Best Kept Secret

We discovered this amazing playground complete with splash pool, on the edge of the forest and sandwiched between two railway lines, not far from our house.  It must be Putney's best kept secret because we never knew about it before now and it is never very crowded.  I hope it stays that way!

From the playground ...

 ... into the splash pool ...

 

... back into the playground ...

 ... and back into the pool!

Run run as fast as you can!

Fun with friends

Amanda's mom lives in Kent and has this lovely sparkling pool on the property.  While they were staying there with their Granny we went to visit them out in the country.  It was a lovely sun-shiny day so we spent hours in the pool and the lovely garden surrounding it.  The four boys, and the little girl, had an amazing time in the water.  For a moment I forgot that I was in England.  It made me realise how much we miss having a real and private outdoor pool, and lifelong friends at our disposal!

Ready Steady ... GO!

Star Floats

Somersaults

Messing about

All together now!

Look what I can do!

Here I go!

Outdoor swimming

During half term we also got to do some outdoor swimming at The Roehampton Club after Nicholas had a private tennis lesson with Rory and his brothers.  It felt rather luxurious sitting by the side of the pool soaking up the sunshine.  It definitely was a unique experience given the current trend in the weather and our current location.  Hopefully we will have some more opportunities to do the same in the summer! 

More Spring Holidays

Most kids are back at school already but Daniel and I were lucky to have Nicholas' company for an extra week. The theme of the week was rest and relaxation. We spent a lot of time pottering around at home. We also had a couple of playdates including a swimming get together at The Roehampton Club with one of Nick's friends from school, Rory, and his brothers. I am sad to say that it's all over and back to school but Nicholas seems quite excited!

There are quite a lot of nice photos from outings we did during the week and over the weekend so I have kept them in separate posts. Have a look immediately after this post or click on the links below:

Natural History Museum

National Gallery

Richmond Park

50M Badge

Nicholas' swimming is coming on beautifully. I am so proud of my little fish. He has lessons twice per week: one group lesson and one private lesson. Obviously the private lesson offers much more than the group lesson but doing one of each has a lot of benefits especially since it means more time in the pool and two different perspectives as well. In level 3 they concentrate mainly on crawl and back but have started learning breast and butterfly too. The lessons are in the big pool which means it is serious swimming because they can't touch the bottom and usually the teacher isn't in the pool with them. We had an extra lesson with Virginia this week so she did a little test. Nicholas passed the STA Pool Frog 3 with flying colours. Then she did a distance test to see how far he could go in each stroke. He easily managed 50m in back, crawl was touch and go and he even just made it in breast. So he got awarded with his 50m swimming badge. Well done my boytjie - you're my super star!

PS: Nick just reminded me to add that he can also swim underwater, jump off the 1m diving board all on his own and is happy for Virginia to drop him off the 3m board as well!

Underwater

A couple of weeks ago when we were at swimming I noticed that there was a company doing underwater photography so I leaped at the chance to get some shots of my waterbabies!