Luca cycles

It was a lovely day today and Luca was out in our street from 9:15 this morning until his Dad came to pick him up at 7 pm. His cycling has really come on:

He was playing with the other kids in the street - principally Torquil from No.1, who had set up a jump for the bikes:

Don't be fooled by this photo however - Luca wasn't quite ready to make a jump yet.

Luca left me a drawing of a footballer:

What looks like a crown on his head, is, I am assured, a representation of a spikey haircut!

The week so far

Still feels a little odd this week, this part-time thing. Still, it's nice that today's my last day of work until Tuesday.

Didn't do much on Monday - just strolled along for the paper and spent the rest of the day at home. As we were walking along past the War Memorial, we looked up to the sky and it was like a scene from Apocalypse Now - 5 Apache helicopters appeared over the hills, flying close together in formation:

It transpired that this was part of the biggest ever European war exercise - and one of the choppers had had to ditch in a field at Maryculter.

Gary brought Luca over to stay with us for a few nights. His current obsession is football cards - and there's a big focus on world stars, with the World Cup in Brazil just a couple of months away now. Every morning when he wakens, the first thing he wants to do is to open a new pack of cards - he's so excited. Jo is becoming an expert on the players now too. Here they were at breakfast the other day:

It's the start of the golf season now - our regular Wednesday night group started last week and I joined them last night. This is also Masters weekend, which traditionally gets all golfers going - a bit like everyone starts playing tennis the week after Wimbledon.

According to my Jawbone Up device, my sleep patterns have not been very good recently - a lot of light sleep, but very little sound sleep. Am I still thinking too much about work?

No more news from me, but, to close, here's Gary's race number from Sunday's 10 miler at Perth:

Weekend

I was confused when I got up yesterday - it felt like Sunday, but I was heading to Newcastle for the football match. Haven't got the grip of these long weekends yet. It was a long day - 16 hours - but it was fun - see my football blog. I missed Kelly's FaceTime call however, but she spoke to Jo.

I spotted an article about Adelaide and the Ghan in one of the weekend newspaper magazines:

Played golf this morning at Banchory - bit of a contrast from Dubai, but OK. Gary had stayed with us overnight on the eve of his departure to Perth for a 10 mile race. He had stomach cramps on the way down, during the race, and afterwards, but seems OK now. He's gone home, but he'll be back with Luca tomorrow night - he's with us for 3 days this week during the school holidays. Luca's short haircut looks smart on camera, but I'll see it in the flesh for myself tomorrow.

It seems something is finally happening at the old filling station next door. The building has finally been torn down:

So that's about it for now. Keep watching this space for blog postings.