1,2,3 : Having a Squash Ball

Playing family squash at Hallhill, Dunbar. 1 ball, 2 boys, 3 photos squashed together. When the weather's not great we hire a squash court for an hour and bash a ball about in the warm. A couple of years ago I picked up racquets and balls for all 4 children from one of the big sports warehouses and they've done us well. Now that the older boys are doing badminton most weeks, they're really coming on. The little ones tend to chase a foam tennis ball round the next door court (in the dark, we don't pay!) with the short tennis racquets they have, but today they mostly sat about with comics, 15p crisps and cups of blue & pink slush. "Healthy Living Centre" indeed.

I took my life (and my camera) in my hands and sat in the corner of the court for a while. I nearly used this one for today's blip. It's a good action shot, with Duncan in focus, Malcolm chasing and Katie and Gordon playing in the background. But I put it to the vote at the near-traditional dinner time slide show and the layered confection above won. The rest are on Flickr so you can vote too if you like.

Cycling was a bit more organised today - no glove-hunts - and I upped the cargo bike theme by hooking the double trailer onto the tag-a-long. 5 wheels on our wagon as Gordon pointed out. Katie sat back there with the squash bag and some teddys. She seemed happy but had a bit of a complain about bumps at dinner time. Gordon pointed out she didn't have to pedal and she was nice and warm. But there's no suspension so I can see her point.

The iPad got a pounding today as well, the kids love it. I think it's a bit of a silly toy really. I did put a whiteboard app on there that'll be handy for work, and Katie immediately used it to do me some super-cute drawings. I found a load of "learn math" (grr, it's "mathematicS"!) things for the big lads, and story-telling apps for the wee ones, which inevitably have incredibly irritating American voices reading sugar-coated versions of Aesop's Fables and the like.

Katie now has her favourite apps Cut the Rope (brilliant, she does the first levels and the rest of us do the rest) and DressUp, a sort of doll dressing thing. Gordon showed me how he'd taken loads of shots of Katie's princess dolls in their underwear which he thought was hilarious and didn't impress Katie at all. Isn't technology great? Certainly, in the hands of children, it's brilliant!