Selfies

I'm heading off soon for my first ever 10.5k race. I didn't sleep very well and I'm a bit nervous. I'll leave you with a couple of the photos I found on my phone the other day - not from Joss this time!

At least it isn't a duck face....

We were at Toby's soccer training while these were taken. I know this because she silently took this photo of me. Reading time, the best thing about soccer training.

Spring

The blossoms are out everywhere, and while it is still cold, I know that winter is slipping away. There seem to be more people who prefer the heat, but I am definitely in winter's camp. Having a house with ducted heating helps, but I don't even mind running on a dark morning when it is zero degrees, or standing on the sidelines at soccer, feeling the cold ground through my shoes. I'm so much more of a whinger when it is hot.

Still, there are plenty of advantages to the passing of winter and I think the first one will be time. Cycling is all year round, but soccer is not. No more soccer training, that's two afternoons a week, and no games on Saturday! I don't think road season for cycling has Saturday competition either, so we could have a whole day off! That's worth looking forward to.

Back to school

When your children either catch the bus, walk or ride their bike to school, it can be quite long between visits. This week we have been to both schools, thankfully, for fun things. Joss had a Year 9 subject information night. When I was at school (I love being the old person who starts sentences like that), I chose two electives, in Year 7, that I did for all of Year 8 to Year 10. I chose French and German. Joss had compulsory subjects for all of Year 8 as well, and now has had to choose three electives.

Andrew and Joss had spent some time going through all the options, so Joss was pretty sure which subjects she wanted to choose, but I was surprised at what was on offer, and why. It seems like they provide, along with more academic courses like commerce or French, options that students will enjoy and, spread over their timetable, will keep them interested in school. There are subjects where you go hiking and complete Duke of Edinburgh, there are extra PE subjects (PE is a compulsory subject as well) and all sorts of fun things like textiles, photography, dance and food technology. You could choose all physical subjects and end up playing sport for something like twelve lessons a week!

We were told, very clearly, to let the students choose subjects they want to do; to let them give things a go. The only two subjects where choice at this stage affects the HSC, are French and music. Obviously, if you want to do French or music for the HSC, you need to include those now. Joss has given up on French, so the 2015 school trip to France is definitely off! Joss chose journalism, food technology and child studies. I told her that she can make dinner at least once a week as part of her food technology study, and that if she has to bring one of those dolls that cries all night and needs its nappy changed, that she is on her own!

I also went to Bethany's assembly, as her class was doing the item. They had each made a papier maché puppet and written little plays for them. Bethany's was about a very naughty puppet named Claudia (yes, this was Bethany's puppet), whose friends taught her not to play pranks. It was a very familiar story...

Taking photos with my phone proved difficult. That's her fuzzy, pink puppet.

I tried to make it less fuzzy by not zooming in, so this is a shot of parents' heads and a pink dot.

Each team had to come out and bow. Bethany is the one with the white shirt.

Thankfully, we can get close when it is all over.

Coffee meetings

Ah, meetings. Sometimes they are a great thing to have when you want to avoid actually doing stuff, other times they are really productive. My team has meetings every fortnight and we have always had them in my office, which has three less-comfy-than-they-look tub chairs and a coffee table. We decided last week, however, that we would have our meetings in cafes, as a way of doing something a bit social as well.

For our first cafe, I chose the Old Empire Tea Rooms, given my lovely experience there last week. We had a very good meeting with coffee, minty hot chocolate, passion fruit melting moment and tomato and basil muffin. I like this plan a lot. Especially as, after some serious rearranging last week, my office looks like this.

Hipstamatic makes it look better....

I took this photo for Tim, as his little people love a good 'chino'. 

Running update

Everyone hates a smug, fit person. I don't want to be one of those, but I do want to share where I am up to with my running because it still astounds me that I can do it! I am hourglass shaped, not remotely sporty, came last in every race I ever went in. It started at the end of January when I decided to stop flirting with fitness, now that I am well and truly over forty, and make a real effort to get some of the many health benefits of being properly fit. I began running in sixty second bursts and have built it up by running three times a week, without fail, ever since.

