Reasons to be Cheerful #CountryKids at Ambleside Sports #R2BC

 

This is the last week that the wonderful Jo at Ojo's World is hosting the linky as she hands it back to me for August! She has been an amazing host whilst my life has been a whirlwind so I hope she enjoys the break until September. I am combing this with my second country kids post of the week as it was such a huge reason to be cheerful. We made our second ever visit to Ambleside Sports as we had enjoyed it so much last year (my daughter winning £10 wrestling helped!). So here are our Country Kids at Ambleside Sports reasons to be cheerful:


1) Healthy sibling rivalry

A free competition to see how far you could row in 5 minutes or how many calories you could burn on the cross trainer made both the children happy:

2) Beautiful scenery and inspirational athletes:

My son and I saw the start of the amazing 9 mile Rydal Round from part way up the fell race course. One hundred tough fell runners who were out for a minimum of an hour and half with an awful lot of ascent and descent:

3) Up close to the action

There can't be many places were the cyclists race on grass:

4) Fell racing

This is my son in a race to the finish in the under 12s fell race. As he is only 8 he did well to finish 63rd out of 85th. He really accelerated when he heard the Helm Hill supports screaming his name!

#CountryKids Swim Safe at Brockhole

Today we headed to Brockhole for my children's Swim Safe session. These sessions are run jointly with the RNLI and the Amateur Swimming Association About Swim Safe. Living in a county with lots of open water I was very keen on helping my children learn how to stay safe - my daughter has twice got too cold in the water and needed rescuing so it was time to teach them to be safer.

On arrival they were kitted out in full wet suits, bright tops and swimming caps to keep them visible in the water:

An RNLI lifeguard ran them through the 5 main safety rules:

Then some ASA instructors ran through the things that the children would be doing in the water before leading them down to the lake:

Reasons to be Cheerful: Summer Holidays are here #R2BC

Thanks again to Ojo's World for hosting this month. Go and see what is making her smile! Here are my reasons:

1) Leaving primary school

My daughter had her year 6 leavers' service on Friday. A packed church for an emotional goodbye, the end of 5 years at her school and moving on to secondary. There were plenty of laughs too and in the evening nearly all the families met up for a party in the village recreation ground:

2) Running

I hadn't run for a month so it was such a fabulous feeling to get out on Monday. I went off way too fast I was so excited! It was only 4 km but it put a smile on my face:

Then on Wednesday my son acted as my fell running coach and wore me out on the Helm:

#CountryKids Get Cycling at K Village

At the weekend there was a special cycling event at K Village and we went along on Sunday so that the children could try out a load of different bicycles with Get Cycling. My daughter is a keen cyclist but her brother isn't so keen. However there was something to tempt both of them:

One of the more unusual bikes was a miniature penny farthing which both my daughter and I had a try on. It was incredibly strange and I found it hard to turn corners:

My son's favourite was the recumbent bike but I am not forking out £300 for one!

Reasons to be Cheerful: Certified! #R2BC

I am leaving the linky in the safe hands of Jo at Ojo's World until the end of the month as she is doing such a great job! She seems to be bursting at the seams with her reasons again this week. Here are mine:

1) I did it!

I was officially signed off as a qualified teach this week! All the blood, sweat and tears have added PGCE to my title. Its been a roller coaster year but getting that piece of paper makes it worth while. Now to recover over the summer before undertaking supply work and seeking a permanent job.

2) New home

The biggest reason to smile about the new house is that my son's bedroom has finally been replastered so we can decorate it:

We have also done some work on the garden and things in the front room are finding their new homes.

3) Proud mummy

My daughter carried the Union Flag for her Guide company at the Sea Sunday service at church. Its a heavy flag and she did really well:

4) Prizes

I had forgotten that I had won an Avengers canvas from an Instagram competition. It was a lot bigger than I expected and will look amazing on my son's bedroom wall:

Please join in and share your happy posts!

#SilentSunday

#CountryKids in Bradford

I have missed joining in with this linky! Looks like I have a backlog after over a month of enforced blog silence. So I will start off with last weekend's trip to Bradford. This may not seem like a Country Kids event but read along and it will become clear ...

We took the scenic route (in the rain) via Skipton and arrived in plenty of time for our showing of Horrible Histories at the Alhambra:

It was an incredible show with laughs, things that made you jump and plenty of fascinating facts about the people who have invaded Britain since the Romans.

When we came out we nipped into the National Media Museum next door for a quick bit of TV fun:

A retro game of Pong:

Then we headed outside in to what had become a glorious day:

Reasons to be Cheerful: I am back online!! #R2BC

The wonderful Jo over at Ojo's World has been hosting as I haven't been online at home since the start of June! All that is now behind me and I am back again. So here are my reasons to be cheerful this week:

1) Internet

Not having home broadband has been so frustrating and its been a comedy of errors. In the end my mum had to email the CEO of BT to get me sorted! Today at 3:20 I was finally reactivated after being switched off on June 1st. We have all systems back online and that includes TV which is a relief. It shows how much our family and student life relied on being able to connect to the world wide web.

2) Fun in the sun

Today to celebrate great academic reports from both children we headed to the park in the village and the children were all cooling off in the river. It didn't seem to matter that my two didn't have swimming gear:

3) House move

Well I haven't been able to blog about the progress in the house since we moved but today a major step happened when builders ripped out the dodgy walls in my son's room and started to make it a safe room for him to sleep in:

Hopefully now I am back online and coming to end of my teacher training I will be back blog on a regular basis again!