here in Wales, the first installment in the Chronicles of Nania, 'The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe' was released today.
Sorry to all you North American friends, you have to wait until tomorrow, and not only that, with the time difference it's almost a whole day and a half before any of you can see it!
Well, let me tell you, it's well worth the wait!!
What a great movie!!
And not only was the movie great, but we also had the whole movie theatre to ourselves. Going during the afternoon is a great idea!
So we had our very own private viewing.
My only complaint about that was my Dad decided if there was nobody else there, he could talk as much as he wanted.
And the only thing about the movie I wanted to change was the size of Aslan, I thought he should have been bigger, he needed a bit more of an 'awe' factor.
But apart from that it was fantastic!
I won't give any more away (not that the story is much of a secret), I just wanted to blog and say ha ha! We've already seen it!!
And now I've gloated a bit, I'll go, and dream of lions and fawns and talking beavers.
Enjoy the movie!

As I'm sure you've read on Sarah's blog, we had a good date night the other night. We went to see Flightplan with Jodie Foster, good movie!! Just the type of film I like.

The other type of date I want, but am still waiting for is a moving in date for the house. We're STILL waiting! Hopefully when it all happens it'll happen quickly, but at the moment it's still in the hands of the solicitors, man do they ever move slowly!

This morning I co-led worship, this is the first time I've ben involved with the worship team here (I've led a couple of other events, but not the regular service), so to lead first time up was pretty cool! Admittedly it was because they were missing a few people, but I still enjoyed the opportunity.
I stuck with some golden oldies, the tried and tested for the most part, but threw a bit of Grace Like Rain in there, and even did one of my own songs pre-service. I really enjoyed it, and it went really well too!
And I'm making some good friends on the worship team too, I led with a Brazilian guy called Celso this morning, he and his wife Denise are really cool.

I'm just about coming to terms with being a father, I think.
Sarah and I bought a book of names and a book called 'The Pregnancy Bible' which tells us absolutely everything a book can do.
The wierdest thing I've learned so far is that Sarah actually conceived 3 weeks into the pregnancy. Don't quite get that one!
So we think the conception was about 3 weeks ago, but that makes Sarah 5 weeks pregnant.
Based on that date the book also tells us the due date is 6th August, which just so happens to be Sarah's birthday! Happy birthday sweetie!!

Sarah and I have affectionately called the baby 'Bean'.
Bean's heart will begin to beat any day now.
Bean is about 2mm tall.
Bean looks like this:

The name 'Bean' is set, at least for now, my Dad told the church during his preach this morning, and then proceeded to use Bean in an illustration, so now everyone will be calling him/her Bean.

I hope that doesn't stick after Bean is born.