Beavers Swimming Gala 2015

Today Joshua competed in his first ever swimming gala at the Basildon Sporting Village. The event was organised by the Beavers and Scout groups and involved him participating in three types of races, float, backstroke and freestyle. Joshua as a very strong and competent swimmer and we couldn't have been more prouder of his achievements tonight. He placed 2nd place in all three of his qualifiers to successfully make it into the finals. In the finals he ended up placing 3rd in the float, 3rd in the backstroke and a very strong 2nd in the freestyle. He was by far the strongest swimmer from his Beaver group.

 

After the finals they also did a 4 man relay race and whilst Joshua was on the anchor leg, the damage was already done by some very weak swimmers on his team and it was just far too much ground for him to make up. In fact the top two places had finished the race before Joshua had even been tagged to start his final leg!!!

 

So at the end of the event Joshua had competed in a total of 7 races. I think he will sleep well tonight!!

 

Joshua starts his first qualifying race in the float event.

Joshua gets a strong 2nd place finish in his first round of qualification in the float event.

Backstroke and another strong qualifying performance by Joshua.

Onto the front crawl and Joshua comes strong at the end to take his third 2nd place in the qualifying heats.

Back stroke final and Joshua comes in 3rd place.

Freestyle final and Joshua comes a very close second place.

 

For some strange reason Brandon's Beaver group did not support the Gala which is a bit frustrating as he would have loved this event and probably done very well. Annoyingly, Caroline who is Joshua's Beaver leader later said that she would have been happy for him to join their team even though he is in a different group. To make matters even worse we actually had Brandon's swimming kit with us tonight so he could have gone and raced had we of known before. Brandon is now talking about switching from his Beaver Club and joining Joshua's. It would certainly help with the logistics having both of them going on the same night to the same club. 

Brandon gets Star of the Week

Brandon finished off a very good week by being rewarded with the "Star of the Week" certificate at school. He was awarded Star of the Week for producing some excellent work so far this term and making fantastic progress. 

 

Brandon with his Star of the Week certificate.

Last night at dinner time Tina had left Holly at her high chair with her fish, chips and peas in her own bowl. I managed to get this really funny picture showing that Holly clearly enjoying her dinner as I she lifts the bowl to her face to try and get every last pea out of the bottom. She is so funny......... 

 

Holly enjoying her food. Who needs knifes and forks!!!!

Little B's 6th B'day

Today was Brandon's big day as our little man turned 6 years old. So happy B'day to our "B". Once he woke up today it was lovely to see him run downstairs so excited and even more so once he realised that I was at home so he could have his presents before school. Today must have been the quickest he has ever got dressed and washed and then he even ate his breakfast pretty quickly. I cooked him a special birthday breakfast of boiled eggs, soldiers and bacon. Once breakfast was out of the way it was in to the living room to tear into a pile of presents. This year his interest and the common theme in his presents is Transformers, Infinity 2.0 and Avengers.  

 

His main present for this year was his Flicker scooter and as you may recall from Xmas we had a bit of a dilemma on what size to buy. In the end we went for the smaller blue version knowing that he will only get a years worth of use out of it, but the next size up was just too bog and he couldn't even reach the brake lever. So I think we have made the right decision.

Brandon enjoying his special birthday breakfast.

 

Brandon's pile of presents including his new blue Flicker.

Brandon's 6th Birthday balloon.

Birthday boy blueberry sweets, yum, yum.

Can you spot a happy B with his presents.

He seemed more interested in playing with his Infinity 2.0 Spiderman character that Joshua bought him rather than opening all his presents.

 

Holly was helping out passing Brandon more presents to unwrap.

Brandon opening his new Skylander Swap Force characters.

He ended up with 5 Swap Force characters but we are now wondering if these will get any use given Brandon's interest in the Infinity 2.0.

Brandon was very excited to finally get the Hulk for Infinity 2.0.

And even more excited with his giant Bumblebee transformer (although I think you need an engineering degree to transform this model!!),

Unfortunately Brandon didn't have much time to play with all his new toys this morning as it was a school day. The school run was good fun though as both boys used their Flickers.

 

Brandon soon got to grips with his new Flicker and was wiggling his bum from side to side to get it going.

