Thursday photo #281

I often feel that I’m wandering along through life without much purpose. I know what I need to do, but managing to do all of it and retain some semblance of sanity seems a bit too much. Things seem to be falling into place from a work standpoint this week, but it’s at the expense of getting as much exercise as I usually try to do. It all seems like such a juggle, but I suppose I need to get one thing right before moving on to the next.

Blogon Toys 2019

For the past few years, I’ve been going to at least one Blogon conference each year. It’s always a brilliant opportunity to meet brands, chat to them about Christmas gift guides and get contacts to work with in the future. There’s also the added bonus of sessions run by experts in both blogging and other fields. It’s one of those areas of work where you can’t be brilliant at every aspect of it. I regard my social media and blogging skills as quite good. I’m dreadful at SEO and I love making videos, but they’re not always as I’d like them to be. So, it’s great to go and pick up some tips from people who really do know what they’re talking about.

Better still, it’s good to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. It’s always good to spend some time with Donna and it was good to see Tim and meet Suzanne, Laura and Jess for the first time. Working from home is a privilege, but it does get lonely. The thought that other people are out there doing the same thing is quite comforting.

Swimming galas

Over the weekend, Libby took part in her first ever swimming galas. She started swimming club before the summer and has been desperate to be in a race ever since. This may seem a little odd, since I know a lot of children get nervous about races. But not Libby. Libby is a medal magpie. She wants nothing more than to take part in every race going for every sport around and collect up all the shiny medals she can.

Better still, this time she knew the medals would be for actually coming somewhere in her races rather than for taking part. In the gala on Saturday, they cleverly split the children up into races with children who weren’t necessarily in the same category. This meant that Libby won her front crawl race, although she came last in the butterfly. Then, medals were awarded by time depending on the category. Libby is in the girls aged 8 and under. She’ll still be in this age group next year, so she’s quite young and small for the category.

There ended up only being two girls in her category. Her and one other girl who was bigger, stronger and faster. So, Libby got the silver medal in both races. She still hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that there were only two of them in it, so she’s delighted to have come second. Her silver medals have instantly become her most prized possessions.

I love this photo of the girls sitting at the piano, failing to be serious as usual. Lia started piano lessons a few weeks ago and she’s loving learning to play like her big sister. This has spurred Libby on to practice a bit more and they’re both getting a lot of enjoyment out of the instrument. I’m sure this will come as a relief to the poor people who collected it for us when I found it free to a good home about 10 years ago. Not least because their backs probably haven’t yet recovered.