We’d been invited to GI Sarah’s house today for luncheon. She is a work colleague. She’s not really called GI Sarah, obviously but we have many, many Sarah’s at work so they have had to adopt additional twiddly bits. One of them has a fancy double barrelled name with the intials P-J so she has naturally become Sarah Pyjamas. Another two are both Sarah G so have had to take the second letter of their surnames too giving us Sarah Gi and Sarah Gr. I don’t really work with Sarah Gr but do work lots with Sarah Gi who has long had the reputation of being a bit like an army sergeant so is called GI Sarah. As it goes all of this nicknaming rather pleases me (can you tell) and infact I may have had more than a little bit to do with tagging the Sarahs…;)
Anyway today we’d been invited to luncheon at GI Sarah’s – us and another colleague Sian and her daughter Imogen, who has cerebral palsy and is four. I’d briefed Davies and Scarlett on acceptable behaviour for luncheon at a work colleague’s and we’d taken offerings of eggs and some flowers.
Sarah had outdone herself with a huge spread of lunch, having previously asked what all Davies and Scarlett’s favourite things to eat were and prepared all of them! They have a trampoline (despite the ‘children’ of the house being 18 and 21!) and two rabbits and a cat.
We had a very nice four hours there with Davies and Scarlett doing incredibly well, only starting to irritate each other at the very end. we came away with a bag of windfall apples of Sarah’s tree that I’d tasked the kids to collect and a very sweet follow up text message to say what a credit D&S were to me :).
We had to drop off a folder of paperwork to Julie from Badgers who happens to live nearby so did that, leaving it in her porch before going to the swimming pool for the first lesson of term. Due to me forgetting to give the paperwork to Dad in time Scarlett’s lessons were already full so instead of her being at 430 and Davies at 5pm I had Davies at 5pm and Scarlett at 530pm which I was already cursing about knowing coming out of the swimming pool in the dark and cold later in the term would be horrible. Also the pool closes to the public at 530pm meaning Davies can’t be off swimming while Scarlett had her lesson.
We were there about an hour too early but not early enough to make it worth going home so we had a half an hour wander on the beach before going in. I’d been intending starting my channel swim – as we won’t be around for Swimathon 2011 and I’d pledged to try the 5km I’ve decided to do the Aspire Channel Swim instead. More challenging as it is 22 miles spread over 12 weeks but a great way of ending the weekly swimming lessons I think :). But when I checked it doesn’t start until 13th September so I decided to watch Davies and Scarlett’s first lesson of the term instead.
We were early enough for them both to have fifteen minutes in the pool together first before Davies’ lesson. He swam really well, his breast stroke is excellent and his front crawl is really good. He still needs to work on his back stroke as he tends not to use his arms as much as he should but generally his swimming is strong, stylish and a pleasure to watch :).
Scarlett was rather more haphazard, she can certainly swim, has no fear and will happily leap in alongside me and do a couple of 33m lengths but her strokes are all over the place. The group she was with was full of really little kids though and she was miles ahead of all of them. She did really well, coming way infront of them all every length with Davies sitting beside me saying ‘And Scarlett wins again!’. I wondered if being by far the best would bolster her and maybe be a good thing but when she came to grab her towel and we said how well she’d done she complained it had been babyish so I grabbed a word with the instructor, Carolyn. She has 3 of the same level groups running on a Tuesday and agreed that while Scarlett isn’t quite ready to move up she is very much at the top end of the group and needs to be challenged. I explained we had been late to pay so her usual group had been full and Carolyn said she wasn’t happy with several of the placings in the groups and would be chatting to the swimming lesson manager about shifting some children about and putting them with more equal abilitied children. I said we could manage any of the lesson times on a Tuesday and we left it there. By the time we got home there was already a message on the answer phone to say Scarlett had been moved back to the 430 session :).
Back home the kids had roast dinner leftovers for dinner and then we read some more of King of the Cloud Forest.
Davies has impressed me greatly by appearing at 1130pm to recite the months of the year to me perfectly. He learnt the days of the week earlier this year in about ten minutes and it seems the months of the year have happened in a similar fashion.
Am now Very Tired Indeed and have failed to note everything that happened today including Davies and I discussing an opposite and equal reaction to every action while he was on the trampoline and his very excellent short films starring the rabbits today where Davies went all Johnny Morris and did voiceovers for them to great comedic effect.
hurrah for getting the 4:30 swim slot for S 🙂
Comment by michelle — 05 September 2010 @ 7:01 am