Merry Christmas 2016

Here's wishing you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Baby names

I was just searching for the meaning of the name Ngaio... it means "light refelecting on water".

While I was looking, I also saw another name and I've fallen head over heels in love with it:

Name Aroha
Gender Female
Origin Maori
Meaning Love

I could have two baby girls, Ngaio Emma Richards and Aroha Isabelle Richards. Then we could have a baby boy, although I'm not sure what his name will be yet.

Oh gosh, I want a baby so much. I'm so ready to grow our family.

Reasons I am looking forward to losing weight

1. Wear shorts and a bikini in Hawaii. Adam and I have a booked a dream holiday in December - we're spending 3 nights in San Fransisco, then 7 nights in Hawaii. I am so excited, but I want to be able to wear shorts in Hawaii and a bikini on the beach and feel comfortable. The last few times I have been on holiday, I have sometimes felt really uncomfortable. I've felt fat, I've got stuck in a chair, had to ask for a seatbelt extension on the plane and had plenty of stares. I don't want this in Hawaii.
2. Go skiing.
3. Go ziplining.
4. Join a ballet class. This is something that I have always, always wanted to do. I never had lessons when I was a little girl, so would love to start now. I know I'll never be a ballerina but it's just something to do for me.
5. Be able to take more photos of myself. I know technically I could take them now, but I always hate how I look in them. I can't avoid seeing myself like I can in a perfectly angled selfie or the mirror.
6. Use less fabric/wool when making something for myself to wear. I have to knit so much more, or buy so much more fabric to make something for myself. I could literally half the time it would take for me to knit a cardigan for myself.
7. Enjoy sex more. I used to love sex. I would love to just ride Adam (crude, but true). I just feel so self conscious with myself.
8. Dressing how I want to dress. Not just making do in whatever is there and whatever fits me. Being able to choose and develop my own style and wear more expensive clothing.
9. Hide away less. I feel so embarassed of myself all the time, I have become this wall flower who won't say anything, ever. I want to get more of my personality back.
10. The big one. Be able to actively pursue getting pregnant. Enough said, really.

My husband.

“There is no greater risk than matrimony.
But there is nothing happier than a happy marriage.”
–Benjamin Disraeli, 1870

in a letter to Queen Victoria’s daughter Louise,
congratulating her on her engagement.
via the book Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
I'm feeling incredibly grateful for my husband right now. He's just rung me to chat as he was driving from one job to another and he asked me what was wrong as I sounded a bit down. I told him I was worried about tomorrow, about going to work and having a one to one with my boss as my sales have been, and always will be, terrible and I'm going to be put onto a performance review at work if they didn't improve (which they haven't).

Adam was so sweet to me and told me that I didn't have to worry about working; that if I was unhappy and it was making me miserable I could just leave. That it was his job to provide for us in a monetary sense and that we make such a good team and look after each other and he wants to look after me.

It made me cry. I am so, so lucky to have him and there's not a day goes by that I'm not aware of this. I love him and appreciate him and hope more than anything that we'll be together forever.

Motherhood.

“During my professional career as a doctor of medicine, I was occasionally asked why I chose to do that difficult work. I responded with my opinion that the highest and noblest work in this life is that of a mother. Since that option was not available to me, I thought that caring for the sick might come close. I tried to care for my patients as compassionately and competently as Mother cared for me.

Many years ago the First Presidency issued a statement that has had a profound and lasting influence upon me. ‘Motherhood,’ they wrote, ‘is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling and service next to the angels.

Because mothers are essential to God’s great plan of happiness, their sacred work is opposed by Satan, who would destroy the family and demean the worth of women.’ ” Russell M. Nelson, “Our Sacred Duty to Honor Women,” Ensign, May 1999, 38

I've just read this quote here and I love it. I can't wait to be a mother, and I just hope that one day I can be one.

Old film photo scans

After Dad died, Uncle Gary came round with some old photos which I immediately confiscated and scanned. I'd love to get more old photos, one's from Mum, and scan those too but for now I'm just sharing these. These photos are my childhood.









































(Except for that one. That one's Uncle Gary's wedding)

Pietro Politano

Last week I went to see a medium and I can't stop thinking about it.

I want to record it somehow before I completely forget as the memory of the things he said to me are already fading.

It was a group clairvoyancy evening at my best friends school. The medium, Pietro Politano, also works in some capacity with schools in our area as his 'day job', so he already knew my friend. I went with my Mum and my sister, and I thought it would just be something fun, and that even if we got a message I'd take it with a massive pinch of salt because he knows my friend, and I don't know what she might have told him about me/us, and that he would probably already know about the circumstances around my Dad's death.

Pietro came on and gave a short message to another woman, then he turned to my Mum and said "can I work with you?" My Mum said yes, he asked if we were there as a family and said he would speak to us as a family and he spoke about a couple of things and then he turned to me and said "can I work with you?"

I said yes.

