Bye bye

Today was the day of the goodbye lunch for our curate R as he goes off on paternity leave. By the time that is over our new Rector will be in post so he will be moving back to a neighbouring church to take up a part time post. His last service is actually next Sunday but there's a baptism on so we didn't want to distract from the main event.
R and his wife are expecting twins any day now so they have big changes ahead. They already have a delightful 3 year old son who you can see sitting on his dad's shoulders in the thumbnail.
This is the cake decorated by a member of the congregation R with his son, their dog and some rocks all made from icing along witha hot wheels car of the jeep he drove to Ukraine from Edinburgh a couple of years ago.
We had a lovely service and a great lunch afterwards all in all a very happy occasion. I was organising the lunch so I'm very glad that that is now over. It all went well though so that was a relief even though I did have to make a potato salad with a new pair of marigolds on so as to avoid messing up my bandage!
This afternoon Ali and the girls came over, while they were here there was a phenomenal downpour, we watched the rain bouncing off the ground and the roof. It was still warm though and the slabs were almost completely dry an hour later.