I have given up on the 'runners' high' I have heard about, I find running hard, but it is a lot easier than it was. When we lived in Central, I ran around the completely flat streets. Moving to hilly Estella was a shock and it took me a while to work back up to running for thirty minutes straight, the uphills really took it out of me!

When I finished the couch to 5k app, Shep said that I needed a new goal, but I was happy just doing a half hour run (with five minutes walking either side to warm up and cool down) three times a week, which is easy to fit in before work. Then, in a weak moment, my friend Narelle and I agreed to form part of a relay team to run a marathon - a real marathon! There are four of us in a team and we each run 10.5k. I bought a new app to get me from five to ten kilometers, and am now in the final week. Just in time because the marathon is this Sunday.

This app is a bit different. It is still three runs a week, the first being a shorter, steady paced run, the second involved jogging then bursts of fast runs and then jogs, or a sustained faster run, and then, for the last run of the week, the time was increased by five minutes each week. On Saturday I was supposed to run for 60 minutes, with five minutes walking either side. As I can't walk for the first five minutes of the marathon, I decided to run through both walking sections, going for seventy minutes! It wasn't easy and I spent a lot of time thinking about calling Andrew to come and get me, but I ran the route of my marathon leg and ended up doing 10.5 kilometers. I started at Wagga Beach, ran past the school , over the very nasty hill on Red Hill Rd (Red Hill perhaps?) and dow to Jubilee Oval.  I'm not fast, and coming last is a real possibility, but at least I know I can run the whole way.

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Old Empire Tea Rooms

People used to say that Toby was Andrew's 'mini-me' and I would reply that he was so much like Andrew that it was as if I wasn't there. It isn't just his face, either. Toby is a perfectionist (about some things, homework isn't one of them), so when piano exam time comes around, our biggest worry is dealing with the nerves. Before every exam I can remember sitting, I was praying that despite the fact that I left the study to the last minute/didn't do enough work, I would do well anyway. There would be tears because I had done it again and would I ever learn? With Toby, we pray that he gets what he deserves, because he practices every day.

On Friday, Toby went to school as usual and I left work and picked him up just after ten. At six past eleven he went into his exam and in the following twenty minutes, went from a trembling, close to tears bundle of nerves, to a relieved grinner! We won't know his results for a while, but he is happy with his performance and, therefore, so am I.

There is a McCafé between the Conservatorium and his school. We have been there before around exam or eisteddfod time, but I felt that this celebration required more ceremony and a little less grime. I decided we would go to the evocatively named Old Empire Tea Rooms, up the Paris end of town. It was a brilliant idea. I have blogged about this café before, when it was just a hole in the wall. Now they have several rooms and Toby and I perched ourselves in front of the window, to watch Wagga go by. I told the friendly, dapper fellow that we were celebrating and would require hot chocolate and something sweet. He overwhelmed Toby with a list of all the things he might like, including three types of hot chocolate, so I helped him choose, and ordered a flat white for myself.

While my phone and the photo booth on my computer are full of selfies of Joss and funny videos of Bethany, Toby is not a man who likes the camera. This is the best shot I got of him enjoying his minty hot chocolate and chocolate shortbread sandwich, which he declared 'the best bikkie ever'. When we could no longer avoid returning to school and work, I went to pay for our lovely refreshments and experience, only to be told that my coffee was all I was to pay for. They made Toby a congratulatory present and he felt very special.

Bethany has started to have private violin lessons. All children at her school learn the violin in Year 3 and a few keep going with it. There is a family at church with three beautiful-in-every-way girls who are pretty much grown up now. The youngest, Rhiannon, finished school last year and Bethany was in awe of her. Rhiannon plays the violin, so Bethany wants to play too. Andrew had the brilliant idea of asking Rhiannon to teach her, so now we go to Rhiannon's house once a week and Bethany is in raptures. She, too, is practicing every day.

Last night, just before bed, she and Andrew gave me a one song concert. At the beginning of anyone's violin journey, I think one song is a very good concert. Keep it up, Bethany!

Good morning, Sunshine

The view from our house never fails to make me thankful. Today, Toby has his piano exam. I might wake him up now so we can marvel at the sunrise together.