May 18 in crawling into 2014.

It's been a weekend with a difference, but a good weekend. Rich works a 9-5 Mon-Fri job but this weekend he had to go in for a course for... well, I can't tell you because I'm not allowed to talk about his work...

Anyway, he had to work Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon so we had a close-to-home weekend.

I dragged the girls out of bed early on Saturday so we could drive daddy to work, then took them to swimming lessons. Lila has been in stage 2 for well over a year and I spoke to her teacher a few weeks ago; she said that Lila needs to use her arms in back crawl and on her front so today Lila went for it. If she keeps it up she'll be moving up before we know it! Tally worked really will as usual. To be honest, when she puts ask her effort in she leaves the rest of the class standing but she's happy to pootle along. I'd be interested to have a front crawl race with her as I'm a pretty good swimmer but she's a damn natural! However, tally doesn't race. She hates the pressure of racing, the risk of losing. She's also an incredible sprinter but at school sports day she puts no effort in at all. And I won't tell her that she has to. We encourage her to participate, we show her that taking part is fun and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose - and sometimes you're an also ran in the middle. She is getting better. But she has to make the choice to do it.

Once they were dry and dressed we went to the supermarket for picnic paraphernalia and dashed home for a bottle opener before picking rich up and driving over to Uffington White Horse.

Although I believe it's a dragon ...

Rich and I lounged around reading magazines, the girls went to talk to some sheep who trotted nervously away from them! The girls pretended they were in South Africa as they explored :-)

We walked up to the horse (dragon), the girls going anywhere but on the path, exploring the hills and mounds. They marvelled when we showed them Dragon Hill where lies buried the poor dragon slain by St. George.

Eventually we had to leave, the FA Cup final was due to start at 5pm and I had some more de-lousing to do.

Rich and I sat in the conservatory until the bed calls came. It was warm, dark and peaceful.

Tally and I are training for the Race For Life, it's a 5k run (and we're careful not to call it a race) for women that is held all around Britain every summer. It's a charity run event and raises money for cancer charities. Today we had a run of 2.5 miles to achieve. And we did achieve it. I had to encourage her to hurry up or we would get too hot, but she dilly dallied and complained about being too hot..

Running with tally is so much fun. We chat, we stop to see the world, there was a squirrel eating seeds from a tree that she wanted to watch, we played pooh sticks. We ran and walked all the way around. And then we had breakfast and went for a walk with Rich and Lila included. We went to our local country park to walk around the lake. The girls made a see saw out of old, fallen branches. They climbed on fallen trees and made bridges too. I love how much they embrace the natural world.

And they had ice creams at the hut after the two miles circuit.

We took Rich to work and headed home for a picnic in the garden where a little bastard stung me just under the arm pit. Holy shit!!

We had three hours, I mowed the grass, sorted Lila's clothes out so she has bigger clothes and got my hair straighteners out with the intention of squashing and burning anything else that may be left in Talaia's hair. She looked very glamorous when I'd finished and she couldn't stop smiling at herself in the mirror... :-D

We picked rich up, gathered together more picnic stuff and went back to the country park. We parked ourselves between a tree and a couple who were only not shagging (partaking in coitus) because of their clothes..! Tally climbed the tree, very high up (to be expected), Lila sliced her foot on a pine cone (not so expected).

But now the weekend has finished, now I need to sleep so I can run tomorrow.

I do believe that weekends should be three days long.