Ben's GCSEs
Ben is taking his final GCSE exams. By the 4th June he has finished PE, Music, Art, Biology, Maths and English. He has final exams in Latin, Physics, Statistics and History over the next two weeks. His verdict at the moment is that he thinks he may have hit the grades he was expecting in most subjects but there were one or two exams that were harder than he had expected. We have to wait for the results in August to see.
Coincidentally, Beccy started her GCSE courses in English, Maths and Science this week, just as Ben is finishing his!
Alexander (6 months old this month)
Helen and I took Alexander swimming in Saffron Walden. He seemed to love the water. We were in the pool for 50 minutes and he laid on his back and kicked his legs and turned on his front and kicked his legs again. He was happy all the time he was in the water and happy to be under the shower when we got out. I think he drank some water but, hopefully, this won't have done him any harm. He spotted a colourful ball and got very excited when Helen pushed it towards him. He managed to get his hands on it and to propel it back to her. We started by trying to get him to play with a white ball but it seemed to be the colours on the other ball that he was more interested. I can't wait to take him again.
Beccy and I had our first experience of babysitting Alexander on the 14th. We fed him, changed him, played with him and he was great. Dan and Helen had a trip to the cinema. The following week they came to visit us and we got some good pictures in the garden.
Beccy's Kent School trial
Beccy had a trial for the Kent Schools football team. We're not sure how she did but need to ring a premium line number on Monday to find out. At 60p a minute, let's hope the message isn't too long!
22/6/09 - we rang and she got through. The next trial, unfortunately, is on an evening when we had arranged to go to a music festival and means that we will arrive too late to put the tent up. We will either need to go separately so that one of us can put up the tent or all travel the next morning and miss the bands on Friday night - nothing ever goes quite to plan!
Walks
We have been walking quite regularly on the Hoo pensinsular. There are a good number of birds to be seen, although we are rubbish at identifying them. We think we saw a cuckoo in flight and we saw a large bird of prey that we couldn't identify. These walks are quite noisy, especially in the evening when the birds make a huge amount of noise between them.
Ben's tennis
Ben has had a few men's doubles matches with a few wins. He has also now clocked up two singles wins in tournaments and club matches with one counting loss.
We went to Ben's school to see the display of GCSE artwork. Ben had one painting on exhibit (most boys just had one) so we didn't see much but he will be able to bring it home later in the year.
Other events
Beccy took part in a samba workshop with her school. They went to a primary school and taught the younger children how to play this style of music. She had a trip to the London Dungeon and Madame Tussauds and has a day at the University of Kent taking part in French language workshops. She won the 1500m in the Medway District Sports competition for the second year running with a personal best time of 5 minutes 35 seconds. Her team came 2nd in the 100m relay
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We had a good lightning show on the 27th June. Beccy decided it was a good idea to shelter under the parasol. She soon found out that it wasn't at all waterproof and rushed inside to get a waterproof cape so that she could lie on the table and watch the storm.
