October already! But this year the winter doesn’t scare me.

Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year – the weather is nearly always guaranteed to be better than in summer, long afternoons spent blackberry picking are obligatory and halloween parties are always the best! Plus, three birthdays and our wedding anniversary means it’s celebration season for us!

The smell of winter is in the air – it’s in the coolness that comes from the low slung sun and in the shortening of the days, but it’s not here yet, and it makes me want to squeeze every last bit of goodness out of Autumn.

My Mum used to throw the BEST halloween birthday parties for me. They had (and still do) a legendary status among my class mates. We had fancy dress (of course), bonfires, custard-pie fights (I know!) dunking for apples, spooky walks (thanks Uncle Davy) and copious other activities that, today, would involve local councils (and not in a good way)! Like I say, LEGENDARY.

In my opinion you can’t beat the golden hue of an autumn day. The whisper of winter in the air and the litter of leaves on the ground never fail to take me back to being heavily pregnant with our first son: the nervous uncertainty of first-time motherhood, the heaviness of pregnancy, the waiting. My belly round and taught, ripe like a conker. That it was almost ten years ago has not dulled my memory of it. It’s sensory. My body will never let me forget what I experienced at this time of year. For that reason autumn is special for me. A time to pause for reflection and remember our ultimate new beginning –  when we became parents. So it’s fitting that this autumn, ten years after our son was born, we have another new chapter to celebrate. In a few weeks we will move in to our new home – a project that has taken over two years to complete. We hope, it will be our family home for the rest of our lives. It will be the stage where we will act out our own unique family drama. The safe haven where my boys will become teenagers and eventually men. Where girlfriends, and hopefully one day wives, will be introduced. Where my husband and I will grow older, where we will sing and dance, laugh, and no doubt cry. It will be the backdrop for everything, a member of the cast. And I love the synchronicity that the curtains will be raised in autumn.