After school the boys both had swimming club and then Brandon wanted to go out for dinner. Unfortunately he wanted to go back to the Quays yet again!!! We tried every tactic possible to talk him out of it as we really fancies a change. But he was determined that he wanted the Quays - mainly for the cookie dough pizza!!!!

 

Brandon enjoying his starter at the Quays.

All three of our beautiful kiddies enjoying a family meal out.

Mummy and her boys.

Tina made Brandon this rather delicious giant cup cake lined with white chocolate fingers and decorated with mini footballs. We took it to the Quays so they could sing happy birthday to him. One of the candles they used kept re-igniting itself which was quite amusing.

 

Brandon with his homemade giant football cupcake.

To finish Brandon's special day we headed home where he was pleasantly surprised to find uncle Michael and Auntie Lea waiting for him with more presents. Once we had dragged him off of the Infinity 2.0 to actually look at his presents, he was very pleased with his Drift transformer and a very cool Optimus Prime talking / light-up mask.

 

Brandon wearing his new personalised Chelsea pyjamas from Auntie Chris and his Optimus Prime mask from Michael and Lea.

Happy birthday Optimus B. Hope you had a great day.

His birthday will continue to be spread over the next week as he gets more presents from the family, takes sweets to football club this weekend and then he has his football birthday party scheduled for Saturday week. His present haul for today was: Spiderman Infinity 2.0 set, Hulk Infinity character, bi-plane airfix kit, Skylanders swap force with 2 extra characters, a Brandon race car pen, a Flicker, Bumblebee, Drifter, Optimus Prime Mask, Transformer top trumps, a Queen CDG for his karaoke, a Transormers DVD, Chelsea pyjamas, birthday sweets, £40, a Disney Planes 2 character and some Infinity 2.0 discs. Not bad if you ask me..........

Baywatch Babe & Badminton

Yesterday I took the three kids swimming and Holly got to wear her first ever bikini. Believe it or not this bikini is supposed to be for 18 month babies, but it seemed to fit her pretty snuggly and I can't see her getting too much use out of this. It was quite funny seeing her strutting around the male changing rooms line a Baywatch babe wearing her new bikini,

 

Little Holly strutting her stuff around the make changing rooms at the David Lloyd.

Not sure this is going to fit her for too long.

"Does my bum look big in this?"

After swimming the two boys wanted to have a knock around at badminton for a while and since Tina was not with us I had to take Holly as well. I gave her a racquet and a shuttlecock to play with so as not to disrupt the two boys too much. Instead she was hell bent on running around the adjacent court disturbing some poor couple who were trying to have a Sunday afternoon game. They did seems to find Holly amusing though,

 

Holly gets to grips with a badminton racquet.

Teaching her where the shuttle cock goes.

Holly enjoyed a run around the courts.

Brandon and Holly in action.

Holly off to annoy the couple on the adjacent court again!

Holly commando crawling under the badminton net.

Brandon's First Away Game

To start today's blog I have a lovely picture of Holly getting all dressed up for a party last weekend. She looks just so adorable in her dress and head band and she is even carrying a brush to make sure her hair is right.

 

Beautiful little Holly all dressed up and ready to party.

This weekend has once again been dominated by Joshua and Brandon's football. On Saturday Brandon had his first friendly away game at Hannikins Farm. Unfortunately I could not watch him as I had to manage the training session for Joshua's U7 team. So me we divided and conquered and Tina took Brandon and Holly whilst I took Joshua. Brandon was selected for the "A" team and seemed to really enjoy his match. I am told he played very well, however in the end his team lost 7-4. The result isn't that important at this stage, it is just good for them to be getting friendly games in to get prepared for entering the league this September. Anyway here are a few pictures from his first away game.

 

Team talks with coach Glenn. Brandon wearing the nr.5 shirt.

Brandon running at the back of the field to support his friend Zac who is on the ball.

Brandon holding the back line in defence.

The Under 6's on the attack.

Brandon ready to make a run.

And he is off sprinting down field to close down the attacker.

Plenty of boys behind the ball but they still let in 7 goals. Still a good result as Joshua's first away game was an 8-1 defeat!

