water-babies...

Over the last 2 weeks, the kids did swimming lessons with Brittany's swim school. You can find it on facebook here. Their teacher was Miss Bethany, a college student who swims as a sport and teaches in the summer holidays. The school is based at her family home. They have a pool in a lovely setting in the back yard and I got to hang out there, watching the kids during their lessons. Great when the sun was shining, not so good the day it rained!!

I could only get them booked in for 6 lessons so I was hoping that would be enough.

They were nervous at first but soon warmed up to Miss Bethany. She was lovely with them, calling them a 'silly goose' if they stopped kicking or didn't want to go under the water.
By the end of the second week, she had Charlotte swimming under the water after jumping off the diving board and starting to learn the front crawl - scooping the water and coming up for a breath after 3. She could also swim on her back, kicking her legs and even came down the big water slide a couple of times (she has my fear of heights!).

Toby wasn't too sure at first but by the end, he was happy to put his face, ears and head under the water, was eager to climb up onto the diving board to jump off and started to learn to hold onto a float and kick his legs to move forward.
She worked him hard for the 30 minutes - after every lesson he would pass out in the car!

But the real proof for me was this weekend, when we took them to the beach with our friends. Their kids - Luke and Johnny, who do regular swimming lessons, were more than happy to show Charlotte how to do things like the butterfly stroke and she loved it! She tried to copy everything they did and we could not get her out of the water! She spent hours swimming under the water, without any goggles on, trying to swim further each time.
Both kids were full of confidence in the water which was so good to see. I love being in the water and I so wanted them to learn to swim at a young age, hopefully we can find local lessons over the winter.
I am so proud of my water-babies.

Week One:

Week Two: 

Olympic fever

We have Olympic fever in our house this week and we are loving it!

It all started at the weekend with an Olympics themed party for our visitors - my friend Ruth from University and her family, our neighbours and some ex-pat friends. We did well and had 5 countries represented - teams GB, USA, Australia, Ireland and Mexico!

I love my neighbours - they went to Old Navy and Party City on the day and bought up a load of 4th July clearance items. They win the award for best dressed guests!:

We missed the opening ceremony on the Friday night as the Planes arrived that day and we were busy having fun at the pool, playing baseball at the pitch in the park behind the house and relaxing with beers and s'mores round the fire pit on the driveway with our neighbours! Phew! 

After taking Ruth to my run camp on the Saturday morning we enjoyed watching the opening ceremony whilst decorating the house team GB style and getting ready for the party. I particularly enjoyed the Queen and Bond dropping into the stadium from a helicopter (oh ok it wasn't really them but to be fair she did film part of it with Daniel Craig) and the whole history of England thing with the stadium transforming from agriculture through the industrial revolution to digital era. All in all I think they did a great job and I was very proud of my home nation! 

We had a great time at the party, the kids had a bouncy castle and inflatable pool in the back yard whilst the adults watched the Olympics in the house and soaked up the sunshine. Jeremy did a stellar job with the BBQ and friends brought tasty dips and salads to munch on. 

But by Monday I was on my own with the kids and unfortunately without any Olympics coverage. NBC have the rights here and in their wisdom, decided to limit viewing to prime time - 8pm to midnight, recorded over the day. I cannot stay up until midnight so I was left watching it on Tuesday, 36 hours after it happened and approximately 35 hours after I saw the results on facebook! Oh the joys of the digital era!! Oh and heavily biased (obviously) on the team USA so no coverage of Zara Philips Silver medal or the cycling. 

Until today... My friend saw my frustration on facebook and found a way for me to stream the BBC coverage through my laptop! Woohoo! I was very excited to watch the action on a pretty historical day - we got medals in rowing, cycling and swimming.

I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and playing Daley Thompson's decathlon game on the Spectrum but kind of lost interest in my 20s. I did however really get into it in Beijing when I was on maternity leave with Charlotte and we met Sir Chris Hoy (when he was just Chris Hoy!) who had just won Gold at the Olympics in the cycling.
And again when I was in the hospital with Toby and watched a lot of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

And now I have started exercising and can barely run or cycle a few miles, I have even more respect for the Olympic atheletes! It is also cool to watch it with the kids. To get them excited about the gymnastics and then see them jumping and rolling on my bed saying "Mummy look I am doing gymnastics!".

The kids have collected Olympic t-shirts from friends and family and today we received a parcel from their Auntie (thank you Lou!) with official Olympic mascots in them so we aren't missing out all together, being so far away.

So fingers crossed I can maintain my internet connection for the next week or so and we can enjoy the games with our next visitors - Jeremy's childhood friend Simon and his family plus 'Aussie' Dave and hopefully have lots of fun memories of these very special Olympic games from our home country.