Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

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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Two seconds at the British

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

851After a bit of indecision, Christine finally decided that she wouldn’t run on the Saturday of the British Orienteering Champs due to a calf injury but we would all go up to Cannock Chase for the weekend and she would still run in the relay. This meant I could move my individual start to a late time and we could drive up to Rugeley on the Saturday morning rather than having to stay up on the Friday night. This probably meant we missed the worst of the bank holiday traffic and we actually had a very smooth journey arriving in pleny of time.

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Summer Series moves to Southampton

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

We headed in to Southampton this morning for the second of SOC’s Summer Series on the Common. I took Emma and Duncan round the yellow course again whilst Christine ran but this time I also got to have a go. It was slightly disappointing that although, as promised, it wasn’t the permanent course, it did use the permanent course controls so I had been to them all before. I made the mistake of trying to take the direct route through the green to control 6 but otherwise it was just a question of trying to run as fast as I could. It was good fun though and we were joined by Christine’s parents for a picnic afterwards. We’d made the mistake of promising Emma the paddling pool which doesn’t open for another week but she seemed happy enough in the playground.

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Sharing sister

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

I think it’s fair to say that Emma isn’t all that great at sharing things with Duncan. With a little persuasion she’ll give him one of her toys but when you’ve got your back turned she’s quite likely to rip it back out of his hands! She’s also all to ready to be his morale guardian, sweeping anything out of his reach lest he might put it in his mouth. This, combined with the fact that Duncan is, on average, still waking twice in the night (if you count 6:30am as night time), meant that it was with some trepadation that we moved Duncan’s cot in to Emma’s (now the children’s) room.

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Summer Series Starts

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

848Southampton Orienteering Club’s Summer Series kicked off today at Stoke Park Woods in glorious sunshine. There looked to be a reasonable turnout with plenty of new faces (the series being designed to pull in beginners as well as satisfying the desire of club members to have more local events). Christine went round the green course and I took Emma and Duncan around the yellow. I’ve been to the woods a couple of times before for RR10 races but have either been going too fast or, more likely, been too out of breathe, to notice the forest itself. There was talk of brashing but at least from the tracks it looked like a nice piece of compact woodland. More importantly for Emma, there were lots of streams for her to play in. We were back home by lunchtime which is a major plus. I’ve undoubtedly ruined my chance in the scoring system for the series by not running today. However there were a few other people missing, most notably due to the antics of Eyjafjallajoekull leaving them stranded in various parts of Europe. If we ever get our summer hols booked then there’s a fair chance we’ll miss 2 or 3 of the events later in the series anyway. The next event is on Southampton Common in a week’s time so see you there!