Lily at the Todmorden Cyclocross
Lily’s second race was another moment of intense pride for me – and for Katie. Again, she took te bull by the horns and rode flat out from start to finish on what was a ideal course for the Under 12s. There was a large field too, and she did herself proud. The Dad running round with her was largely just that this time – holding and pushing her on the dodgy bits of the course was kept to a bare minimum and she pedalled her little heart out. Eventually she finished 18th out of 28 under 10s – quite an achievement for a 6 year old.
I rode the senior race and really enjoyed (and hopefully benefitted from) the outing on a tough but really fun course just one week before the national champs in Bradford.
Elsie managed to kick her legs a lot during the whole thing in a combination of enthusiasm, mimickary and sympathy.
A really ace event organised by Mountainbike Guru Chipps Chippendale and we’ll no doubt be popping over to Todmorden next season for another hammering round the park.
Happy New Year
A lovely couple of days in our house just went by. Friends Rachel and Jon brought their three children to ours for a couple of nights and for the third year running we saw in the New Year with them. In order to try and keep the excitement levels up (and indeed try and stay up until midnight), we had a fancy dress theme of loutish Brits Abroad. (Well – it seemed right once I decided I was going to cook Tapas and Paella).
Photos of their stay here.
Christmas photos 2008 part 2: the other half of the family
We made a pretty spontaneous trip up to Greame and Fiona’s farm on Saturday to catch up with Katie’s branch of the family, meaning that Lily and Elsie had seen all of their six cousins and all their aunties, uncles and grandparents in the space of 24 hours. Great trip to the farm including all the normal animal chaos (no inpromptu lambing this time but some taming of a frisky horse to be done).
Christmas 2008 – a load of Haygarths together
We had Phil (my brother) and Anne with their three children and my mum to stay on Xmas day and had a brill time. So much went on my head’s a whizz but we seemed to cram a million little memories into 26ish hours.
A load of photos here. My own personal favourite moments were Angus saying “I can bite my own toe uncle Dave and it well hurts” and the fairy hunting going on on the lovely walk through Redisher woods in idyllic Boxing Day sunshine.
A midwinter p-p-p-pick-me up
It was Lily’s school Christmas Concert on Tuesday and she and some of her friends danced a delightful penguin dance. Sorry for the rubbish mobile phone quality of the fillum you’re about to watch. (Lily’s the one on the far left at the start and finish)
What’s the music called? It’s so familiar and on loads of things but I don’t know what it’s called and who it’s by. I Googled it: Perez Prado – “Guaglione”.
Oh, and on the subject of fish, which we almost were (it’s something on most penguins’ minds):
Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, “Dam!”