The 2008 Newsletter
Hello all those who stop by this website either semi-regularly or once a year to check out the Green’s seventh annual newsletter. We can’t quite believe that it’s seven years since we started doing these annual reviews and certainly 2008 is a year with enough news to rival some of our best and most packed twelve months in living memory.
The biggest news of the year was, of course, the birth of young Josiah who was born on the 22nd of May weighing surprisingly less than expected (and than his brother and sister when they were born) but healthy and well nonetheless. As we write now, seven months on from that date, Josiah is a very bonny lad who is being weaned, getting used to various kinds of flavoured mush and occasionally sharpening his two bottom teeth and rubbing his other sore gums with a bit of french bread or spoons or whatever he can get hold of. He’s generally a happy boy, sleeps fairly well and seems to enjoy their company most of all.
Talking of his brother and sister, Nathanael is now two and a very cute young man. He enjoys variously Thomas the Tank Engine, diggers, football with his dad, looking for worms in the garden, playing games with his sister and Something Special on CBeebies. His language is starting to come on well with some vaguely intelligible sentences although you have to kind of attune your ear a bit to him, but he’s doing well, having fun and very keen to join his sister at the local Playgroup.
Bethya, meanwhile, is growing up fast. As we write, she’s approaching her fourth birthday and very much looking forward to Christmas and, of course, her birthday in the days following. In some ways, Bethya hasn’t changed much. She still loves her princesses and her ballet dancing and anything pink, but in other ways she’s grown up a lot in the last year. It’s a scary thought to think that we are trying to choose a local school for her at the moment since she will start next September. She goes to playgroup five days a week and is quite the girl about town. Mum and dad are becoming a taxi service but a proud one. Most recently, she was a very bouncy participant in her end-of-term ballet production and also took the part of Mary in the pre-school nativity play and was beyond precocious in the way she attacked the role! A budding dancer/actress perhaps?
Of course for mum and dad, Dave and Kerry, they’ve had their own eventful year. In the summer, we organised our move from Cambridge and took up residence here in Walderslade, Chatham where Dave now serves as the curate at the local church, St Philip & St James. There’s been an ‘ontological‘ change for us both (as the theologians might say) with Dave now a clergyman and getting used to all that brings while Kerry deals with the interesting demands of being both the wife of a clergyman and a full-time mum to three very full-time kids.
Apart from getting used to a third child, living with the fun and games of clergy life and all else besides, we’ve also been sorry to say goodbye to Dave’s last grandparent, Grandad Ray, this year. We didn’t get to know him half as well as we might have liked.
While we’ve been sorry to leave behind so many good friends from our couple of years in Cambridge, the church at Walderslade have been incredibly welcoming and friendly and it’s so far, so good for us both with our involvement in the church. Dave is doing the usual curate’s round of services and sermons, funerals, children’s work, youth work and baptism preparation, plus his ongoing training and other aspects of the role that are more ‘one-off’ in nature and variety. Certainly, no two days ever seem the same which is mostly a blessing and occasionally a curse.
Being back in Kent is a real blessing for Kerry which has meant she is far more able to catch up with her family and other friends from these parts much more easily than before. Certainly, she’s out and about regularly with the kids seeing all sorts of people.
Dave’s glandular fever last year did mean that he left Ridley Hall in Cambridge with some of his academic work incomplete. He’s still got a dissertation to write to conclude his Masters degree and, as we write this, he still hasn’t finished it. It’s hard finding time to do such work with the full-time demands of ministry in the parish but with any luck 2009 will see that piece of work conclude and Dave add yet more letters after his name… for what they are worth anyway.
So that’s us in 2008. If you find yourself near Chatham, do come and say hi. We’d love to see family and friends, whether from near or far.