Heather's first swim

Saturday was another family first, this time the first time that Heather has been swimming.  We all headed off to the rapids.  Originally it was going to be just Mum, Scott & Heather, as Emily & Elizabeth were at a birthday party and Dad was supposed to be diving.  But Dad’s diving was cancelled and then Emily struck a deal with her Mum that everyone would go after the party. So we did and it was great fun. 

As the party was a late afternoon party we didn’t get to the rapids till 5.30pm but we didn’t leave till nearly 8pm.  The children had a great time and Heather loved her first time in the pool.  She looked on in awe at her brother and sisters as they splashed around in the pool.  She really wanted to join in.

We have really seen the benefits of the three older ones going to swimming lessons, they all rushed into the pool and were off swimming around, mostly underwater!!  showing no fear whilst at the same time showing a lot of confidence in the water.  It was fantastic to see,   They had all really improved.  Emily is having a real good go at swimming whilst Scott is now getting really confident about swimming out of his depths and Elizabeth is showing her confidence in swimming under water and on her back.

Since the improvements to the leisure centre the pool temperature has risen a couple of degrees which makes the whole experience a lot better, especially for the children.  They didn’t want to get out but we had to prise them out of the water as the pool was closed at 7pm ready for lane swimming…..  sure Scott would have loved a go.

 

Heather's entered in picture competition

Press the read more button to see the picture and then Double click on the picture for a larger version .

This picture has been entered into a competition with the Hampshire Chronicle.  The web address for the hampshire chronicle is http://www.thisishampshire.net/hampshire/winchester/ but we are still looking for the article with the competition in.

A sunny Saturday…..

Lisa was out on a Barth Syndrome Trust seminar on Saturday so the 3 older children had to endure Daddy for all of Saturday.  I don’t know how they coped…  It was a really fun day that started off with the girsl going off to ballet which left Scott and I to start cleaning out the bathroom, ready for a fresh coat of paint. 

After ballet the children all sat down to watch a programme whilst I put a coat of paint on the bathroom walls, till I ran out of paint.  The children were tasked with memorising the paint code so that we could get a good match……. all together now, what colour is it Blue Moon 6.  Even Emily could recite the correct colour. 

The plan was then have some lunch and then off to Serendipity Sam’s playcentre followed by a trip to B&Q for the paint and back via ASDA for the shopping to fulfill the shopping list that Lisa had left us. 

After a couple of hours in Serendipities (the children had a great time and I read some of my book) we headed off to B&Q.  Got the paint no issue but we had a little incident outside in the car park with a neandethal guy who insisted on offering out every single explitive under the sun in front of the children….. go here for a rant on that subject  Once we had got through that it was off to Asda, oh how I loath Asda on a Saturday afternoon.  However it wasn’t too bad, Emily decided she wanted to go in the trolley and I tasked Elizabeth with leading the way to the relevant aisles for the goods.  To her credit she knew where the things were, bread, milk, fizzy pop, she was on the ball… a very good shopper how she is going to make me pay later in life I reckon…   Bribery at Asda consisted of doughnuts and some cookies for after dinner, which ended up being fish and chips from the chippy. After which the children got themselves ready for bed and into their beds. 

I painted some more and put the bathroom back together ready for when Heather and Lisa came back. 

Busy day as Elizabeth used to say…..

We've updated the main website

The new website www.thegilmours.net is now live and we are testing new things with it.  It gives you the option to register which means we can keep you updated of new things happening on the website.

Hope you like it

 

A Snowy Weekend in Scotland

You may have heard on the news that the South West of Scotland suffered a bit of a snow storm last night well Lisa and I were in the middle of it travelling back from Huddersfield to Lisa’s parents in Biggar.  We had been down to a visit some friends who we are going to the Galapagos Islands with next year.  More details of that are in the diving blog.  

We left Huddersfield at about 1am to head back to Lisa’s mums who was looking after the older three children. Under normal conditions we would have got back about 3.30am but as we got to Carlisle the snow started really coming down and we ended up having to slow right down.  We eventually made it back around 5.30 after following the trucks who were blazing a trail through the snow.  At times we were down to 10mph on the motorway.  The last 10 miles from the motorway junction were very slow and very treacherous but we made it through.  We found out this afternoon that the motorway was closed and also the road from the motorway was blocked later on, even the snowplough had to be towed out by the local farmers!!

So with all the snow meant that we were all stuck in Biggar and couldn’t make it to Dalkeith for Church so we had a meeting at home with everyone in the afternoon.  It was a lot of fun, the Children did a primary presentation on prayer. 
We wait to see what the weather will do to see if we can get home tomorrow……..

Hope you are enjoying our new diary

Hope you are enjoying the new version of the diary.  We are going to be making some changes to the layout in the next couple of weeks which will be part of a complete revamp of www.thegilmours.net including a brand new picture gallery and the addition of a guestbook.

I am aware that some of the links on the existing video and picture gallery at http://gallery.thegilmours.net are out of date and no longer function but I am working on this and these will be resolved with the launch of the new site.  Some of the shutterfly links have been repaired and I have posted them in the diary.

If there is anything else you would like to see on the site then please let us know. 

Try this link

We had some problems with the family pictures filmloop, if you do have any problems accessing it, try this link below.

Click to see Family Pictures

A quick update on us

We are now well into the daily routine and so things are busy, Scott and Elizabeth are doing well in school, although it can be very tiring for Elizabeth sometimes. 

Everyone is suffering a little from the sniffles as the weather has turned really quite cold this week, poor old Lisa has nearly lost her voice with her sore throat but is otherwise well.  She says it sounds worse than it feels. 

Heather is growing strong and a real delight, she is kinda of in a routine and doesn’t do too bad at night.  Her character is starting to show through already, she beams a beautiful smile when she is in a good mood.  She also likes her time on her playmat and will quite happily play on there, enjoying some time to herself.  Gotta snatch it while you can in our busy household. 

Hopefully will get some updated pictures onto the picture loops over the next couple of days. 

It’s always nice to read your comments so please feel free to say hello….. if there is anything you want us to post on here then drop us a line….