Social animals

Four in the bed, originally uploaded by Racmol.

This may be why Willy sneaks in with us while we're asleep.

It seems nobody in our house likes to sleep alone - although Fia asked to get back in her own bed last night as Willy's bed was too lumpy. Later, when he had a coughing fit and I went and sat with him, I had to concede she had a point - the best part of a tub of 48 small spiky dinosaurs were in there with him!

We survived half-term (a week of school holidays). Jules and I took one day off work each and then Maria came on Friday. I sent Willy to Hopscotch on my day off (I know, very mean and boy was he suspicious: 'What you and Fia doing, Mummy?') Then Fia and I took the train into town and went to the National Gallery to see the sunflowers from 'Camille and the Sunflowers' (picture book about Van Gogh). She quite liked it (mainly the gift shop though, where we bought some Christmas decorations) but I don't think Willy would have got much out of it. And then, to add insult to injury, we met Jules for lunch and Sofia had a haircut.

Jules took both kids to the Natural History Museum on Wednesday but they ended up seeing the insects rather than the dinosaurs due to the size of the queue for the dinoasaurs.

FInally we have worked out why Willy has been saying (for about 3 months) 'There are dinosaurs in New Zealand' and 'Maria took me to New Zealand - on the train'.Just a mispronunciation of museum!

The pink cast...as promised

Fia in pink, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Photos are up!

Photos from the half marathon can be found on www.marathon-photos.com, under Royal Parks Half Marathon. You can search by surname to find us. Not sure who looks worse, but there are definitely some shockers in there!

The rundown of the run

J pre race, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Well, we survived the Royal Parks Half Marathon, although we are still hobbling about and going down the stairs sideways.

Tomorrow hopefully the offiicial race day photos will appear on marathonphotos.com, but for today all we have is the few we took before the race.

Anyway I did it in 2.18.41 which I was pleased about as it was 4 minutes faster than Windsor last year and Jules did it in 2.07.34 and was devastated not to be under 2 hours. There were pacesetters running with big flags attached to them for 2.00 or 2.10 - I managed to keep my 2.10 guy in sight until 5 miles and then I never saw him again and Jules had a similar experience with his 2.00 guy.

Jules's friend from work Glenn finished in 1.47 but has no memory of crossing the finish line and woke up covered in ice in a St John's ambulance! Five hours later he was allowed to go home from hospital, where he had his celebratory half-marathon feast (chicken broth).

Later that afternoon while we watched the rugby that we'd missed in the morning, Fia and Willy ran laps of the living room and held medal ceremonies with our medals. Which was quite cute.

I did take some pictures of Fia's cast early yesterday morning before we left from the race, but she has this ominous scowl and with the energy saver lightbulb in the living room, Jules said the photos were too freaky to share. So we will try again in daylight.