Sporty Summer Days...

 Last night was Jake's final cricket practise at our local cricket club.  He's learnt a lot in just a few weeks and has really enjoyed it.  He's very keen to join the main cricket club next summer, so hopefully this is the start of something good for him.  His friend Nick, above is cricket mad.  And boy can he bowl!  He's known as Quick Nick for a very good reason.  Nick's dream is to play for the Cape Cobras one day and he's well on his way. 

For last night's practise, they'd organised a Dads and Sons friendly.  Jake asked me to play and of course I was thrilled.  Not that I can play cricket, nor do I know much about the rules of the game.  Jake & I were on the team to field first and I managed to bowl in a straight line, the whole way down the wicket and even managed to get 2 kids out :o).  When it was our turn to bat, Jake & I were paired up and I even managed to score a 6.  Jake hit the ball right out the field, which lost us a few points, but we did well and managed to score a total of 9 runs and I was not bowled out!! HA!  Just shows what you can do if you try.  I think I missed my calling...

After the match, there was a little awards ceremony, which took all of about 2 minutes, but was what the boys were waiting for...

 For those of you who don't live in Cape Town, it was hot, even at nearly 6pm, we were all hot and sweaty after the game...

 Jake's team...

 He hasn't taken his medal off yet...

 This morning was the school swimming gala.  Our temperatures went from 35 degrees in the shade yesterday to a miserable 24 today, with plenty of drizzly rain.  Not so good for a gala.  Thank goodness I don't really care too much what happens to my hair.  Jake tells me that he chose not to swim in any of the races.  He was short listed to swim breastroke & free, but decided that he didn't actually want to race them, so swam slowly.  He really did want to swim back stroke (oh he has a gorgeous back stroke, that boy does!), but someone swam into him and he put his feet down, so was disqualified in the qualifier.  Anyway... next time.  The grade 3s are responsible for doing the opening ceremony and Jake has been super excited about it for weeks.  They've practised every day for the last 2 weeks and all their hard work certainly paid off. 

Corky came to watch too before he went to school.  Is that actually some affection I see between 

 those two??

Getting ready to do his thing and pretending he can't hear me howling his name...

 The pool is cold, very cold!  The guy next to me told me I need to feed Jake more, you can see all his ribs, but in fairness, he was sucking everything in, it was that cold...

 And juding from all the pulled up shoulders, everyone was cold...

 Their theme song was "I like to move it" and their little squence was great...

 Showing off their muscles - the boys were doing something different to the girls...

 Nice straight arms, Jake...

 There was a teacher in front prompting them, you can see them all looking at her...

 Giving some attitude for the end.  Check how Jake makes sure he keeps as much of himself out of the water as possible...

 The kids had to sit in the drizzle, but were all very festive and happily cheering for their teams...

The grades one and two also did some fun races, before the serious ones, but I had to get to work.  Last year, Jake told me that it made him feel quite sad when I had to leave the gala and I had taken today off, but since he wasn't in any races, I decided it was best to get back to work anyway.  We are short of staff at the moment - our one partner was involved in a very serious motorbike accident yesterday.  He wrote off a brand new Harley Davidson that he was test driving, when someone decided to do a sudden U-turn in front of him - the Toyota Hilux is also a write off.  He was knocked unconscious when he flew over the top of the bike and landed on the pavement.  He's had surgery to fix up his badly broken wrist and arm and is going in today to have his badly smashed up ankle and leg fixed up to.  His leg bone was pushed through the bottom of his foot (makes me want to hurl just thinking about it).  He's alright though and he's alive, but will be in hospital for a while and will be very sore for longer.  Just puts everything back into perspective - some things (like worrying about paying my huge water account and Jake's pricey dentistry) just aren't important.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.  Love what you have.

Love Sue XXX