Driving

Granny has been volunteering and driving her ponies weekly for the "Riding for the Disabled" for many years now.  She has also taught many of her Grandchildren and is now teaching Tanzin how to drive the horse and cart, using her two older and patient ponies, Apollo and Honey Blossom.

These photos were taken on Sunday at G&G's annual driving competition.  Tanzin's only driven three times, and with granny as her groom, she did exceptionally well.

Tanzin is going to horse camp next week for a week to learn how to drive, muck out, look after ponies etc.  Fortunately, she will be with her 4 older cousins, Katie, Emily, Sam and William, who have been attending this camp for many summers now.  She is SO excited!  She'll be sleeping in a tent with another 10 year old girl and between you and me, I don't think she'll ever work so hard, so it'll be very interesting to see how she goes!

PS - UPDATE.....  Tanzin rocked camp!  She loved it so much and learnt a great deal.  She was so happy with her prizes and won best washer-uperer!  Also best young camper.  

We went to camp to watch her on her final day (Friday)  She drove those ponies exceptionally well and with a huge smile.  We were all so proud and I let out a huge sigh of relief!  

G&G with their grooms, Tanzin and William.

She is a beauty and reminded me of my horse, Brandy

Not too sure if daddy is keen on being backseat driver!

 

Cousin William takes Apollo for a drive

Friends

I'll be there for you....
I've known my Minny since I was a whipper snipper.
She lived across the street from me in Boronia, so our families quickly became firm friends and have always been since.

You can imagine how sweet it is to see the love between her girls and mine.  Jordan and Tanzin are really great fun together and compliment each other well.  The other three musketeers got along so well, which can be a little hard for Jaimie sometimes when she can feel left out.
They are here from Melbourne on their whirlwind Summer tour of the UK to visit Neil's family.

Bubble fun with Matilda

Posers!

We spent how much in the shops yesterday???!!!!

Family pic

Peddars Way

Since coming to live in Norfolk, I've had a yearning to cycle Peddars Way, which is an old Roman road that runs from Knettishall Heath in Suffolk to the North Norfolk Coast, near Hunstanton.

Together with the North Norfolk Coastal Path, it is 97 miles (156 kms) long.
We couldn't of picked more perfect weather conditions, so on Monday, whilst the girls were staying with G&G, we eagerly set off for our 2 day and night adventure and rode to Brancaster, which was about 60 miles.  Although it was challenging at times, we had a ball, though our butts weren't so pleased with it.  OMG, they ached!!!!

We live near Diss

The start of the track.  

Remains of what would of been a very grand Castle, at Castle Acre

There's a perfectly good bridge to cycle over, but no, too easy right?

Short detour to Great Birchman windmall, one of the few working mills left in Norfolk

Fields upon fields and great big open skies 

Holmes next the Sea

Great Massingham.  We stayed here on our first night at the Dabbling Duck.

'Round another bend

G&G met us in Titchwell on our last day with the kids.
Here is Taylor showing Granny her crab she found.

Stunning Hunstanton beach with it's chalk coastline

The sea is actually miles away, but this doesn't matter as long as you've got your windbreaker set up!

Rrrrrrrrrr, Pirates Ahoy

For some reason, the girls woke up yesterday morning (Sat) and decided they wanted to be pirates.  

I have a sneaking suspicion it's because Jaimie knows they get treasure (which means candy to her).  

They had a full day of it, complete with a pirate song, tattoos, the eye patch and a wicked treasure hunt with 18 clues, made up by JP.  It kept them busy for a few good hours! 

I also included a mini scavenger hunt which I printed out from the web.

Believing

There's a line from Peter Pan when they all chant "I do, I do, I do believe in fairies" when one of them starts to lose belief.

It came to light last night when Tanzin lost her 11th tooth yesterday and in her 9 year old skeptic wisdom, she decided to hide the tooth from both me and JP, so if she didn't receive any money, then she'd know it was us all along being the tooth fairy.

Like all good stories, this too has a happy ending as she was rewarded 2 pounds for her tooth and faith is restored.

Back to Broadway

We went to Great Yarmouth last night with G&G to watch a musical stage show, "Back to Broadway".

Starring JP's cousin, Freddie Huddleston, who is a sensational tap dancer, singer, choreographer.  

The musical was brilliant to watch and dance along to as they sung everyone's favourite stage shows musical numbers from Les Miserables to Singing in the Rain.

Jaimie especially loved Ariel's "Part of the World", Tanzin's fav was Footloose and Grease's 'Hand Jive' (which she asked for them to teach her after the show!) Taylor loved Hairspray's 'You can't stop the beat', which was full of energy and heaps of fun.  Mine was 'Memory', from Cats and JP said he enjoyed 'Dont Cry for me Argentina' because they were both sung with such emotion, truly beautiful. 

Check out their website and take a look at some videos to see  just how fantastic it was.  

http://www.backtobroadway.co.uk/tour/

 With 2nd cousin, Freddie

Gotta say that Great Yarmouth is one of those towns that you'd either love or hate.  You can probably guess which one the kids say and what I would say about it!  

Besides the real Vegas, I've never seen anything like it before.  The strip is chockablock full of casino type places. (Slot machines only)  The pink flamingo, The golden nugget etc.  Lights flashing everywhere and cod and chips on offer in every 1970's looking restaurant.  The girls were going into the 'casinos' and finding free penny's that were sitting in the bottom of the slots! So they had a very enjoyable 15 mins of free play!!!  They also had such a laugh going down the giant inflatable slide.