Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Testing Way

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

On Thursday night Christine, then Emma, then I, had been sick. Although Emma bounced back very quickly, Christine and I had spent Friday recovering and it was therefore with some trepidation that we set off for today’s Test Way Relay. Christine was running first leg for the Southampton Orienteering Club team, starting at Inkpen Beacon. As they had only two women in the team they didn’t qualify as a mixed team and hence she set off with around 15 men (the womens and mixed teams starting an hour earlier). It therefore wasn’t particularly surprising that she came in to the changeover in last place.

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Sprint finish on the beach

Sunday, September 5th, 2010

872Yesterday we headed down to the coast for the annual Dorset Coast Path Relay. We arrived at Lulworth Cove a couple of hours early so that the kids could expend a bit of energy before being bundled in and out of the car for the rest of the day. We didn’t have a particularly peaceful lunch on the beach as Emma was scared by the crashing waves and Duncan just wanted to crawl in to them!

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Family run

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

My brother joined us for tonight’s run from Wilverley. With Neil away on vacation, we had a fairly steady pace for a run south through the Inclosure and looping out to the west. Despite all the recent rain it was remarkably dry although we did get wet feet on a couple of occasions. As an added bonus, chips were ordered at the pub and an extra free bowl arrived.

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Welsh Holiday

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

869I’m just coming to the end of two weeks of vacation of which we spent the first 10 days on a family holiday to Wales. We originally had had various plans for an overseas trip but, apart from anything else, we’d failed to get Duncan a passport! In the end, we spent a week in a ‘lodge’ at a place called Timber Hill near Broad Haven in Pembrokeshire and then, because the original plan had been to find some mountains, up to a cottage in Llanberis for 4 nights.

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Sprint weekend

Monday, June 14th, 2010

866We had a fun weekend of orienteering blessed by some good weather. On Saturday it was the Winchester Urban Race. This started and finished at the Rugby Club and the 1:5000 map stretched south to the Cathedral and Wolsey Castle. If you think city racing is all about tricky route choices influence by narrow cut-throughs, dead-ends, and control sites where the side of the feature is all important, then the event wouldn’t have disappointed you. (more…)

Emma turns three

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

863Emma’s birthday itself was a fairly quiet afair. Emma was up early but more due to sunlight than anything birthday related. Presents were opened over breakfast and then I went in to work.  The family then joined me there for lunch at the clubhouse where Emma’s early start was starting to show. Apparently she enjoyed visiting the fish after I’d gone back to my desk though. Then it was the first of many cakes in the evening. Emma’s attempts at blowing anything (and not just Rice Krispies out of her nose) are still pretty feeble so I was suitably impressed that she managed to extinguish the candles.

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First camp

Monday, May 24th, 2010

860Emma’s birthday week started well. SOC had one of it’s summer series events at Telegraph Woods (by the Rose Bowl) on Saturday. Christine had a run whilst the rest of us went round the yellow with Neil and his girls. About half way round we’d had to resort to bribes to keep the girls walking and eventually cut back without finishing the course. We were then joined by my brother for a picnic in a shady spot overlooking the construction work on the cricket ground (which was a plus point by the way).

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Where it went, nobody nose

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

857Last Wednesday Christine phoned me at work to say that Emma had put a Rice Krispie up her nose. Apparently Christine had come downstairs and Emma had said that this was what she had done. When asked to remove it, she’d pushed it up further with her finger. When asked to blow her nose, she’d then sniffed instead. Given the cold she had at the time I assumed it would just find its own way back out in the general flow of things! However, when Emma took 4 hours to go to sleep that night and was complaining of earache we decided to phone the surgery the following morning. They said they didn’t go poking around up noses but that we should go to casualty and so the saga began…

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