Without any real planning to do so we’ve spent 3 of the last 5 days in the company of Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna. It’s been lovely actually. Scarlett and Jack have been getting on really well and it’s been so nice to be with Julie as we had slipped into more of a fortnightly getting together of late. It came about today as I mentioned yesterday that we would try and get along to the PYO farm today and Julie said ‘oh we’ll come too!’.
Before we went out this morning Davies and Scarlett played with lego and the pretend food. Davies built an ‘RV’ and gave me great descriptive detail about itand it’s various components and design features. I made some lunch to take with us and we headed out to PYO.
Julie and co arrived just after us, thankfully with suncream as I’d stupidly forgotten to pick any up again and the sun had broken through the clouds and was at full strength again so I’d have surely topped up my burn otherwise :rolls:.
The strawberries were rubbish but we sat for ages in the pea field picking, chatting, playing and in Lorna’s case having some milk too :lol:. We decided her little 5 week old life is pretty full and would make a good ‘Amazing Adventures of Lorna – breastfed in as many different locations as possible during the first 6 weeks of her life’ film 😆 Today she managed pea field, tractor trailer ride, sitting infront of Shakespeare play just in a few hours :). We also got loads of raspberries too. The children discovered the irrigation system which throws out massive jets of water across the crops and got soaked playing in that – happy, happy children :).
We drove a little along the road to Highdown Gardens and discovered a man in a funny hat in the carpark and then signs along the paths leading to ‘Rainbow Theatres’.It turned out to be the dress rehearsal and setting up of stage etc. for some plays happening there over the next week or so. We set our picnic rug up in full view of the stage and were soon approached by one of the set builders to say if we hung around we’d see a performance soon. We ended up staying for a couple of hours watching them get dressed up and start to run through the play. The children wondered around and about, sometimes stopping to watch. Davies was very interested in the setting up and costume stuff but was less for sitting and watching the performance which was Taming of the shrew.
Reluctantly we left as we had to get back for swimming. So we whizzed home for the children to get changed and me to shove pizzza dough into the breadmaker.Ady arrived home and we all went off to swimming. They both had a great lesson; Davies is really doing well and Scarlett appears to have had a real breakthrough and is actually swimming although she stops when she needs to breathe and puts her feet down. Davies has gone up a class from September which I am proud of him for but both children are quite upset at the idea of not being in the same class anymore :(. We spoke to the instructor about whether she thought Scarlett could take a couple of week long courses through the summer and get put into the higher class too but she said she doubted there would be space for her even if she was up to that standard :(. It means Davies’ lesson is at 4pm and Scarlett’s is at 530pm which will be a right pain for us so we’ll have to see how that pans out and hopefully it will only be for one term before Scarlett gets put up with Davies too. It is staggering how Scarlett has gone from thrashing wildly in the pool to a rather graceful stroke in mere weeks :shock:.
We came home and Ady took over while I got changed and dashed back out again to the library for book group. We were discussing two books this month having not met last month so that was quite lively. We finished about 830pm and I walked home again to find the children awake but allegedly in bed :rolls:. There was some toing and froing before they actually did settle down though.
Nice idea for a baby book. I bet you could sell it round here!
Congrats to both on swimming progress.
Comment by Allie — 16 July 2008 @ 8:14 am
Don’t know if your pool has separate pools, but that’s why we always go swimming on a Monday – because when the kids have lessons they can swim for free, so I only have to pay for myself 🙂 It’s one way of filling in the gap between lessons, and makes the whole thing much cheaper 😉
Well done to Davies 🙂 Buttercup was very relieved not to be going up this term, this class is all too much like hard work for her 😆
Comment by Alison — 16 July 2008 @ 10:35 am
I’m always amazed at these kids all swimming so young. I couldn’t swim until I was 10!
Comment by Michelle — 16 July 2008 @ 7:26 pm
I was gonna say the same as Alison, S would soon be moving up to Ds group with all the extra practice!
Comment by Liza — 17 July 2008 @ 10:28 am
Our experience of swimming classes was that decisions about moving on were less about ability (within some parameters, obviously), and more about whether or not there was space in the class above, or pressure from below.
Comment by Joyce — 17 July 2008 @ 10:32 am
Yes I think that’s what we’ll do – the big pool is open to the public til 530 when S’s lesson starts so we can watch D’s together, then all have an hours swim before D and I watch S’s lesson. Ah well I guess it means my never before achieved aim of swimming with them once a week will finally happen!
Joyce, I think you’re right and suspect we’ve been lucky to even get them in the same non swimmers class up to now!
Comment by Nic — 17 July 2008 @ 12:34 pm