Saturday, October 27, 2012

'Soccer Mom'



Along with the start of the last school term of the year comes the start of summer sports. Tyler's got a fairly full programme starting with soccer on Monday, touch and then t-ball practice on Wednesday, Flippaball and a swimming lesson on Friday and t-ball game on Saturday. Chris coaches the touch team.

Today was Tyler's first t-ball game (t-ball is a junior version of softball where the ball is placed on small pole at home base and the kids hit it off there). He was very proud of his Wallacetown Tigers uniform because now he looks like Daddy when he plays softball. He's in an under 7 team at the moment because he's never played before and the club didn't have enough players for under 9. The next group up plays full softball so it would have been a bit too much of a leap. It's always as funny as a play watching littlies play sport. Playing tag in the out-field is much more fun than listening to the coach ! Trying to decide what to do with the ball once they have it - very taxing on a wee brain. And they get that they have to run....but which way??

Anyway, the wee dude did pretty well for his first go and although I forgot to take the camera (d'oh!) I did get some photos and video on my phone.

Photo: First hit of the Tball season. Go the Wallacetown Sharks!
First hit of the year
                                                         
                                              Making sure he hits that home base!

Friday, October 19, 2012

Where IS that green sheep?


Most nights I read Tyler a bedtime story. He has his  own particular favourites of course, but our mutual favourite is 'Where is the Green Sheep?' which  he received as a birthday present one year from G-A Betty and G-U Dennis. 
The method of reading it has evolved over time from straight off the page as written to the current methode du jour which is where I substitute a wrong word in each sentence and Tyler corrects me. 

But it doesn't stop there. Before we start reading Tyler will say "Do the one where you get really angry!" So it will go something like this:

Me: Here is the purple sheep.
Tyler: No, here is the BLUE sheep.
Me: Hmmph. FINE. *exaggeratedly* Here is the BLUUUUUE sheep.
(Page turn)
Me: And here is the der sheep.
Tyler: No Mummy, here is the RED sheep.
Me: No. No. Look see, it says d-e-r. Der. 
Tyler: No! It's r-e-d. Red.
Me: But I'm reading it from over here, looking at it this way, so it's der.

You get the idea. It's actually quite challenging thinking up inventive ways to  change the words on the spot. Especially the pages with multiple sheep doing various activities.

The other night after a particular hilarious read-through, Tyler laughed so hard he had tears running down his face. As he wiped them up he said "Oh look, I've got tears of funnyness!"

Sunday, October 07, 2012

Hawaii

The boys are currently in Christchurch staying with Chris' Mum, so in the interim here are some photos from Chris' rugby trip to Hawaii.

The Black Pearl from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies

Dolphins

Battleship at Pearl Harbour

Submarine for tourists 

Battleship - an idea of how big it was

Chris was fascinated by these wooden, windowless buses