Hi,
What a lovely week. I hope you have enjoyed and made the most of our taste of sunshine.
Everyone seems so much happier when the sun shines, especially with all the lovely flowers and May blossoms out too.
A huge thank you to Sally Hinton for coaching our kids on Sunday at Close House driving range. Sally is the PGA Professional there and really put the youngsters at ease, taking time to understand their individual needs.
Also thank you to Cellular Solutions and ITPS who organized the golf lessons – it really was a great treat.
The weather was glorious and our children all came on amazingly from not having played before to learning lots of terms and the strokes. A good time was had by all.
The driving range was fully accessible and we even managed to get on the putting green with wheelchairs and walking frames. It is a great facility.
It looked so much fun and Close House is such a beautiful place. I could fancy taking up golf myself, although I did have a little go and I found it quite hard actually hitting the ball, which as you can imagine made the kids laugh.
We have been working on our Go Bananas campaign this week, which has been lots of fun, organising and coming up with different ways of raising money with local companies, schools and youth groups.
I love our ‘Get Your Bake On’ idea, where we are asking you to get together with a group of friends or colleagues and have a baking competition.
Pick someone who can’t bake to be the judge and then sell the cakes to raise money for the Sunshine Fund so we can buy equipment for the kids who really need our help.
So you get to show off your baking skills and eat cake whilst helping local children achieve their potential. What could be better?
We are so looking forward to receiving all your pictures of fabulous cakes. I’m hoping to see lots of bananas in the designs. There will be a prize for our overall winner too so watch this space.
I did two 30-minute training sessions last week in preparation for our Sunshine Run. I still find the first five minutes hard and need to stop for two minutes before getting my second wind, but with the help of a running App on my phone I am getting better.
I can now do over 20 minutes of what I call running, but it is more like jogging without feeling out of breath.
I have been going out just as it’s getting dark so I don’t feel too conspicuous. I’m sure my style leaves a lot to be desired but I am concentrating on my breathing so much at the moment and getting to the end of the 30 minutes I haven’t bothered much about technique.
But it’s only week two and I’m feeling good that I have eventually conquered my fear of running outside.
If I can do it anyone can. There are still nine weeks until the run on Wednesday, June 24, so there is still time to sign up and join me.
I’ve paid my £17 registration fee and can’t wait to get my official running vest. I know I will be one of the slowest on the night but I’m looking forward to finishing and receiving my medal.
I will also hopefully have raised enough money to buy a piece of equipment for one of the children we support. Please get in touch if you would like to join the run or donate to help me buy a tricycle for a child who isn’t able to run.
I’m having a break for a couple of weeks so Julieanne will be taking over the column next week with a little update on what she is up to,
I hope you enjoy it.
Have a good week,