Author’s Note: I stopped blogging regularly in 2020, but now in 2024, I am using Google Photos, Google Maps timeline, and my old planners to recreate a post about what we were up to each month!
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The first of May was a Sunday and thankfully I didn’t have any worship leading scheduled as I was still recovering from my whirlwind trip to the States. The lovely people of Monmouth brought me a welcome home gift - after worship someone brought by a card and the flowers that had been in worship that day!
That afternoon we had a two-hour rehearsal for the Sound of Music and I was very excited to see these posters popping up all over town.
Monday was a bank holiday and we did nothing more exciting than see two different movies at the cinema. Although, really, it was one and a half because Joel agreed to leave early when he saw how much I was not enjoying “The Northman.”
On Thursday May 5th two exciting things happened. First, we got to vote! In Wales as long as you are a resident you get to vote in certain elections - you don’t have to be a full citizen. So we exercised our right to vote down at the local leisure centre.
The second exciting thing was that we discovered a Taco Bell had opened in Newport! It was Cinco de Mayo so of course we had to go get some tacos. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very good (even by Taco Bell standards, lol) so we decided that we can make better Mexican food at home and it is worth the effort. According to my diary we squeezed those two things in along with me hosting a boys school visit at the church, leading a Church Council meeting on Zoom in the evening and even making time to see the “Mulitverse of Madness” in the cinema! Must have been a busy day.
On Saturday the 7th we had a very British day - we went for Afternoon Tea with Tom and Rachel and then went to see the new Downton Abbey film! I even made Rachel borrow one of my fascinators so we could be extra festive.
And then it was Eurovision week! Steve came to stay with us for the week so we could adventure and watch the two semi-finals on Tuesday and Thursday. On Tuesday we explored Abergavenny’s castle ruins…
And we took a selfie outside of the museum, with the sugar loaf (the name of the mountain) in the background…
It was a gorgeous day so we also just wandered around in the sunshine!
Wednesday was a more chill day (and I had work to do) then on Thursday we went to explore Tretower Castle and the Brecon Beacons. I have a lot of photos from this so I will try to stick to a few favourites, like this one of Steve and I exploring the castle…
And this one Joel caught of us being fascinated by the pigs at the neighboring farm. (Are pigs more interesting than the castle? Apparently!)
I also like this one of Joel poking fun of the very obvious “castle this way” sign - the castle it right there!
Steve headed home on Friday morning so Joel and I took a trip to Cardiff to see the movie “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.” Why Cardiff you ask? Because for some reason it was not showing at our local cinema in Newport! That turned out to be a good thing, though, because immediately following the movie we were craving everything bagels (if you’ve seen the movie you know why!) and Cardiff had a fresh bagel shop where we could get some!
Then on Saturday the 14th, we headed to Steve’s to watch the Eurovision finals. We joined his parents in their lounge upstairs and Steve had decked the place with all of the flags! We were rooting for the UK with “Spaceman” but were happy for Ukraine to take home the win. Joel particularly loved Sweden’s entry this year thus the Swedish flags. Steve even hung an American flag above the couch where we sat.
After that things calmed down for about a week until it was Sound of Music show week and things ramped up again! I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I should have, but I guess I’ll blame that on being busy actually doing the show. It was incredible to get to perform at The Savoy - which is the oldest continuously running theatre in all of Wales! Here is a selfie I took on stage one night just before we started.
[In the middle there is Amy - we didn’t really bond until the very end of the show but I am so glad we did. Somehow we started talking about board games and she mentioned she and her husband love to play, so we set up a game night for a few weeks later and the rest is history! Now we game with them about once a month even though we live an hour away now instead of ten minutes.]
Joel captured this great photo of Steve being excited to see my face on the big poster.
I do have a few more photos of the show as keepsakes but since they aren’t my photos I can’t post them on the blog. The show basically took over the rest of the month between dress rehearsals and then four completely sold out shows! It was so much fun and I am so thankful for the experience.
I did make the brutal mistake of not taking the Sunday of show week off, so the day after ending a four-show run I had to lead three worship services and lead a meeting at Monmouth to discuss whether or not the church would approve to have same-sex marriages in the building - not usually something you want to be tired for! Thankfully it went well and they did approve it.
Not surprisingly at all, I then ended up very sick on the last two days of the month. Every time I had a show in high school and college I would end up sick right after closing, so it didn’t surprise me, especially since I now had a full-time job thrown in the mix. It made for a rough start to June but I’ll share about that next time!
XOXO, Bethany