Tom's turn

Monday morning saw Jules and I up at school for the Term 3 recognition assembly.  Tess was playing in Junior Band and little did Tom know but he was going to get an award.  Jules and I were curious to find out what the award was for:

And Tom was determined that he would stand securely on the stage:

Instead of nippers this summer we're trying Tee-Ball which is essentially a version of baseball which for Tom's age group does not rely on someone being able to bowl.  Instead, a baseball is placed on a clever T-shaped post (hence the name) and the kids simply need to hit it as hard as possible and then get round the bases without being touched by the ball.  The game is totally non-competitive with no score recorded and the innings changed every 10 minutes.  The added bonus is the incredibly cute uniform:

 Tom batting - if you look carefully you see the ball gently falling off the "T"!!

The Mennies came round on Friday evening for take away pizza to celebrate the end of term.  Lisa bought Tess' birthday present which is the most beautiful long green dress which Lisa described as perfect for climbing trees (if you're a girl and determined to constantly climb trees which Tess is).  We went round to the Wakes-Miller's for dinner on Saturday and Tess insisted on wearing her fabulous new dress.  Within 5 minutes she was up a tree proving Lisa right:

As Jules is now a board member of Manly Yacht Club we feel obliged to help out more at the club and we started with being race officers for the summer series race on Sunday.  I cleverly managed to outsource the kids (they would have hated 5 hours hanging round the yacht club) and took up my role as Duty Officer whilst Jules was driver of the support boat.  The sun was shining and I thoroughly enjoyed the view from my office window:

Jules headed off in the "Robbie R" to set up the necessary buoys for the race and soon noticed that the boat seemed to be taking on quite a lot of water.  After checking with the crew on the starter boat they discovered that the "Robbie R" has 4 bungs - Jules had only found 2!!  They raced back to the pontoon, hoisted the boat out of the water and allowed it to drain before putting in the additional 2 bungs and resuming their duties.