The wait was finally over and at the weekend Emma could finally enjoy her joint birthday party with her friend Rhianna. After lots of initial debate about venue it ended up being at our house and, with a few drop-outs, it wasn’t too much of a squeeze. There was a craft theme and the combination of party bag decorating, decopatch (yes – now I know what decopatch is!) and bracelet making more than filled the time available to the extent that we had to text parents to tell them they could pick-up late. The party food pretty much all disappeared (perhaps because it was chosen by the girls themselves during one of their party planning sessions at school) and thankfully didn’t cause any allergic reactions (EpiPen was at the ready). The only downside of all this is that Duncan is still keen on having his birthday at home and 5/6 year old boys are a different proposition!
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Double the fun
Wednesday, June 10th, 2015Egg Dropping
Saturday, June 6th, 2015
The sun was shining for Emma’s sports day this year even if not on Emma! I only stayed for an hour although that was at least twice as long as Christine. It was long enough to watch Emma perform in the two team competitions and then come last at picking up balls and the Egg and Spoon! Her hat was obviously troubling her in the first (taking it off obviously hadn’t occurred to her) but it was something far more fundamental that was the problem with the latter: an inability to keep the egg on the spoon!
Sculptures at Hilliers
Thursday, June 4th, 2015It’s that time of year again – Hillier Gardens have their new sculptures out. The only difference this year is that they’ve put the prices on the signs so you have to make sure you don’t read them first before guessing at the jaw-dropping numbers! The sculptures seemed a little less exotic than in some years (if you discount the pile of skull-like objects) and there were even a few that I’d be happy to have in our own garden (were it not for the price!).
Emma at Eight
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015
I’ve been more than a little remiss in my blogging recently (nearly 5 months since the last post) but I couldn’t let Emma’s birthday pass without a mention and perhaps that will be the trigger for me to start posting again. Emma’s birthday fell in half term this year and both Christine and I took the day off with the intention of making a day of it but, having been away camping in Dorset for the weekend, both children seemed to keen to make the most of a day at home.
Emma was expecting to spend the day playing with all her new toys and, I suspect, was slightly disappointed that she didn’t actually get lots of new toys to play with! Her main present was an iPod Nano which, I shall be the first to admit, I won in a raffle at a recent conference. I did have to buy her some speakers later in the day though for fear of never being heard by my daughter again (although she’s quite capable of not hearing you even without headphones in!). Her party (joint with a friend) is still to come and I’m sure that will even the score.
And what is momentous about being 8? According to Emma, the fact that she can no longer go in men’s toilets! This fact is based on a sign in the local swimming pool but Emma has applied it more generally. I suspect more significant is the fact that Emma can be let loose in the pool on her own.
I can no longer remember life without children but somehow it also seems that Emma has grown up very quickly. Still hard to believe though that in another eight years she’ll be able to leave home and get married!
Map Management
Sunday, January 18th, 2015
SOC had an event at Busketts Lawn (near Ashurst) today. We’d offered to help and a very thoughtful organiser had suggested that we should assist on the start which would save us the 1.8km walk there and back. Christine went out for her run first and I and the children were left in charge of the all important task of putting a map under each box so that competitors don’t have to faff around with trying to take just one map from the pile. The children seemed to love this job and, other than the odd complaint about cold toes, they kept going until Christine got back from her run.
They then went out on the White course and I was relieved from my post shortly to go out on the Brown. I dawdled around the first half until Rob Patterson caught me up. We raced around the next six or seven controls together before I finally got away. I probably clawed back a minute by the end but he still beat me by four overall. Looking at the download from my Garmin I ran a full min/km faster in the second half and my average heart rate went up from 144 to 160!
The area didn’t offer much variety with the strategy for most legs being to run straight trying to check off features on the way and not worry too much about missing the feature as a bit of running in circles in the right vicinty would usually pay off. It was still a nice place to run through despite all the mud.
Wassailing at The Vyne
Sunday, January 18th, 2015
We went over to The Vyne yesterday to meet up with friends. Unfortunately it turned out that the playground there is closed until 13 February but there wasn’t too much complaining from the children. Whilst everyone else had lunch, Duncan and I joined one of the gardeners for a spot of wassailing to assure a good crop from the orchard. This involved drinking cider (at least for me) in a toast to the tree, placing toast soaked in cider around the tree (to encourage the birds to come and eat any pests), making lots of noise (to ward away the evil spirits), and party poppers (which left the tree suitably decorated). After lunch we wandered around the lake and up in to the woods. Remarkably 20 month old Alice insisted on walking the whole way until she finally fell asleep within sight of the car park.
First ‘O’ of 2015
Sunday, January 11th, 2015Our first orienteering of the year took us over to the WIM Galoppen at Moors Valley Country Park. I went out on the Brown whilst Christine shepherded both children around the White. Emma started two minutes after Duncan and Christine and had caught them by the second control. Duncan exacted his revenge on the string course! I’ve succumbed to the children’s cough over the past few days which, combined with a general lack of core strength, meant that I found all of the brashings and furrows hard going (and the planner had, unfortunately, done his best to ensure that use of the extensive path network was minimal). I may have been sixth in the results but I was a good 12 minutes behind the winner! Thanks to Simon Errington implementing my feature request, I can also now link directly to my route on RouteGadget.
Whilst Christine was out on her course we relocated the car round to the main Country Park car park and the children used up what remaining energy they had in the play ground and on the play trail. They certainly went to sleep quickly this evening! We’re booked in for orienteering the next two weekends so it’s good that they enjoyed the day out.
Fleming Mudbath
Monday, January 5th, 2015
Opening the curtains on the first Saturday of the year to view a very wet garden and more rain on its way could only mean one thing: the Hampshire Cross-Country Champs! At least it was handy with Fleming Park once again being the venue. Christine braved the weather first, cycling there whilst I fed the children lunch. We then followed on in the car arriving just in time to watch her race start.
The courses are particularly convoluted which has the benefit that, as spectators, we didn’t have to move very far to see Christine, and the conditions, getting progressively muddier and muddier. The children were very good given the weather. Emma said it was great fun although, to be fair, I think this may have just been her new discovery of sarcasm. Christine finished just in time for me to hand over, strip off, and head to the start for the men’s race.
Last time I ran this course two years ago, I started far too fast on the first lap only to realise that I still had to go round twice more. Knowing this still didn’t stop me repeating the error! I’ve strategically chosen a picture of Christine to accompany this post as, once you’ve removed the blurred and out of focuse photos she took, your just left with ones of me looking like an old man in lots of pain. I waded round the 11.5km of mud in 46:23, some 35 seconds slower than in 2013 and ended up four places further down in 45th place. By way of consolation, when I really am an old man next year and qualify as a veteran, I just need to shave off 16 seconds to end up in to top 5 M40s!
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