Starting golf at 3....

Last week I mentioned our plan to get Theo involved with our local sailing club and this week I'm posting about his first trip to the local golf course, which I realise makes us both sound like sport obsessed helicopter parents.

But we're not! Both Jim and I were never particularly good at sport at school (or err... after!) but at a time when children are spending increasing amounts of their leisure time indoors we wanted to expose Theo from a young age to a couple of things that he may (or may not) want to pursue as he grows up. The key for both these sports is that you have to go out in the fresh air to enjoy them and that you can do them (at a certain point) on your own.

Apparently the sport of golf is going through a tough time at the moment because it has a image problem, but we are lucky having an excellent, very unstuffy club near us which has quite accessible pricing. So yesterday we decided to take Theo down for his first session and I'm pleased to say it was a success.

The driving range was deserted and the sun was shining. We each had a bay to ourselves and Theo happily hacked away with his minature irons. Wrong stance, wrong swing, wrong everything, but he was having fun! Then all three of us had a mini competition on the putting green and finally we asked about kids lessons.

Luckily for us on Saturday mornings they run a children's academy for 3-6 year-olds so we're going to give it a try. It's too soon to say if he'll enjoy it, but it would be lovely if one day I get to spend time being thrashed on the course by my precocious eight year-old son and if in the meantime we get to spend some time as a family hacking balls around then that'll be great too...

Linking up with Living Arrows & Country Kids
 

The joy of kids being messy

A few weeks ago I spotted that Mum In The Mad House was running a competition with Two Little Fleas asking bloggers to write about the fun their children have being messy. I think that one of the greatest joys of being a child is not caring if your clothes get covered in dirt or your face is smeared in food. Throwing yourself with gusto into all that you do.

Whilst we don't seem to do a lot of messy play at home (somehow we just never get round to it!) Theo has a family who love food and we seem to have an awful lot of pictures of him getting messy whilst helping cook or when eating the results, always with a big smile on his face!

So for my entry to the competition I thought I'd put together a little compilation of some of my favourite messy moments with him. I promise he doesn't spend ALL his time eating ice-cream, no matter if the evidence seems to say otherwise!

The Isle Of Wight...

A little warning to begin, this is quite a photo heavy post, but I think it's worth it...

We are back home after a wonderful few days on the Isle Of Wight. It was just what we needed after 3 months of living on top of each other surrounded by building chaos. Booking for half-term was not deliberate, but nowhere was over-run and we found the whole island reasonably priced, low key and a little old-fashioned. A really pleasant surprise.

Godshill Model village which I have wanted to visit for so many years lived up to expectations. The buildings are copies of the full size ones that surround them in Godshill, including a model of the model village itself. Which means there is a full size church, a 1/10th scale one, a model of the model and a model of the model of the model. It confuses me just writing that.

We stayed at the Priory Bay Hotel in Seaview. We had ajoining rooms and Theo's was decorated beautifully in a nautical theme. It was the first time he'd slept in a proper big bed and he took to it immediately.

The hotel has a lovely private beach right on the Solent. Although the weather let us down a bit, it was still a great place to spend time looking for shells and climbing on washed up tree trunks. With the greenery coming right down to the sand, it reminded me very much of the wild parts of Vancouver Island. 

The food was amazing. You have to try the afternoon tea if you visit...

We visited the garlic farm, where there were chickens, hamsters and some visiting owls to keep Theo entertained. Lunch had come highly recommended and although we couldn't get a table in the main restaurant, we had delicious soup and a roll in front of a log burner in their cafe. Lunch and free entertainment for under a tenner - that's my kind of day!

And then finally we spent a great morning walking (and cycling) the three miles between Shanklin & Sandown on the seafront, past the beach huts at Small Hope Beach.

The sun even shone briefly when we walked along Sandown pier. I do love a proper British seaside town...

Our three days on the island exceeded our expectations. Good food, good activities and easy to get to. The hotel was fab and staffed by lovely people. I hope we'll be back.

Theo loved the whole experience too as you can tell from the tired sulky face on the ferry on the way home. He would have been quite happy to stay for the whole week...

There are more pictures on my Instagram account, you can follow me here.

Indoor games for (another) rainy day

This month the Center Parcs challenge is all about creating indoor games as a family. Heaven knows we've had the perfect weather for that over the last few weeks! We took inspiration from the expert's suggestion to create your own indoor bowling alley.

We didn't have any empty toilet rolls but we improvised with building bricks and a varied selection of balls. It all went pretty well until one of the dogs ran off with Jim's cricket ball and chewed it (oops!) and Theo declared all out war on my tower destroying it by any means, which definitely wasn't in the rules!

Big thanks to my sister for capturing it all, as it meant quite a rare set of photos of Theo and I together!

I’m a Center Parcs Family Blogger and will be visiting Longleat village with my family. If you want to enter to win a place as a wildcard winner just go the challenge page to find out how.

Back to normal...

 

It's good to see this boy back to his normal self at last. Over the past 10 days he's been laid low with every symptom of the winter lurgy you can imagine (and really you don't want to imagine.) Somehow by sheer luck I avoided catching it, but the stream of broken nights and a tired fractious toddler took its toll on everyone.

He finally went back to nursery on Friday morning and we then spent the weekend catching up on everything, sleep included. By Sunday night I no longer felt like Christmas and university deadlines were hurtling towards me at an uncontrollable speed and things were back in some sort of order.

In the fog of the last couple of weeks I had almost forgotten what the old Theo was like, how he smiles constantly, is easy company and wants to engage with everything and everyone. When you are in the thick of something it's very easy to forget that you will eventually pop out the other side, but it's good to have made it through.
 

The shifting sands of East Head

East Head is a sand dune spit at the entrance to Chichester Harbour and right at the eastern end of West Wittering beach. I first visited by boat in my twenties when we'd cadge a lift on whatever floating vessel we could come by, bringing with us ball games and disposable barbecues. I borrowed a sailing boat once, forgot to put the bungs in before we set sail and only noticed when I saw it had sunk in the shallow water where we'd moored it. We got it afloat and made it home just, bailing out all the way.

Later I cycled here, via the small ferry that crosses from Bosham to Itchenor, and had similar mishaps with a puncture and a passing stranger who stopped to help us.

These days we come by car with dogs and a small child and just as my life has changed, East Head is always evolving too, a constantly shifting spit of sand anchored to the mainland by the briefest of hinges. If you look at historical charts you can see how the whole land mass has moved around the clock face over the years, from 3 o'clock in the 1700s to 6 o'clock where it is now.

These places that we return to time and again become markers in our lives, ways to measure the changes while all around us the sands are shifting.

Golden days

Some things you can never plan to turn out as well as they do.... On Wednesday I was invited back to my old school to talk to the pupils about working in radio. My old school is 10 minutes from my sister's house. My sister's two children had an inset day on the same day. So they all got to spend the day together and Theo helped keep his cousins entertained while they were off school.

They baked, drew pictures, threw leaves, watched tractor videos, bumped down the stairs (a novelty for a boy who lives in a bungalow) and laughed. Despite the age difference, these two are Theo's greatest friends and his biggest fans.

And my time back at school? Lets just say this, I had forgotten what a hard audience teenagers can be! A sea of stoney faces devoid of questions. It's hard to know which one of us had a more exhausting day.

And thank you to my sister for taking so many wonderful photos!