Amongst the Giants

I was spoilt for choices of photos today as it's been one of those days when the camera was working overtime. Not many great photos mind, just lots of snaps of different activities. It was also one of those days that when I finally get to bed I think; I'm not really sure that you can actually have it all.

First up was sports day and so after depositing the littles ones at school, gym kit already on, we wandered down to the park to find a space alongside the finishing line. Eventually the whole school arrived, class by class, and found their space around the playing fields. Fortunately for us at the moment the P1-3 classes races are in the same place as the nursery class races and they intersperse them, so we were able to watch both little ones compete one after another in the same location. There were genuine cries of delight from my lovely husband and I when the oldest one won 3rd place in the tattie & spoon race and complete bewilderment when the littlest one came home empty handed (if you know our two, you will know that is not how you'd expect it to pan out!).

Anyway, as soon as their races were complete - and before the parents races could begin - I nipped off, back to the car to head the 45 miles or so up the road to Cullen for a meeting. I had swithered and swithered over whether to go to the meeting or not; Thursday's are not one of my normal work days, it started at 10am and I really wanted to go to sports day so I knew I'd miss the first hour or so at least, if I went I'd miss the P1 induction meeting for my little one (and get to find out all the details about the class plans and see him meet his buddies) which was being held in the afternoon but decided to go since the meeting is a forum of forestry industry folks across Grampian who only meet together three times a year, the meetings are always useful, informative, interesting and relevant, I really need to use their expertise to write our forestry strategy in the next few months and the topic and site visit were of particular relevance to part of my work. So I went.

Of course, by trying to juggle everything I managed to arrive at the meeting after the chap from FCS head office in Edinburgh had finished his presentation and at a point when all disussion had been exhausted and everyone was tucking into their soup. However, I was able to join in the site visit which was considering the complexities of management of woodlands and individual trees in designed landscapes and through that pick up a bit on what I had missed and join the continued conversations.

My lovely husband attended the P1 induction meeting and gathered all the necessary information and the littlest one had a blast at the party with his class mates to be and was delighted with his two friendly buddies.

Back home in time for a quick tea and out again en masse to the school summer BBQ and fete for a round of spending 50ps to throw hoops, ducks, darts and wellies, smash malteesers, break codes, jump on bouncy castles and eat candy floss, followed by a forced removal from the school premises (of the screaming children who'd like to stay in the playground with their pals forever, by us - nothing more serious!) and a miserable bed time with two overtired, grumpy and sugar filled little ones.

So all in all, I managed to physically be at (almost) everything I needed be at today, but it was a fairly half hearted attempt at all of it. The juggling and guilt of a working mother I guess, nothing new there.

I am however genuinely grateful that this situation doen't happen to me too often and am really very thankful for a great job, which I love and which continues to interest me and which has incredibly flexible hours and conditions that allow me not to miss those precious moments like a six year old struggling to run inside a sack.



Oh - the photograph - this *might* be the largest, existing Picea sitchensis Sitka Spruce in Scotland, if not the UK.