Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Chariots of Rain

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

830Neil and Alice are off on the other side of the world for the next week or two and have kindly lent us their cycle chariot. Emma was certainly keen to give it a go as she was sat in the seat with the cover over whilst I finished assembling it! Unfortunately Saturday wasn’t really the best day for venturing out on a bicycle as it was drizzling from dawn ’til dusk. By mid-afternoon we had to get out of the house to maintain sanity and a bike ride round the local playgrounds seemed as good an idea as any. As you can see from the photo, Duncan was slightly less keen about the whole idea but then he did go off to sleep shortly after we set off! I certainly found it an easier ride towing two rather than having Emma in the rear seat although there’s not much in the way of hills around us to really provide a test. Given its size, it remains to be seen whether we take it away with us on holiday and, given the price (now about £800 for this model), even more so whether we decide to buy one for ourselves.

Relays Revisited

Monday, March 15th, 2010

On Saturday we went to the SOC local event at Dibden. The longest course on offer was a Green which included several legs from the Mens Open at the British Relays. The course started with a few track legs which weren’t particularly interesting but were a good chance to warmup. When we reached the legs from the relays they weren’t the same gaffles I had but I was pleased to find number six without too much trouble as this was the area I wasted time in at the British. In proceeded to waste a minute or more on the next leg although in my defence I still couldn’t see the distinct vegetation boundary even when I was stood at the control site. Total time was just under 27 minutes for the 5k course so a good burn-up.
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Expensive shoes

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

As part of the drive to use up all of my remaining vacation by the end of the financial year I had Friday off work. After we’d been to Emma’s swimming lesson at Twyford School, we all headed in to Eastleigh for a bit of shopping. This involved taking back Emma’s new shoes which she’d managed to wreck on the slide on the way home from buying them. Shoes for a two year old can hardly be called fit for purpose if the soles can’t cope with a slide! I then went to the running shop to get some new road and off-road shoes whilst Christine went to Sainsburys where we’d parked.
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Local orienteering

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

827We went to SOC’s local event at Anderwood in the New Forest today. No string course this time so I took Emma and Duncan round the Yellow course whilst Christine nipped round the Green. Duncan nodded off half way round and Emma spent most of the time in the running buggy. Christine passed us on our way from the last control and came back to meet us. This meant I could head back to the car with dozing Duncan whilst Emma climbed about on a conveniently placed ring of tree stumps. They had only just made it back to download (Emma with a big stick in each hand) as I set off for the start to do the Blue.

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Staunton Country Park

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

824We finally concluded that the best way for transporting two small children on walks from home (e.g. to the shops) is a double buggy. It’s just a bit too far for Emma to ride on the buggy board and she’s still a little reluctant to give up her seat to Duncan. This really wasn’t enough of an incentive to spend a couple of hundred pounds on what would be our 5th buggy so we bought one second-hand on eBay. Anyway, the point of the story is that this took us over to Portsmouth to collect it and we decided to try out our Culture-all Passport at another venue: Staunton Country Park.

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On the road at Christmas

Friday, January 1st, 2010

815I’m behind on the blog so this post is a catch-all for our activities over the festive period. Having taken the weeks off before and after Christmas we’ve had plenty of time for visiting friends and family and also had a chance to spend a bit of time at home. On the Tuesday before Christmas we set off to visit Christine’s parents in Monmouth (it’s her Dad’s birthday on the 23rd). We failed to check the road conditions before starting out but were intending to stick to the M4 rather than going via Gloucester and through the Forest of Dean. However, we hadn’t been on the M4 for long before we were informed of the closure of the Severn Crossing. We mistakenly decided to continue on in the hope that the old Severn bridge (which we normally use) would still be open, or at least that it would have reopened by the time we got there.

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Snow arrives

Friday, December 18th, 2009

809For those out of the country, snow arrived in England last night. We didn’t have as much here as, say, my parents did in Hertfordshire but there was enough of a covering to get Emma excited in the morning. I had to go in to work (fortunately not cycling as I had to pick up a mountain bike for the event tomorrow) but Christine took Emma out in the snow. Unfortunately they timed it just as another flurry of snow arrived and Emma wasn’t particularly amused. Luckily Christine persuaded her to go out in the garden later in the day and they had great fun making footprints in the snow.

Nursery Sing-Song

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

I took a couple of hours out of work this afternoon to go along to Emma’s nursery for their Christmas performance. I picked up Christine, Emma and Duncan from a friend of Emma’s birthday party and we drove to the nursery. Christine stayed outside feeding Duncan so, having handed Emma over to the nursery assistants, I had the pleasure of joining the audience of parents on my own.

The children were led in at the front of the room and all obediently sat on their coloured spots on the floor. Their subsequent rendition of various Xmas themed songs wasn’t as bad as you might imagine from a bunch of under-3s. One boy was in particularly fine voice much to the amusement of the audience. Emma was partly obscured from my view by one of the assistants but I could see that, despite having told us most of the words to the songs they were going to sing, she didn’t sing a word. She just had this look on her face as if to say “what are all these children doing?”.

After the singing was over the children were released to their parents and we filed out past Father Christmas. True to her word, Emma wasn’t scared of him this time. She wouldn’t say anything to him though and just stared at him intently. Having been told that he would park his reindeer outside she was a little disappointed to discover that they weren’t there when we left!