Last weekend was the Whitley Bay Annuals,  the big excitement was that it was to be Molly’s first proper skating competition.   The morning started well,  we all got up at 4:30,  dressed in competition finery and hair done, and it was off to the rink.

I left the kids in the waiting area and sat down to watch,  I’d been sitting for about 2 minutes when the power went out.  We were all escorted outside to wait,  and then eventually it came back on and we went back in and started again,  unfortunatly the power just wasn’t reliable and after it went off for the third time the competition was cancelled.

So,  no video of Molly’s first competition but here is a photo taken outside whilst we waited for the power to return.

Unfortunately,  the competition has been rescheduled for a weekend when the girls are on holiday wiht granny,  so she will have to wait until October for her next chance to compete.

Katie didn’t have to wait quite so long,  as she was competing in Hull this weekend.  We have been to Hull a few times now, and it’s always a lovely competition,  I really like the rink there,  it’s nice and bright and warm!  It was a very hot day and we were all roasting in the ice rink,  it’s not often we are sat by the side of the rink complaining about the heat.

Katie had a lovely skate,  and after a rather funny fall in the warmup (sadly not caught on film),  she managed to land everything when it really counted.   She ended up in 7th place.

and here are a few photos

   vs 

A few weeks ago a friend of mine shared some gorgeous handbags she had
made. I was quite inspired, but not quite ready to try a handbag,
so I bought some lovely fabric and then pondered what to do with it.

There was the very real risk of the fabric sitting in my pile and
never being made into anything, but I really didn’t want that to
happen, so today I decided to make some lunch bags. I really like
the size of the Bloomindales Little Brown Bags, so that is the sort
of shape/size I was hoping for, and I found these instructions which
seemed to follow that idea. The instructions don’t have handles on,
so I added some with ribbon, the blue gingham ribbon was perfect but
that was all I had, so I have 2 very short handles on my bag. Katie
chose a thinner ribbon and longer handles, and Molly chose some very
sheer ribbon so I plaited it to try and give it a bit of strength.

The next question is how well they will hold up with lunch in them,  we shall find out tomorrow.

I stumbled upon this lovely free digi kit yesterday, so I decided to do a quick layout of Molly and her skating medal.

 
All the elements were from the Floral fusion kit, which I downloaded from Digi Designs
and Stolen Moments. (the yellow alpha is from simplycleandigiscraps)

I quite enjoyed this, the page was mostly already created so it was definitely no stress scrapping, and since it was digi, it was no mess scrapping as well

On Sunday mornings, they run competitions at the rink. Molly has entered a few times, and on Sunday she came third! Which was a great result, and she was thrilled to bits with her medal.

After skating, she went for a bike ride with Phil and mastered cycling without her stabilisers! All in all a great weekend, and I haven’t even mentioned the chocolate.

Molly went skating with the big kids yesterday morning.   Normally she has to go later in the day when it is busy,  but because it is quiet at Easter she got to come in first thing in the morning and skate.

She has got her first program, which I attempted to video.  She is skating to Sugar Plum Fairy and Angelina Ballerina.

Here she is in glorious shades of grey.   (I never remember until I get to the rink that this camera hates the lights in the rink)

and in glorious technicolour

Not a lot of beach...

It’s the first day of the easter holidays today,  and whilst Katie was off making Jewellry at a class,  Molly wanted to go to the beach.  We live about 3 minutes from the beach and I go as rarely as possible,  it’s just not something that appeals to me,  all that sand between your toes and avoiding the dog poo,  I can do without it.  Of course,  we don’t live on the Costa Del Sol,  I might like the beach a bit more if it was accompanied by scorching on hot temperatures and ice cold cocktails.

As I’d promised,  we headed down there,  I cleverly picked the carpark near the cafe so when I’d had enough we could head in for a coffee,  I’m not daft

First problem,  the tide was up so there wasn’t an awful lot of beach to play on,  secondly,  it was freezing cold and very windy,  and then theres the dog poo….

We settled on a brisk walk from one set of steps to the next.  I expected a great deal complaints about the briefness of the visit to the beach,  but I think even Molly could see it wasn’t ideal beach conditions. 

I thought I’d entertain myself with some photography,  so I took a lovely shot of the lighthouse.   If you squint you might be able to see it,  i promise you it is there,  but I shan’t be blowing it up and hanging it on my wall!

The lighthouse and the sea fret...

So,  we wandered along the beach,  Molly picking up stones and generally trying to appreciate the beach,  and me reminding that the tide was coming in,  and we’d be drowning if she didn’t get a move on  Eventually (it took at least 6 minutes) we made it along the beach and up to the prom.  We shook the sand out of our shoes and took a few more photos,  and headed back to the cafe.  Ordered a couple of drinks and some tunnocks teacakes and sat by the window looking at the sea.  Now I was happy,  this is how I like to enjoy the seaside,  from behind glass with a hot drink and a choccy biscuit in my hand.

it's not exactly bikini weather

Whilst we were sat,  we were entertained by the road sweeper who was attempting to clean the prom.  He was going around in circles,  back and forth & side to side attempting to pick up a specific bit of dog poo,  but he missed it every time,  until he hit it,  not with the cleaning brush but with his tyre and he made the mess much worse than it originally was.  Molly and I got much amusement out of this

After the entertainment was over,  and the coffee finished we headed back to the car,  approximately 45 minutes after we had arrived , not a bad ‘afternoon’ at the beach for me…..

Some friends and I chat online quite often, and we realised recently that we’d been chatting for 5 years. That’s an awful lot of gossip!

In celebration of all that hot air, we had a little cybercrop, and I did some layouts last night. Its been a while since I did much scrapbooking at home, and I rather enjoyed it. Katie and Molly did a few pages too.

Here are our efforts

This page is by Molly

Let's Dance

Born 2 Dance, page by Katie

This is Katie’s picture folder

Tresspasses Will

The rest are all my pages, based in cybercrop classes

This is me, Scuba Diving in Cyprus in 1994.

Our nickname for Epcot,  from when Katie was tiny and couldn’t say Epcot.

Katie & I, along with my parents, went down to Telford on Thursday for their Open. It was a good day, and Katie had a great skate. She ended up a very respectable 8th out of 21, and landed her Axel.

Thanks to Dad for doing the video, Telford has a strange orange glow about it, but the video is much better than my usual efforts!

Jane challenged me to blog more often, so I shall endeavour to find something to share occasionally.

This morning started off normally enough, I left for work ontime and headed around the corner and onto the main road. I had just pulled out when my foot dropped flat to the floor and the accelerator pedal stopped working. I was manically pressing my foot through the floor whilst quickly coming to the realization that it wasn’t working anymore. I actually thought it had fallen off.

I managed to coast into a nearby carpark and drifted to a stop in a fairly safe place. So I got out and rang Phil, like a complete girl, my car’s broken come and help me!!!
Then I took a look at the pedal. It was fortunately still attached, but the cable was completely snapped.

Phil and Molly came round to rescue me, and Phil pushed it into a parking space.

As it has happened, it was a fairly minor event, but it shook me up a little as I kept thinking , what if it had snapped on the motorway, or when I was overtaking. It was very lucky that it went where it did, and I was able to stop in a safe place quite easily.

It’s made us both think we need to start thinking about changing our cars though. I quite fancy a little Mini, and Phil would like a Land Rover.

Well, we can dream….

and the result was a very respectable 3rd place,  with Whitley Bay taking 1st, 2nd and third!