Round about the silly season

 A woeful patch of two plus months - doing a very quick bit of catching up here - and then the new year stuff will flow:

December was a fantastic month - no travel means breakfast in bed with Ev (Aiden likes to get up and have breakfast whilst illicitly accessing some or other screen media).

Weekends hanging out with friends at the short bar.

Not everyone bothered by the cooler weather - Malcolm coming in on his sharky boat (seriously quick rib this one) making the girls smile with some substantial bronzed pec.

Aiden was playing some great rugby at flyhalf for the Stingray's second team, running well, passing well, kicking well...

... and tackling well.  So well in fact that he was rewarded with a promotion to the first team, whereafter he had a really horrible time being a sub and playing in the course of one tournament, lock, centre and wing.  (Much to his delight he has now returned to the second team where he is again enjoying being the flyhalf).

Great excitement - Granny Rose arrived, a delight.  We did a lot of stuff - I failed to take pictures of the very vast bulk of all of it - seemed like a distraction from having her.

Evan, having discovered that he is something of  a tackle missile on the rugby pitch, announced that he was going to buy a pair of goal-keeping gloves with a gift voucher he received.  This he duly did.  So when the annual soccer tournament came around, and he arrived at the game with his new gloves, the coach had no trouble deciding to put him on as the keeper.  Ev rewarded that decision by keeping a clean sheet throughout the four games - and he made plenty of saves - some bone crunching ones - including a penalty save.  His team ended up winning the tournament,  in no small part thanks to his efforts, downing the favourites in the final.  Rose and I were terribly chuffed - Ev was quietly much more so.  Here a ball comes whizzing towards him from a close range shot, through the traffic...

...but it too gets stopped (despite eyes being closed in both frames - must have been open at some point).

The APAC schools team with their winners' medals and some big smiles (Ev, characteristically pigeon-toed, but no birdie that - he'll knock you down). 

Then it was Christmas - that great delight of prezzies, double bonus that granny was visiting ...

...and that Santa had managed to squeeze a table-tennis table into the haul of loot.  Dad, it should be noted, is king of the blue-top, and not looking in danger of being toppled any time soon.