Blair and Charlie at Palm Beach
Well since it has been about 3 ½ months since our last blog (sorry Alison) I should have plenty to talk about!
Christmas holidays
Blair and I were lucky enough to have two weeks at my parent’s beach house in Palm Beach over Christmas and New Year (somehow I managed to have 3!!) It is always extremely hard to get Blair to leave our property for more than two nights in a row let alone two weeks. He seems to think that our business will completely fall apart and no one else can possibly run it except him. That said after the first few days Blair did actually start to relax and we had a really great time. We had Gendy and Hugh Parry-Okeden with their three boys stay for four nights over new year. The combination of Gendy’s three boys and our two (all within two years of each other) was definitely … well … um … rather NOISY!! On the first night all five boys were surfing on their boogy boards down our very steep concrete driveway! (not sure what the parents were doing but we were totally unaware!) We were lucky our neighbours are very understanding!
Dad finishing the Cole Classic 2013
Usually each summer holidays Dad spends most of the time at the beach training for about five ocean swims along the Northern beaches. However this time Mum and Dad had given the house to us, and then my brother was having his two weeks with his family, so he couldn’t get the same amount of training in. (Palm Beach has a 50m pool at the southern end where many people do endless laps each day). So the swims were fast approaching and Dad was feeling that he wasn’t fit enough. My sister Mandy decided that she would do the first swim with Dad just to egg him on a bit and reassure him that he could do it. (he is 77years old). I then started to feel guilty - so I joined in too. The swim was 1.6km in the ocean with lots of scary sea creatures swimming around beneath us! We all made it and Dad was completely fired up, he was so excited and so happy that we were all swimming he entered us for the next weekend!
Me at the end of “The Big Swim” 2013
The next swim wasn’t called ‘The Big Swim’ for nothing! Palm Beach to Whale Beach – 2.5km around the headlands, deeper ocean, more sharks, more blue bottles, more swimmers swimming on top of you. It was cold, raining with a swell of about three metres high! But again we all made it and our times weren’t too bad for a few country hicks!
Dad winning ‘the plate’ for finishing third
The third and last swim that I did (by now I was driving to Sydney especially to go and swim with the sharks for an hour) was the Cole Classic at Manly. Dad, Mands and I all swam and received our medals (for participating!) and much to Dad’s delight he was presented with a ‘plate’ for coming 3rd in the 75 and overs!
Me Mum and the boys (somehow they got medals too) at the Cole Classic
Back to horses
Sadly the beach holiday came to an end and it was back home to try and start thinking about riding horses again. Darryl Burgess came to stay with us for a few days in January and built us our very own water jump! We bought a number of portables as well that Darryl had made which totally revamped our training paddock. It is just amazing being able to school a water jump in your own paddock and so beneficial for the young ones. We can place the portables anywhere around the water jump and then move them a week later for a different line/combination, it’s just fantastic.
Our new jumps
Back to school
So school holidays are now over and the boys are back at school. They are both happy with their new teachers and finally Oscar has been separated from the boy who he has been in the same class with for three years during which time he has had about eight yellow cards because of their love/hate relationship! Hopefully no more trips to the principal’s office for a while!
Charlie lining up for the regionals
Oscar and Charlie have had a great swimming season this summer with Oscar taking out the junior boy champion and Charlie the 7/8 yr champion. They both went on to zone and placed well there with Charlie qualifying for the regional carnival in Maitland for 8yrs 50m freestyle. Wow there were some fast 8yr olds there, needless to say that is where our swimming season ended.
Blair and I are on the Scone Horse Trials committee and we ran our event a few weeks ago, which was a big effort by all but a great weekend. The weekend before we were setting up arenas and whipper snipping the cross jumps in the pouring rain. I think we had three inches and already the vehicles were getting bogged in the entrance! Luckily the sun came out for the next five days and it amazingly dried up the entire area and the going was perfect. My 2* horse “Rudolf” was a very good boy despite me ‘missing him’ into the first water jump and ended up 6th overall. Last weekend we went to Berrima, which didnt all go according to plan but that horses so we will next head down to Albury and then hopefully to Sydney CCI2*.
I promise I won’t leave it this long between blogs again!
Nikki
