jayneandmarty.com

This blog post is for Kate, mostly, as her blog is where I’ve seen this most. Maybe it’s a NSW thing.

The word “Muppet”, for me, has always been, and always will be, those likeable Jim Henson puppets from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show - shows I grew up with.

Now it seems that “muppet” is gaining acceptance as some sort of derogatory term used to describe morons. (See wikipedia article here).

I, for one, am not going to buy into that. Muppets are the friendly characters on the afore-mentioned shows.

The end.

I’ve almost finished editing the video of Georgia and Lindsay’s first day ever at the snow (but can’t finish yet as there’s another 15 minutes of footage on a tape somewhere … can’t find it). It’s pretty good so far but it ends abruptly (!).

I wasn’t going to put it on YouTube as it’s 23 minutes long, but if enough of you want to see it then I will. Otherwise I’ll just cut a DVD for Paul and Catherine.

Over to you guys…….do you want it on YouTube or not?

We’ve signed up for the Nike 10km “Human Race” on August 31, and although I’m already running that distance for my half-marathon training, Jayne really needs a way to train during the week for the next few weeks.

So is there a borrowable treadmill anywhere …….. ?

Just asking before we go down the joining-the-gym route.

We’ve been too busy this week to post about last Sunday’s snow trip with Georgia and Lindsay but with a spare half hour today I thought I’d at least put the photos up! (The video’s still to be edited).

We left VERY early (4.30am) as the plan was to get there for the 4 hour kids ski school lesson at 9.30 but a minor delay in Mansfield to hire their gear did us in. We passed the ticket box at Mirimbah at about 8.15 but hit a big traffic jam about 5kms from the car park that delayed us for nearly an hour. I’ve never seen anything like it. I even got the girls to get ready in the car while we were stuck in the jam but it made no difference, and we didn’t make it to the ski school until just before 10.

With the 4 hour class missed, our only option was to put them into a First Timer’s lesson for 2 hours on the gentle beginners slope, which we thought would be a bit tame for them given their slalom waterskiing exploits. But actually that turned out to be pretty good, even though by the end of the lesson they were itching for the bigger slopes.

The instructor started by getting them to put one ski on and scoot around, then they swapped legs and scooted some more. When he was satisfied that they’d learnt the basics of balancing, they clicked into the other ski and learnt how to stop, sidestep up the hill and stop themselves from sliding down backwards (although Georgia had a bit of trouble with that one and kept sliding into the safety fence).

Then it was off to the magic carpet for their first run and some proper skiing. The video tells the story a bit better from here, so I’ll try to cut that tonight and publish it for you all to watch.

If Jayne and I had also been skiing, and if we had more time, after the lesson finished we’d have taken them up to Burnt Hut or one of the other green runs. The weather was OK (well, for Buller, which means it was better than the normal pea soup 20m visibility), but we were just watching today so after a brief snowball fight in the village we decided to head back to the car park, make a snowman and get off the mountain before the craziness at 4.30.

Here are the girls just before their lesson.

All in all a great day, but a bit rushed. Next time I think we’ll stay for the weekend. Jayne and I have done our fair share of day trips over the years (although never with kids before) and whilst they’re three times cheaper than a weekend trip, they’re three times as crazy!!

Lots of photos on our Picasa page.

Yep, the fluff-monster is 4.

Apparently the age-old rule about one human year equalling 7 dog years isn’t true. Wikipedia says:

No one formula for dog to human age conversion is scientifically agreed, although within fairly close limits they show great similarities.

As a rough approximation, the human equivalent of a one-year-old dog is between about 10 and 15 years.

The second year is equivalent to about another 3 to 8 years in terms of physical and mental maturity, and each year thereafter is equivalent to only about 4 or 5 human years.

If I roughly approximate the rough approximations for Max, he’s 28. Which is 4 x 7. But never mind.

I worked from home today, which was great news for him as it meant that I could take him to the beach after dropping Jayne at the station.