Joshua also played today and had his 8th or 9th league game. We were playing against Leighwood United at a return away fixture. In the first game we had a very close encounter but came away with a 4-2 victory. Today the tables were reversed and the Tigers suffered their first defeat of the season, losing 4-2. Both teams played some good football. In the first half Joshua was in goal and made one cracking save with a stinger of a shot which he deflected with one hand. He only let in 1 goal which to be fair was really down to a fault in our defence.

 

I think as a coach I have taken the loss worse than the boys. I don't like losing at the best of times. I know the mini soccer is supposed to be non competitive and all about fun, but I do not find losing fun. We will learn from the loss and come back stronger. To be honest the loss will probably do the boys the world of good as they were probably starting to feel a bit invincible having a stream of good wins against predominantly lions teams.

Bug Boy

This term the boys are learning all about animals at school and yesterday the school had a Bug Man bring in a load of insects, reptiles and amphibians for the kids to learn about. The children got to see a range of animals from snakes, tarantulas, lizards, hedgehogs, scorpions, etc.etc. They managed to get this great picture of Brandon with a very large stick insect crawling right across his face. Such a brave little boy as I am not sure I would like this crawling across my face.

Brave Brandon with a rather large stick insect crawling across his face!!!!

 

The year 1 kids learning about reptiles, amphibians and insects.

In general Brandon has had a very good week at school and earlier this week he was also promoted to Stage 5 with his reading. To add to that he was awarded the star of the day today although he is not quite sure why he got it. Personally I think he deserves it just for having the stick insect on his face!!! So well done little B.

 

Brandon was Star of the Day 22.1.15

I haven’t spoken much about Holly lately but her walking is absolutely amazing now. It is really weird seeing her just toddle around the house at her own free will. In the last week she has now also learnt to get herself up to her feet without holding on to anything and can also bend over from a standing position to pick something up.

Karate Competition

At the weekend the two boys both participated in their first ever karate competition. The competition was more and exhibition for the tots to get them used to performing in front of a crowd and to build their confidence. I couldn't have been more prouder as I got to watch them both perform their individual routine (kata type event) and then they played the tots tag game to simulate fighting. In the tag game they are only allowed to punch to the body or tap the top of the head but its a great way to get them moving around and learning to block without getting hurt.

 

Much like me, Joshua was getting very nervous during the morning of the event and was actually saying he didn't want to do it. I explained to him that it is natural and good to have nerves and that I am exactly the same for any sporting event. I told him he had to try at least one competition to find out whether he liked it or not. As it turned out Joshua thoroughly enjoyed the competition and as soon as he got home his medals went into his school bag to take into school for show and tell. Brandon on the other hand was not lacking in any confidence and showed no signs of nerves. Given half the chance he would have stood up on the mats all day long performing for the audience.

 

Joshua rushed his kata routine and very quickly got off of the mars. But then when it came to the fighting he was a different animal and got right stuck in there.

Joshua showing some of his blocks.

Brandon lacking no confidence as he does some kicks in zenkutsu dachi.

Nice high knee position as Brandon does his snappy kicks.

Joshua happy with his medal for his kata routine.

And Brandon with his medal (he enjoyed it so much he got up and had a second go!).

The fighting starts and Joshua takes on the slightly bigger Arian.

Joshua is much like me in his fighting stance, just charge forward throwing punch after punch with complete disregard for defence and blocking!!!

Joshua scores a point to the body.

Brandon was a bit more clinical in his fight, but he holds his hands in a dangerously low guard making it difficult for him to block.

Brandon gets a head tag in.

Brandon's friend Samuel gets a good tag on B. You can see how low he holds his guard when fighting!

The pair separate ready to commence battle again.

Both boys throwing leather for the head shots.

Lovely chudan tzuki by Brandon as he catches Samuel with a beauty.

Joshua's second fight against another big lad. Nice body shot.

Joshua's forward charging fight style often drove his opponent off of the mat.

At the end of a great little tournament the Abacus contingent show off their medals. From L-R William, Dylan, Joshua, Samuel and Brandon.

 

The sporting weekend wasn't just karate as we also had all of the usual football training and matches on-going. Joshua had his second league game of 2015 against Berry Boys lions which they won 5-2 (coming back from being 2-0 down). Joshua scored his first ever league goal, unfortunately though it was an own goal!!! The FG Tigers all played great though and showed great character fighting back to keep their unbeaten streak running for the 2014/15 league fixtures.