Double swimming lesson this morning :-)

Vicky got a call from the Splish Splosh swimming company to see if we wanted first refusal on some 1:1 swimming lessons on Sunday morning for 30 minutes before the boys existing lesson. This would be for just two weeks but it falls nicely before our summer holiday so we took it.

This morning was the first such lesson and without question it worked well for the boys as they obviously benefit from direct one on one time from the instructor. Perhaps we should have not then done the usual 30 minute lesson with the 6 other children – suspect we will find out later on today as the tiredness kicks in 🙂

Olly was asked to sit on the side of the pool in the second lesson for not listening – there’s a surprise… 🙁 One day he will listen properly…

Bruce now has his new boots AND passed his first test – the MoT

All clear thankfully – although he did need best part of 1000 UKP in tyres to make it through…

Oh well, just got the warranty to sort now and he will be all set for a while – well excepting the fact that he has begun to chirp again at 21 minutes past (and around thirty seconds) every 2 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 10 o’clock 🙁  Guess he will head to the dealer for some other warranty work (rear door handle is broken – not sure how it happened mind you 🙁 ) for them to scratch their head and tell us nothing is wrong.  Clearly something is, else he wouldn’t chirp at us….

Bruce drops a couple of significant needs….

Simon received an email from the Land Rover dealership this morning pointing out that his first MoT is due while we are away on holiday. So, in the discussion that followed (ie should we book it in or wait until we get back) we realised that he would fail the test because he needs new tyres :-(.

It became clear that we needed to make the tyre purchase happen sooner than we had planned so we did a quick bit of research and found that black circles have a pretty good deal for a Pirelli set – we found that the Pirelli is the current OEM tyre from Land Rover, so that helped in the decision making process easier. So, on Saturday morning, a local tyre fitter is going to install 4 new Pirellis for £900. The Continental tyres (existing ones) would have cost a little over £1000 and the Pirelli are apparently better in the wet and also should last a little longer while being quieter on the road 🙂 So an all round win 🙂

To top this all off, Bruce also has an expiring Warranty during the holiday – that’s a further £1045 – OR a £1045 chaser as Vicky called it 🙂

Given the challenges with his brakes, we will more than likely get our money’s worth, so will pay the big bucks for that insurance cover 🙂

Oh, the fun of owning a large SUV :-(. Good job he is a tremendous motor….

Elliot is in Class 2 Malaga next year

We had the Year 2 Information Evening last night to help educate the parents as to how the children will be integrated into their next year of school and what they will be learning etc when they get there.

Elliot is in 2 Malaga next year with Miss Price as his teacher.  He will be remaining with some of his current classmates (from 1C) but also will be joined by some of the children from 1S.  The relevance of Malaga (rather than the more traditional 2P which it probably would have been) is that the school have decided to teach Spanish as the second language in the Junior school, so in order to help push this forwards, all the class names will have some level of Spanish name – in this case Spanish places.

The children will be learning Spanish every day next year – somehting that daddy is quite pleased about because the typical language to teach in schools in the UK (from this age) is French.  Daddy would prefer either German or Spanish given these two languages feature so much higher (in his opinion of course) in the world of business – OK so he is generalising and is using his experience of business, but hey…

In fairness, most of the rest of the information is the same as they have presently – i.e. yellow record books for informal communications between parent and teacher and work books that contain their homework.  What we hadn’t realised is that the workbooks are actually colour co-ordinated to go with the children’s  relevant house.  Elliot’s is Red signifying Yonges – we hadn’t realised that until last night 🙂

All in all, he is set for a fun year next year – although it does mean that we are all going to have to learn Spanish 🙂

Oliver’s is on Monday…

Look mummy, no armbands :-)

In swimming lesson this morning, the teacher took off Elliot’s armbands and then finally his float (they were practising backstroke with their legs only) – he did two half lengths of the pool with no assistance 😀

Yay for Elliot

The teacher then proceeded to take all but one arm band (on each arm) from Oliver and he also did it 🙂

Oliver actually has a slightly better looking style and sets off with real determination.

They are both really benefitting from the lessons with Splish Splosh and are going to be pretty well setup for their holiday I a few weeks 🙂