Busy times for Tim

We've got so used to having Tim here for the past seven weeks that it's going to feel like having an empty nest all over again when he flies back to the UK next week. Still, he's been managing to ease us slowly into this state. Last week he was out every morning from 7.45am until nearly 1.00pm. He was a group leader at the local church SU-produced holiday club, 'Mission Rescue' which featured spies, and secret codes, and amazing rescue efforts.

Tim disguised himself as James Bond for the week - he was still smiling on Friday, though his bow tie seemed to have gone a little lop-sided:


(Photo kindly taken by my friend Sheila who had three children attending the club).

Note the secret code symbols in the background. They were pasted all around the walls of the church building for children to de-code.

Some of our small friends locally were able to attend the holiday club, which clearly caught their imagination; Lukas was wearing a different kind of disguise when we saw him on Friday evening:


Tim was pretty tired on Saturday, but there was no time to rest because the inter-church youth group had their variety night in the evening, to raise funds for their forthcoming camping trip to Troodos. Tim was part of the youth group for many years and is going to camp as a team leader, and co-ordinator of the music.

The variety night went well, with a mixture of items, from a skit about 'Veggie Tales'...


... to a newly formed choir, singing with aplomb:


I set up our video camera on a tripod to record the entire thing, but it takes time and effort to transfer that to the computer. So Tim had also asked me to film one item on my regular camera, since it's so much easier to upload. Holding it steady wasn't easy with several small people around me! Elina and Marie are singing 'Phantom of the Opera', with Tim accompanying; they only had a couple of rehearsals but I thought it went very well:

(The little girl doing her hair in front of the camera is my small friend Katie, Marie's six-year-old sister. )

Since I'd deleted almost all the photos from my camera to make room for these videos, I discovered that I still had room for more. So when Tim got up for his solo item, 'These are the things you don't say to your wife':


..I recorded that too:

(For anyone who didn't catch them all, the lyrics are here)

Since that was so short, I also had room to record Tim's third musical item, accompanying Marie in 'The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy'. They had only rehearsed this once, at our house, and perhaps once more at youth group; it's a pity nobody was doing the solo dance, but it seemed to go pretty well:

On Sunday morning there was a holiday club service at the Community Church, for which Tim was playing keyboard... in the afternoon he had a final camp leaders meeting, and then a good night's sleep, which is rather important before youth camp as he's unlikely to get much while there.

On Monday morning, he set off with around fifty teenagers and a few other adults for the Troodos mountains, thus moving us into the next adjustment stage before our nest is once again empty:


- and no, I didn't actually wait around to see them off, or even go with Richard to take Tim to the coach. My friend Sheila who was seeing off two of her children took that photo for me.