Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Soccer, Swim, Run

Last Saturday the girls had their first soccer festival for this school year.    As you can see, the team is complete with de rigueur accessories.
 Soccer bag?  Check.
Umbrella?  Check.

Sadly, what they didn't bring to the tournament is their own soccer ball to use during warm-up.  Hence, instead of doing foot drills.....

The kids went their own way during summer with only a few handful continuing with soccer training.   J herself was immersed with swimming training the whole of summer.  The team only had a few days worth of practice since the start of school and it showed in their performance.  It was funny looking at how they all dodged the ball during penalty kick.
It is also B's first time to join a competition with the school team.  She is excited as can be.  Coach fielded her for a few minutes, but like most of the girls in Team 2003, she stayed at the sidelines most of the time - chit-chatting up a storm.

The day after, J is back doing the Alaska IronKids again.  This time around, she participated with her soccer friends.  All the girls went to the aquathlon tired from the day before because of the back to back timing of the race with the St. Ignatius Soccer Tournament.  Nonetheless, no one minded the body and muscle aches since everyone only felt excitement on doing the race together.  
The are a lot of familiar faces in the pool due to the lack of a swimming competition for the month of July.  You can feel the self-assured vibe these highly-spirited kids were giving off.  The presence of competitive swimmers made J comment that the felt she was in the Nuvali koi pond during feeding time.

Scary?  Yikes!  Everyone wanted to get ahead, with some of the kids swimming on top of the others in the mad scramble to get ahead.  Naturally, the fast swimmers left the rest trailing behind.

Like the previous event, she did a 200m swim and a 1.5k run.  She was the 5th girl out of the water, but she lost her lead in the run split.  Nevertheless, congratulations is in order as she has managed to improve her time by a good two minutes.  She finished 15th out of 36 girls.

Her race statisticss this time around:
swim split: 4:10.7
transition and run split:  10:32.3
total race time:  14:43.0
Just to make sure she doesn't stay longer in the transition any more than necessary, her race bib was attached to her tri-belt.  Clearly, not tying her shoelaces was not one of the things we talked about when we went through how to improve her transition time.  :) 


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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Mine for The Picking

I am not quite certain what switch flipped C’s green thumb on… it could be the greeneries in Tagaytay or too much Farmville in FaceBook. Whatever it is, it’s all good!

A few weeks after spending the long Labor Day weekend in Tagaytay, we went to the  to do some herb shopping at the EDSA Garden House.

The EDSA Garden House is a huge garden depot, a heaven for those with green-thumbs. Numerous green seedlings welcome you upon entering.  The scent of the assortment of herbal bouquet surely to delight your senses while you walk around.  The scientific names of the herbs are on display, as well as their culinary and medicinal uses and unique properties.

For only P100.00, you get your pick of any three baby plants.  We started with the basic: Italian basil, arugula and mint.  I also decided to get a soil-less potting mix to ensure that there are no plant eating insects, weed seeds and assorted other "unwanteds" that can easily hitch a ride with the garden soil. 

Since I wanted to do container gardening, I got different container pots as well. A hanging tub to showcase and keep in check the speedy growth of the mint. A deep plastic pot with a wide diameter for the basil. And a clay planter box for the arugula.

We love picking the arugula while they are still tiny shoots.

It is so much fun to be in the middle of a recipe and dash out to the garden with my scissors for one of the ingredients. What better way to spice up a dish than throwing in herbs and spices that are just pinched off the stems a few minutes ago.  This nipping away for recipes is important to the plant.  It helps the plant get bushier and remain healthy as you enjoy the benefit of fresh flavors. Just don't take more than one third of the foliage at a time and try to pinch in a way that keeps the plant looking good too. 

I cannot wait to grow a flood of beautiful and fresh food!

EDSA Garden House
Manila Seedling Bank Environmental Center
EDSA near Quezon Ave, QC
(0632) 929.3189
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