We came, we saw, we conquered....and picked flowers

It's half term for us now so this last week has been filled with school activities and fun rather than any obvious academic drive. Matthew had Roman day today where his whole year dressed up in an impressive range of roman and semi roman gear (and one boy turned up in green camo gear suggesting that ancient European history doesn't necessarily reach across the multi cultural community here). His cardboard cutting for his costume was with scissors and supervision on this occasion! He spent the day in the pool (aka Roman baths), doing mosaics and having a roman feast and declared himself completely exhausted as he flopped into bed.


Its also been a week of sports and sports days for the boys - katie's is after half term presumably in the hope that the extra 2 weeks of training will help the younger children work out where the finishing line actually is. Both boys were victorious in their cricket matches if a bit sketchy on actual runs scored (usually a sign that there weren't many). Jamie spent most of a day getting to and from the match returning home tired and pretty dehydrated just after 7pm - 12 hours away from the house for 40 overs of cricket wasn't an obvious equation for me or our very nice neighbour/cricket mum who waited for 2 hours at school for their delayed return. Matthew had to drop out of the tug of war when the coach noticed that letting a small boy with a hand still bandaged from having stitches removed the day before pull on a thick rope was probably unwise. The tug was restarted with the great kine "now we have a team where everyone has 2 hands"....but his team won and he did fine in his running race so he was happy. Jamie also stood his own in the 800m race - although he's got a long way to go before he threaten's Kenya's record setting David Rudesia.




Katie celebrated the end of school for a week by getting on her bike and cycling along our road picking flowers. I think she was as interested by the jumping spider that rode in on one of the pointsetia (that grow wild here to over 3m high- not like the ones that bloom in houses across the UK at Christmas) as the flowers.


And now we are off to the beach for a week. Bags are packed, the kindle loaded, malaria tablets distributed, dive gear retrieved from the depths of our garage, the weather checked - sunny! Not sure who is more excited, the kids or me.

Anne