The Christie Clan diaries..: July

With Litha, the longest day over, we are now into the downward sweep to Winter. We are already into the dark half, waning our way back towards the shortest day at Yule and it doesn't feel like the summer has arrived yet. The days are wet and grey, and not particularly warm. We are sleeping with our eiderdown over our duvet at the moment and I am still waking up cold in the morning.

The garden has been really slow to get going, the veg is crying out for sun, but finally my tomatoes and courgettes are gearing up for a glut, all the peas and beans are flowering and my lettuces are starting to ball up. Yay. I am overdue photos and will rememdy this as soon as there is dry day.

The children are looking forward to the summer holidays. Lochie has just 3 weeks left at school, then they have nearly 7 weeks off before he and Brenna both go to school. Lochie seems quite emotional at the moment and I wonder if he is nervous about moving up a year. He recognises that his birthday will fall after school has gone back after the summer, and has asked if we can take him to the National Science Museum in London, to see the dinosaurs - having said yes, he is now busy planning it.
Brenna is very excited about going to school and we had confirmation today that she will have the same teachers as Lochie had this year. Of the two of my older kidlets she is by far the more confident swimmer and I love watching her in the water.
Niamh is becoming more and more independant and her vocabulary is coming on with singular words like 'hot', 'up', 'sss' (yes) and 'popo' (poo poo). She understands everything and follows direction beautifully up to a point, where she realises and then is quick to be cheeky and run off. Both Brenna and Niamh are fiesty and are very good at arguing about nothing in particular - by arguing I mean Brenna yelling 'No Niamh!' and Niamh growling fiercely!

Paul is very happy with his new bike and has upped his RAB training. He will be off in 11 weeks! If you would like to sponsor them, all money raised will be split between the British Paralympic Association and UNICEF UK, please go to their fundraising page here. With all the bike problems he has had, I don't think his head has been in his training as much as he thought it would be, and I am very proud of him - it takes some mettle to go out at 6am on a wet and windy Saturday morning, when you have been training hard all week but still need to get your mileage up above 80 in one session. The children and I are encouraging him as much as possible, and trying to make going out and coming in as easy as possible - I might not be on the bike with him, but I like to think we are team regardless - I hope thats ok Paul, we love you so much!!

Tangled Muse is crammed with new products at the moment - go and take a look at our website http://www.tangledmuse.co.uk/ and our shop http://folksy.com/shops/TangledMuse

My parents came to visit us last Saturday and I was thrilled when my Dad bought a ticket to participate in the Oct 66 mile sportif I'm doing! I have 14 weeks to get my own mileage up - although not quite to RAB standards, lol. Since the triathlon 10 days ago, I took last week easy and have now decided that maintaining my current fitness is important to me - I ran 37.5k in June! I HATE running!! Ha ha. I can ride my bike, I can run 5k, so I have decided that I'd like to improve my swimming, which is frustrating because our pool is closed for improvement til 22 July. I can wait though! I paid elsewhere to swim this morning and did 32 laps in sets of 2 breast stroke (b/s) and 1 front crawl (f/c). I really want to improve my f/c technique because my breathing is all over the shop, meaning I can't sustain the pace because I'm out of breath.

We went to the local Skyride yesterday and absolutely loved it. I will leave you with some pictures of us all on our bikes. Well done for reading this far x x