January Weekends

Our start to 2020 hasn't been great!  Both Matt and I got colds (we stopped taking our nightly whisky!) which meant that after busy weeks at work neither of us was up to much.  Tom, however, has been fine.

Friday was a bit of a landmark - after an accident whilst bouldering with cubs (he fell off the top and landed on his head) he hasn't wanted to go climbing or bouldering no matter what.  On speaking to Debby who runs the climbing club at the wall on a Friday she told me to bring him along and she would get her boys to spend some 1:1 time with him to try to get him to relax and give it a good try.

He wasn't happy about it.  He didn't want to do it because he was afraid.  I told him he can't stop doing things because he is afraid but that he needs to face his fears to overcome them.  In the end I managed to get him to agree to try climbing for one full term.  If he still hated it after that then he could give up.  I got a lot of 'why are you forcing me?!' 'I hate climbing' etc etc, but once he agreed (mainly due to us saying it will help his cricket because it will strengthen his arms and legs), I held him at his word.

We took him along to climbing club on Friday, he was reticent.  We left him to it (he's better at these things when we aren't around)  When we picked him up an hour and a bit later, we found a buzzing little boy who leapt up to the top of the bouldering walls and apparently had made it to the top of the climbing wall 2 times.  He came hopping and skipping shouting, "I don't like climbing, I LOVE it!" in his strongest Northern accent.  It was a success.  Debby even said to us that he should move up to the next session with the older children as he was too good for this session.  Wowzers.    The downside to this is that we have now lost our Friday evenings - no more Friday night dinners for us - poo!

Chilly Ingleborough.

Saturday was a day of sport for Tom - he had football training in the morning and double cricket training in the evening (Ingleton cricket club training - All Stars and older Development Cricket training - Tom was delighted.)  

That was pretty much it for the weekend.  As I said both me and Matt were feeling a bit under the weather.  We watched a film I made a hearty stew and we settled down to watch the start of the sumo.

The following weekend we did even less.  Tom had football training on Saturday morning which didn't go too well - we think because he didn't eat enough yesterday after climbing - note to selves, make him eat pudding after climbing next week.  Then after a pit stop at Inglesport he got the bus to Settle to see Grandpa and Grannie and watch the snooker.  Matt and I went on a walk around Chapel le Dale to try to get rid of our colds, it was a lovely sunny but cold day, there were plenty of walkers around and it was a lovely walk with lovely wintery colours including a sprinkling of snow on Ingleborough.  

The Ingleton Bumps

We then went out for dinner in Kirkby Lonsdale.  We started off a the Royal Barn for a drink and then ended up at Avanti for tea (we tried No.9, although it was pretty empty, apparently they were fully booked for the evening).  We had a nice tea with a bottle of red wine (gave both of us headaches - so not the best) and were back at home at 8.15pm - rock and roll - we know how to have a good night out!  Forgotten how 'posh' Kirkby is. We felt a bit out of place, think Ingleton is more our sort of place, so glad it has some decent eateries now.

Sunday we picked up Tom, had lunch at Goat Gap, a quick stroll around Storrs Common and then Tom did his homework whilst we did chores.  Tom has new homework now - SATS workbooks - I personally think the work is quite difficult.  Tom did his usual thing of doing it all too quickly and getting most of it wrong, so we made him do it again with workings out etc and he did much better.  We had sulks along the way, but he did ok in the end.  He is getting much sulkier recently, doesn't take much to get him into one.  I have to send him away to do something else because once he is in a sulky mood then the whole world is against him and we get tears, he calls himself 'stupid' which I have to counter, basically he goes into a downwards spiral which is really hard to reverse. 

We had teas on knees and then an evening of sport on the telly: sumo and snooker!