Easter

What was planned to be a nice trip to North England and Scotland turned into a weekend at home with everyone fighting a cold and in Yana's case a fever. But we got some rays of sunshine at last and managed to enjoy the weekend with crafts...

..., a nice roast chicken for lunch and an Easter egg hunt in the garden...

Two parties in one day

We needed a bit of cheering up today after having to deal with snow yet again, in the middle of March. So having two parties to attend in a single day was perfect for that. 

The first party, was Yana and Anya's friend Ella's fourth birthday. Her mum, who runs a wonderful baby and children's music and sensory class called hartbeeps, put on a great show for them. They had a fantastic time.

 

The second party was an early birthday party for Lindsay. He had kept it small with just two families, but having 6 kids running around the house was probably enough anyway. The spontaneous theme was Jamaica with the heating cranked up, lots of fruit, pina coladas, Bob Marley and summer outfits. Unfortunately we didn't get a photo of Hannah and I in our Hawaiian skirts.

Parkrun

Last year we discovered Parkrun, which is a free 5km run held in parks all over the world every Saturday morning at 9am. All you need to do is register, print out a personal bar code (if you want your run to be timed), show up at the park, run 5km and present your bar code at the finish line. Because you get your run timed, you are able to see how much you improve from week to week.

We took part in the Reading Parkrun a few times last year, taking turns with Hannah to run and look after the children. Two weeks ago we started to get back into it. Because the Reading Parkrun location has been flooded, we tried out the Woodley (also Reading) Parkrun. Two weeks ago only I took part and Lindsay and the kids were marshalling.

There were 150 odd people running. We did three laps around Woodford park (in Woodley, Reading). It was a great atmosphere.

My time (27:52) was nowhere near my the PB that I got in New Zealand, back before having kids, but I am working on it and trying to at least get back into the vicinity of it.

Last week Hannah and I took part, while Lindsay was kind enough to look after the children again. It was raining heavily, so the turnout was quite a bit less than the previous week.

There were parts of the track that were incredibly muddy and slippery. Whenever I passed Lindsay and the kids, they ran along side me for a while. Maybe Yana will be able to do one of the three laps soon. I just bought her some running shoes today. Despite the slippery paths I was a few seconds faster than the previous week (27:22).

Red Nose Day

Last Friday was Red Nose Day. As usual, everyone was really getting into it here in England. People here seem to support charity events so much more than in Germany or New Zealand. Pretty much every sporting event I have taken part in has been for charity and every couple of weeks Yana is supposed to bring along a pound or a bottle/can of something to school for some charitable cause.

For Red Nose Day the girls got to dress up to go to school - Anya as a pirate and Yana as anything she wanted (she chose to be a witch):

There was also the Great Wessex (name of the school) Bake Off, into which Hannah entered these great Red Nose Muffins:

An attempt to get back into triathlons...

On Tuesday I took part in a triathlon organized through my work. It took place at Green Park, a business park in Reading, which is where my office will be re-locating to in about August. There were about 25 people from my current office taking part, partly in teams and partly as individuals, and it was a great day. I did the baby-distance - 200m swim, 9km bike and 3.5 km run - and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't go for the longer distance.

Leading up to the triathlon I was quite worried. I had taken part in the same triathlon last year and I did okay, but I hadn't done much training over the winter, apart from a few 2km jogs home after dropping the kids off at school. I went for one proper bike ride and one swim in the week leading up to the triathlon.

I was also worried about the weather. It was still pretty chilly, with me having to scrape ice off the windscreen even on the morning of the triathlon. I was already thinking that I may have to use the heated changing tent that I laughed at last year. But then as if by some kind of miracle it turned out to be a beautiful sunny day getting up to about 12 degrees Celsius and I didn't need to worry at all.

I started in the last swim wave, which was a very fast swim wave, and I was the second to last person to get out of the pool. Thanks to my lovely bike I managed to overtake a few people. But I went way too hard on the bike ride and had nothing left for the run. I thought I was going to be sick and was tempted to walk, because I was wondering whether I would be just as fast. I managed to overtake someone who was walking and decided that running was probably still more effective. Right at the very end, when I saw the finish line I loosened up a little and felt like I was able to run properly again.

I was disappointed about the fact that I was slower than last year and particularly about my running time. But I still enjoyed the day and I am determined to actually do some training and manage to do a sprint distance triathlon later in the summer. Here are my results.

An attempt to get back into blogging, or: Spring-time is near

It has been far too long since our last blog-post, in fact: it has been almost two whole years ago. This is an attempt to get back into blogging and here is our first blog for the year 2013:

Last weekend we spent a lovely day at the National Trust site Clandon Park near Guildford. There weren't many flowers out yet, because it has still been quite cold over the past few weeks, but we did manage to see some snowdrops.

The kids had a great time running around the grounds, with Yana navigating the way using the map.

Within the park there is a Maori meeting house called Hinemihi, which the 4th Earl of Onslow (governor of New Zealand in the late 1800s) just packed up and took home with him. 

Towards the end of our stay we went through the museum that is housed in the grand 18th century mansion. The girls had a great time dressing up as Victorian maids.

And to end a great day, we invited our friends Clodagh and Paul for dinner and roasted marshmallows over the bonfire.