Project 52 2019 week 30 – disco ball

It’s week 30 of project 52 for this year and we’re into the first week of the summer holidays. We’re quite lucky because while most of Oxfordshire were at school until at least Wednesday at school likes to have as many inset days as possible at the end of the school year. It means that we finished on Friday and get a good for six weeks off slightly ahead others in the county.

The week with by of course, because I was off work. I have struggled with the heat as usual. But we did manage to fit in quite a bit of stuff as well as just chilling out in the cooler places at home.

Here’s our week 30.

On Sunday N went down to the tennis club for junior club hour. They never really done anything like this before but this summer have put on 5 Sunday morning sessions for any Juniors just to come and play and have a hit around. Hopefully it’s a good chance to get some new people interested in joining as well as N getting the chance to keep playing a bit through the summer.

The bonus was that while they had the mini courts set up for younger children, the other court was set up with the Lobster machine. I’ve wanted to use one of these for so many years, and this week got to try it out. Let’s just say I didn’t totally embarrassed myself until my last set of five where I hard to get anything over the net. The rest generally went miles out of the court at the other end. Some control, and a bit more practice needed I think.

We went to one of the sister in law’s for tea to celebrate the mother-in-law’s birthday, and had a delicious BBQ before enjoying meeting some of the puppies they have at the moment.

On Monday we were a bit of a loss as to what to do. N wasn’t that excited to do anything but I wanted to do something this week before the weather just got too hot. I wanted to take him to Blists Hill but yet again he refused, so we ended up just going to Stratford Upon Avon so that he could ride his bike around, have a go in the paddling pool, and enjoy the playground. N does like the simple things. He was happy enough to visit Halls Croft, one of the Shakespeare properties, on the basis that we had to do something rather than just play all holiday.

On Tuesday we headed to Cotswold Water Park and beach again to try and cool off. It’s not somewhere we’ve been before and has been on my list. We’ll definitely have to go back another time because N wants to try the inflatable course as well as some kayaking, and possibly stand-up paddle boarding. We were lucky we had already left before they evacuated the park, because unfortunately a man had gone missing in one of the lakes.

On Wednesday we didn’t really know what to do but I had suggested that we try Junkyard Golf in Oxford.. I didn’t fancy heading into a hot city but we decided to nip in just for the golf. It was lucky I booked the night before, because there were only three spaces on the course we did and only two spaces on another of three courses. With children only able to go go from 2 till 5, there’s not that many opportunities to give it a go. Children aren’t even allowed in on Saturdays.

It was pretty cool and we’d like to go back and do it again to try out the other courses. It was a bit excessive driving to Oxford, getting a park and ride in the sweltering heat, just for a game of crazy golf, but we had a lot of fun.

On Thursday N had tennis camp so I had thought I’d have a whole lovely day free to get some bits and pieces we still needed for camping. But this week we discovered we have a wasps nest in a house vent behind the outdoor toy box, so I had to wait in for the wasp man to come and sort them out. Needless to say he left it till the end of the slot, which meant I only had an hour so go out and do stuff, before I headed back out to pick up N and his friend.

Friday was a lovely day. One of the other boys of N’s age who usually goes camping isn’t going this year, so we’d arranged a playdate at theirs. Along with another boy, and an older sister, they had a great time in the garden playing on the slip and slide run, then riding a buggy. I had a lovely catch up with the mum too. N also had tennis that evening – there were only 4 of them so did quite a bit of doubles play. He’s really enjoying being up on the larger courts.

On Saturday we stayed locally. Quick nip into a nearby town for to the butchers and greengrocers, then N’s swimming lesson. His sports lessons feel like they’re carrying on for a longer time into the holidays than normal. It was a fun swim as it was the last week of term, so half an hour of just playing with the floats and balls.

Good news as well, N has been moved up to stage 6 for next term. A great achievement, and his teacher is so pleased with his progress. Since he was in her stage 3 class and finally managed to get his 10 metres without a float, he’s moved up a stage every 2 terms. This last one was massive as the girl who was also moved up, had been in the class for nearly 2 years. Stage 6 is more about lengths and stamina with just tweaking technique, so I think it will be tough at first for N, but he’s really pleased to be moving up again.

We’ve had to come to an agreement about shoot days as the later swimming time means he’ll miss breaktime at shooting. So he has to do swimming the whole term til December, but from January, I’ll let him miss swimming lessons for shoot days. Hopefully there’s only 2 til the end of the season. A good compromise as N is carrying on swimming past stage 5 which I’d originally agreed to.

We also went to see the Horrible Histories film at the cinema. It was very good, funny in places, and N rated it one of his favourite films hes seen.

Week 30 photo is of the disco ball upstairs at Junkyard Golf.