Cricket Saturday

The kids have been amazing today.  And yesterday.

After school they both played cricket and despite playing late, they still played in the morning.  My son played despite being hit in the face with a cricket ball yesterday and my daughter was hit by one this morning.

He accompanied my wife to a baby shower in Halstead and while I waited for them, I got some exercise and walked around the town.  I had a late lunch at a cafe that served great chocolate milkshakes and we got back home to a rested daughter to have a discussion about her school report.

Following that, we watched Mean Girls.  Well my son watched a bit before going to bed.  Hopefully he will be refreshed as I hope to take him out on his bike in the morning!  While the film was great in bits, it was a bit corny in places, but overall, I do think that it is a film that he will need to watch before secondary school.

Anyway I have just finished watching Kin, a much better film in my view, but not one for the children to watch!

Remember not to celebrate May the 4th

Today was fun.  The kids had to play cricket, but my son, who does not practice enough did not want to go as he felt that he would be useless.  We keep mentioning that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy if he does not practice, but he does not want to be proven wrong most of the time.  However he and his sister did well and enjoyed the morning.  

Later we all pulled together to do some housework, though my son wanted to annoy me (we have since worked his out).  While my son watched television later, my daughter and I went out for a bike ride in the summer showers.  I had to get a new seat for my bike as my old one broke, so we cycled to the shop to get it replaced.

Later in the day, we all watched a film.  I wanted to watch one of the Star Wars films, but I was overruled and we watched Crazy Rich Asians instead which we loved.

Chasing an ice cream van

The end of the bank holiday has come, and despite doing nothing I am knackered.

Yesterday we went to see Isobel and Tony for lunch.  They make a great roast dinner, and my wife brings dessert, this time, as usual, bread and butter pudding and a lemon tart.  It was great to catch up, and with Tony, that involved a discussion about Arsenal as well as a chat about politics.  Sadly, he has changed party, and is now helping a rival party who he shares many views with.  However there is no taint of antisemitism within it (I tried to reassure him that there it is not acceptable in Labour) and the party he has joined, and the membership of his new party is a welcoming one.  He appears to still be more left wing than me but his new party aligns itself on some important views with him, such as Brexit.

Anyway we shared our disappointment over the Arsenal result. While it was a home game, due to it being a London derby, I knew it was a tough ask to expect three points. But after ManUre lost after a four goal thrashing we were hoping for much needed points in the fight to finish in the top four.  I may have to get used to Arsenal playing in the Europa league again, or even not playing in Europe at all.  But I was looking forwards to St Totteringham’s Day this year.

Today we went back to Brightlingsea to spend time looking over water, using a pedal boat with my daughter and playing throw and catch with my son. He was great and the practice has shown since last week.  We did have an incident yesterday where he had refused to try, but he did show what he was capable of later.  And when on our way home, we passed an ice cream van.  The kids wanted ice cream, so we turned round to follow it.  The only downside was that it appeared that we had lost it.  but I took an educated guess as to where it might be, and we found it!  The kids were very pleased at that.  Obviously, the ice cream I ate was just to make sure that they did not feel that we were not sharing in the experience!

Anyway, I am tired.  My wife and I have watched The Widow and am now laughing to Sara Pascoe.  Good night all!

Hotel Transylvania

I am very tired, so a quick post about the Bank Holiday weekend.

Saturday took us to the Brightlingsea Food Festival where we enjoyed the view from the beach hut of a friend, and I went for walks with my son and daughter, and threw the hard ball we have with my son.

On Sunday, when I went into work to catch up, my son was taken to Maldon to play cricket where he met Alastair Cook.  My daughter got to spend time with a friend, and her dogs, before rain stopped play.  We travelled to Lakeside to watch Hotel Transylvania, a film that was fun most of the time, though predictable. The other two films are better, but it is not the main characters that make this film for me.

And today, I got to finally mow the wilderness that is our lawn and later went for a walk with my daughter.

I have just watched Arsenal win, but I think that the focus on attack means that we are going to let in even more goals than we have before!

And last of all, chess.  Two tournaments have been completed, the 40th Chess.com Quick Knockouts 1201-1400 with a respectable placing of 262nd, and the 35th Chess.com Tournament (1401-1600) where I finished 418th!

The weekend that was

I missed my son playing cricket this weekend.  On Friday, after work I had been asked to collect my son from a cricket meetup in Halstead and I was hoping to get to watch him play, however, while I got there in time to collect him, the games had just finished. 

The weekend involved my daughter going to a birthday party where she got to do some climbing and after she got back, she had to catch up on homework.  My son was amazing around the house and I did throw a few balls for him to bat away.  The deal is that if he is able to get it over the back garden fence, I will give him a pound (for his Pokémon GO account), but one ball was lost near the shed and the other one went over a fence, but to the side.  I have to say that I am impressed with how hard that he is able to hit it, especially as when this happened last, he got annoyed as I hit him twice (he did not block properly).

And of course, there was the England game, which I watched with Tony.  I knew that we had to win this to take off any pressure when it comes to playing Belgium, but I did not expect such a scoreline!

A happy son

Since the last post, the family have fallen in love with the new car.  Last weekend we drove down to London to see my mother and the parents of my wife. I had to attend a course, and my son was away on a camping weekend.  My daughter therefore got alone time with her grandparents, who while glad to see her, were a bit sad to only see one grandchild.

My son has a weekend of activity planned.  He gets to play cricket tomorrow and on Saturday gets to go out onto the River Blackwater.  This meant that I did not get to collect him from school this weekend as my wife had to get him some cricket whites and apparently he was sad as this meant that I have not collected him from school for a while.  But later in the day, he proudly showed us his work when it came to his Celebration Evening at his school. My daughter found that school was smaller than it was when she left it and got to meet some of her old teachers as well.

Back to my son, the downside for him and his day at the Blackwater is regarding his love of PokémonGO as it means that he has less time to catch Pokémon. But he went to bed very happy today as he managed to get a rare Pokémon. One which I do not have, and I am not jealous at all! And on that topic, I still have a Pokémon in Sri Lanka!  

Most importantly though, I have my fingers crossed for the first competitive match of cricket that my son has to play.  Considering that he hated it when he was first taken to play it by my wife, this is a big step for him and I do hope that he does not lose the love for the game that he has developed.