He said a couple of things to me, which are fairly hazy in my memory but I think it was about how I had spirits around me trying to calm me, and I started to cry, and then he said "you see lights, don't you?" For some reason, I found it quite difficult to understand what he was saying to me and asked him to repeat himself and he said again "lights, you see lights, don't you?" It wasn't really a question, nothing he said was really a question, it was a statement. I was totally confused and everthing seemed really strange around me and I had a little voice in my head, tugging on my sleeve like a small child and trying to remind me of something that was just beyond my memory, and I kind of shook my head but then he said "sparkles, you see blue sparkles" and it hit me with 100% certainty.

After my Dad had died, I kept seeing little sparkly bits of light in front of my eyes. It worried me a little bit as when I'd blink they wouldn't go away and they were increasing in the time I could see them for and I could concentrate on them. I put it down to the fact that I was crying a lot and not sleeping properly and made a mental note to go to the opticians as it had been a while since I'd had my eyes tested, but then after one particular session of it in the kitchen which had been the longest yet, I didn't notice it happen again, but when Pietro said "blue sparkles" I knew these little dots of light were what he meant.

I hadn't told my friend about them - I hadn't told anyone about them.

Pietro nodded, he knew he was right and that it was just taking me a little while to realise what he was talking about. "Well," he said. "These lights, these sparkles, they're the spirits that are around you that you can see."

He'd already established that we'd lost someone very dear to us, and he said I talked to a photograph of them, which I do. When I see a photograph of my Dad, I talk to him, and it feels very intense. It feels differently than when I just talk to him in my head, it's almost as if I can feel him there with me, that I know he's heard me, that I can feel him reacting to what I'm saying.

He was talking to me for a bit longer then he went back to my Mum and asked her if she had any grandchildren, then he turned back to me and said "I've just got to let you know - there's a baby. There's a baby coming." Everyone on our table kind of exploded a bit then, my Mum and sister are desperate for me to have a baby and my friend and her Mum and Grandma were on our table too so they were saying some things too. It was so hard for me, that was what I so desperately wanted to hear. I ask God for a baby all the time, I ask my Dad to send me one too. For him to say that there was one coming, I just can't put into words how that made me feel. He then went on to say "I'm never normally wrong about these things, I once said it to a woman and she didn't believe me as she had been trying already for two and a half years, then I saw her not long after and she told me she was pregnant". I wish I could have asked him about it, asked him if he could elaborate, ask him what he saw, but no one knows that we've been trying for a baby. Whenever anyone asks them, we always say that we'd like to have kids but it's not quite the right time yet. I like that answer because it satisfies whoever is asking, but we're not lying. Obviously it hasn't been the right time yet otherwise we would surely have a baby by now.

He carried on talking to us, he was with us for quite a while. He said some other things, most of which I can't remember, he said things like last Christmas had been particularly hard on us all but this Christmas would be a family Christmas and would be much better, and he said that my sister had been having headaches, and we all just sat there like nodding dogs, all three of us, saying yes to absolutely everything he said. Then he said to us "does the name Stephen mean anything to you? Stephen or Steve?" I literally couldn't believe it. Everything he said to us had already been spot on but then he said this name to us. Stephen is my Dad's cousin, who died when I was a little girl in the same way my Dad did. I can only remember seeing him a few times as he was in the RAF and lived in Wales, but I loved him a lot, he was always so kind to us and made us laugh and I remember my Dad taking me out into the garden and sitting me down and telling me that he'd died. I remember it perfectly. I was astounded about the fact that Pietro had just given us his name, just came out with it. I've been to see another medium in the past and they've said something like "I've got someone here who 's name begins with a B... I mean, P... Peter... Paul... Pat..." so for this medium to just come right out and say the name Stephen straight away I was just... completely in awe. Then further in the conversation, he said he had a clean shaven man with him, and my Mum couldn't think who it would be, and then Pietro said "does the name Harry mean anything to you?" Harry is my Uncle also on my Dad's side who has also passed away. He gave us not just one name, but two!

The thing about it all as well is that everything he said to me, everything he said to my Mum, everything he said to my sister... My friend wouldn't have known any of it. He didn't say anything specifically about my Dad. She might have known my Uncle Stephen's name, but that would be it.

At the end of the show, we went to talk to him and my Mum asked him about having a private reading done, and he gave her a card. Then he turned to me and asked me if I was okay, and told me "everything will be okay. Stop whittling." I almost laughed out loud at that, as I have done nothing but whittle on in my mind and to Adam about babies for goodness knows how long. I stress about it so much.

My mind is officially blown, and I'm so thankful I went. I've felt such a sense of peace and calm since I wsaw him. I feel like, because of everything that has happened to us over the past year or so, I have not been myself, and even my faith was shaken. I feel more like myself now than I have done for a long time, and it hasn't stopped me hurting about my Dad, but it has helped me. I feel restored in myself and in my faith. I feel like I know now that even though when I speak to God I might not get an answer straight away but it doesn't mean that he hasn't heard me. I 100% believe that Pietro was communicating with the spirit world.

I can't wait to go and see him again.