Swimming Gala

Olympic Gold

After sports day and the swimming galas I can now confirm that it is extraordinarily doubtful that either of my children will be winning any Olympic gold on behalf of either the UK or USA. Abigail ran every race with her tongue out. Seb waved at every one as he sauntered past oblivious to the fact that this was a race.

At the swimming gala Abigail was having fun playing whilst Sebastian had to use a float for every stroke other than the normal stroke where he finished after several minutes.....he climbed out of the water exhausted. Luckily, all of his classmates were chanting his name so I am hoping that he won't be permanently emotionally scarred as a result of his lack of physical prowess.

Click on the photo below to get a complete photo montage of the swimming galas.

Monday Mania

Monday nights are a little bit of fun and a little bit of chaos.

I pick up one of Seb's school mates, Hetta, at the same time as I pick up Seb on Mondays. I take her home and then pick up Abigail. Hetta's mummy, Sally, returns the favour and brings Seb home for me on Tuesdays. We race home and Seb has a snack and does as much homework as he can before we run back out the door to go swimming. Seb is taking private swim lessons as he hasn't come on quite as quickly as we would like in the school's swimming lessons. It's nice because Marc and I get in and play with Abigail one on one whilst Seb does his lesson. The second child never gets that undivided attention from mummy and daddy so she really enjoys it. She's getting to be quite good (better than Seb was at this age)!

Then we go out for a bite to eat. The children got to pick the spot today and they choose Pizza Hut. I don't normally mind this as they have one of the best salad bars in England (they are not big on salad bars in this country) and they are the only place I've ever found Blue Cheese dressing (my favourite). Today, the salad bar had no Blue Cheese on offer. They had run out. And they had run out of milk (Abigail's favourite dinner drink). Then the Supreme Pizza got delivered with 4 pieces of mushrooms, white onions instead of red, and yellow peppers instead of green. Heck, if I'd known they were out of food we would have gone elsewhere. In the end, we got the pizza for free and they only charged us for Marc's salad. I'm still afraid it might be a while before we go back!

The children are in bed, exhausted from the swimming. Marc has taken Bailey for a quick walk (in the rain). I am going to go put on my pjs and crawl into bed with my book! Night!

Action Packed

Yesterday was an action packed day. We all walked Sebastian up to the island to resume his riding lessons. A man, a boy and their dog. Abigail wanted to ride her scooter up but after, oh about 1 minute, she decided this was far too much like hard work and Mummy ended up carrying the thing up and back.



The riding lessons are held at a horse rescue centre and his new riding instructor is named, Helen. It was a bit difficult because Caron, the owner of the stable had to go into hospital the night before and Helen had never taught Seb before but once we got the tack sorted, Sebastian got up on Mani like he hadn't missed a whole 6 weeks of riding and off he went. I've never seen such a natural and confident rider in a boy his age. He's got a very special relationship with Mani. He just loves it, and even Abigail, who is normally a little scardy cat around the ponies, decided Penny deserved some fresh hay. Look at the smile on that face. We really enjoyed meeting the infamous Lottie, the pony in the last photo. It is suspected that Lottie is over 40 years old. When she came to the rescue centre she was little more than skin and bones. And she's just about as friendly as a little puppy.





On the walk back home, I was struck by what a beautiful morning it was and how lucky I am . That's our house on the left and the view of Windsor Castle from our house below. We are having unseasonably warm weather and we saw daffodils in bloom as we drove to Coral Reef, the water park in Bracknell.

That's right. After riding we had some lunch of fresh baked bread (which Marc had started when we got up) with some cheese and ham. Then we went off to the water park. Abigail takes her ballet lessons at the Leisure Centre in Windsor and after each lesson she begs to go swimming. She holds her breath like a blow fish and swings her arms about out in front of her like she knows she destined to be an Olympic breast stroke champion. Seb still can't swim without his armbands, despite having swimming lessons every week at school for 1/2 hour. He is scared to death to jump from a standing position into the pool. Abigail on the other hand has absolutely no fear and quite happily jumps regardless of anyone being available to catch her. We had a blast!

I had planned on making my grandmother's famous fried chicken for dinner but by this time we were a bit pressed for time. We ended up doing tacos.....well, not exactly. I left the taco shells warming up in the oven too long and burned them. This was a bit of karma for me because the last time we had tacos Marc did the same thing and I gave him a really hard time about it. Being the wonderful husband that he is, he didn't say a thing. We just used flour tortillas, so sort of tacuritos (1/2 taco, 1/2 burrito).