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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Well, this is going to be a very short monthly review, because I wrote about the most exciting thing we did in April in my in-depth posts about our road trip through the EU. You can pick up the start of that journey with this post, and then click through from there. So this monthly review will cover everything else we did in April.
On the 1st, I went up to Monmouth in the morning for the Easter Fair at the church. Then I stayed in town to have a girl’s night out with Amy! We went out for dinner at Creates which is a fabulous local restaurant and I got a very delicious pizza.
Then we walked just a minute down the road to go see a show at the Savoy Theatre! The Monmouth Music Theatre group were putting on Evita so we went to see the show. It was fun to be in the audience this time! (Amy and I met doing The Sound of Music with this group last year.)
On Monday the 3rd, Penycaemawr Chapel held an Easter event at a local cafe near the chapel. We had advertised it on Facebook, in the local schools and local businesses, but we weren’t expecting too many people to show up. We would have been delighted if we had 7 kids. Instead, we had over 70! It was absolute chaos - the good kind - and we had to send a volunteer out to get more chocolate eggs that we had promised as prizes. It was so fun to connect with our community in this way and we hope to do it again!
Holy Week continued with nightly services at different churches in town around Caldicot - I really love that Holy Week is an ecumenical event here. It culminates with an outdoor service on Good Friday that is held outside of the Methodist Church since we are in the center of town. There was a good sized crowd and it’s a lovely way to witness to people outside of our church walls.
That evening I went up to Monmouth to lead a traditional Tenebrae service, which is always one of my favourites to do.
On Easter morning I led an early service at Caldicot…
Then a 10:30 service at Monmouth…
Followed by an evening service at Trellech. I didn’t take any pictures during the service at Trellech, but afterwards I was greeted by these adorable lambs who posed so well for a photo!
I also wore my new Easter stole. My mom and I commissioned Karen to make this one for me. It is made out of quilted fabric that my great-grandmother made and left unfinished! So Karen fashioned it into a stole and I think the yellow and other pastel colors work well for an Easter stole.
The day after Easter we set out on our epic road trip, which again you can read about starting here!
When we got home from our trip we were greeted by a leak that was coming through the ceiling in my office. Luckily it was in a corner with nothing underneath it so nothing was damaged except for the house itself. We quickly figured out it was coming from the boiler and our manse steward got right on top of things to get the leak fixed and then my office completely repainted!
On Thursday the 27th, I attended a Churches Together in Caldicot meeting, hosted at the local vicar’s home. He has two dogs so I love when he hosts meetings! I caught this picture of them looking out the window as more people kept arriving. (At least, the small dog is attempting to look out the window - I'm not sure he can actually see anything!)
On Friday the 28th, Joel and I went on a walk along the Wales Coastal path, starting from our house. It is crazy to me that views like this are literally walking distance from our house! The bridge you can see is the one that crosses from Wales to England.
That’s all for April 2023!
XOXO, Bethany