OC Partee!

We have black and white balloons and party poppers. We have black and white bunting and we are wearing our 'Go Nick' t-shirts. We even have facepaint! We had hot dogs and chips and we had popcorn.

Unfortunatley even with all this Sari couldn't stay up quite long enough to see Uncle Nick carrying the flag. Bella is still up and the commentator has just said 'We are still on the G's'. Guinea has just walked in the Olympic Stadium. We are nearly there but it is 11.00pm! Come on Uncle Nick!

Warwick Castle

We visited Warwick Castle today which is a magnificent castle dating back almost 11 centuries! It is Britains most original castle and we had an amazing time watching jousting, meeting princesses and knights and climbing the tower!

And look who came with us! We found Steve last night at the Dorridge train station after going out for some milk! I think Caro may have known that he was coming but the girls got such a surprise when the train pulled out of the station and Steve was there on the platform!

Uncle Nick is the flagbearer!

It was announced tonight that Nick will carry the New Zealand flag and lead the New Zealand Olympic team into the Opening ceremony tomorrow night. This is fantastic news and we are very proud of Nick to have been given this great honour! Here is the media release to see the details. We will all be watching him tomorrow night and can't wait to see him enter the Olympic stadium!

Nick in the Olympic korowai at the announcement dinner

Summer has arrived just in time!

We have had two weeks of dull and rainy weather since we arrived in the UK but the last few days have been beautiful here in Knowle. Great timing with the Olympics starting next week. With the sunny weather we have been spending lots of time in the local Blythe river that is only about a mile from the house. Just around the corner from Mieke and James', if you take the back road to Solihull, the Blythe River crosses the road and you have to drive through a ford. This has been very exciting for the kids as it got up to 3 feet high when it was rainy last week. Now it has dropped down again the kids want to go through the ford in the car 'Really fast Mummy!!' and we have had alot of fun walking to the ford and playing in it and getting really really wet!  

Bella, Sari and Noah in the Blythe River

We drove to Worcester on Sunday afternoon and had a picnic with James' family at Gheluvelt Park. The park has a Splashpad which is a wonderful spray park with fountains and sprayers spraying water in all the directions. James niece and nephews Jacob, Sam and Lucy were there and all the kids had a marvelous time. The adults were treated to brass band music from the band rotunda on the lake and the band surprised with some modern hits like Poker face by Lady Gaga!

Sunday afternoon picnic at Ghuluvelt Park.

Noah, Lucy, Sam, Bella, Sari and Jacob (you can see the spray park behind)

We feel like we are settling into daily life here with Mieke and James. 5 kids is at times chaos but at other times amazing like when Mieke cooked chocolate muffins with the oldest three.

'There is some mixture left in the bowl!'

Noah has given up his bedroom to the three Willis girls and is sharing his toys with them too and all this with an amazing attitude. At only 2 and a half this is remarkable. The babies have alot of fun together and even though they are so young they interact and play together.

Phoebe and Elijah sharing dinner

Steve is in Spelleto for the next few days catching up with Nick and Sierra. Nick will have a final hit out tomorrow with a time trial before he leaves to be in London for the opening ceremony on Friday night. We are planning an Opening ceremony party here with the kids excited to set up their beds in front of the television. Black and white balloons, face paint, party poppers and popcorn will keep us entertained as we wait for the New Zealand team to enter the Olympic Stadium (darn that alphabetical order with 'N' so far towards the end!) and we will try to catch a glimpse of our Uncle Nick!

Go you good thing!

Nick had an awesome race in Monaco last night running a huge personal best (that means the fastest he has ever run before!)3.30.35 and setting a new NZ record. Not bad timing 2 weeks out from the Olympics. He looked so strong and came home like a steam train! We were all watching in Mieke and James front room and as the gun went off Bella, Sari and Noah were all dressed in their pijamas and screaming 'Go Nick!' at the top of their lungs. Caro had to ask them to quieten down as she didn't think they could handle 3minutes and 30 seconds of that cheering! In the home straight we were all off our seats with excitement. We are so proud of Nick and were so excited to watch him put it all together in a great race.

Our favourite part was at the end when Nick comes in the shot behind the BBC commentators and gives a big double thumbs up. This is the silly Uncle Nick that we all know and love. The kids thought Uncle Nick was doing it to them which they were very excited about!

Uncle Nick giving us the double thumbs up after his PB.

Rude awakening - Extended One News interview with Nick

A great interview with Nick about the Crystal Palace meet. Watch it here

The Cotswolds

We have had Poppa Richard here with us in Knowle since the weekend and yesterday he took us to Cotswold Wildlife Park. To get there we drove through the most beautiful little towns with names like Moreton-on-Marsh and Stow-on-the-Wold (wold means hillside) that make up the region called the Cotwolds. Six English Counties make up parts of the Cotswolds Region (Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset & Wiltshire) and is distinctive because of the belt of rich limestone and of course by the beautiful cottages, fine buildings, and churches built of this material. The villages we passed through looked like time had stood still for 300 years. There were Union Jack flags and bunting up on all the shops and houses and we thought this was because of the Olympics but we were told it was because of the Queens Jubilee. Having just read four Jane Austen novels in a row Caro felt right at home! 

Stow-on-the-Wold

The Cotswold Wildlife Park is set in the gardens of a beautiful 17th Century Manor House. The Rhino and Zebra enclosure is right on the front lawn of the house and the penguins and meercats live in the walled garden which used to contain the kitchen garden for the house. Bella and Sari enjoyed stepping through the gate into the walled garden as they have just read The Secret Garden with Caro - it was very exciting to find penguins in this garden!

Noah and Sari watching the penguins



Bella and the penguins


One of the highlights was seeing the family of meerkats. They had tiny little babies who tried to stand up on their hind legs like their parents but kept toppling over as they got sleepy!

Noah and the family of Meerkats







Crystal Palace

We all had an adventure into London yesterday to watch Nicks race at Crystal Palace. We made it across London and met up with Steve which was so great as we hadn't seen him for a whole week. We then saw Uncle Nick at the warm up track before his race and showed him the t-shirts we had made and gave him big hugs. He was feeling really good and we were so excited to watch the race.

Sari, Bella and Noah with Uncle Nick at Crystal Palace

Luckily we had seats in the Jubilie Stand, on the back straight of the track, as it was raining off and on during the afternoon and was only about 15 degrees. (You can see Nick wearing his gloves in the picture above!)  We met up with Aunty Sierra in the stands and were made very nervous by two false starts in Nicks mile race due to timing problems. The rain held off and finally the race got underway and Nick ended up tucked in behind the two pacemakers leading the rest of the field. Watch the race here at Spoleto Sport with a fantastic Italian commentary. Nick is staying in Spoleto as his final training base before the Olympics.

The crowd was amazing and really got behind the athletes and we were all cheering our hearts out as Nick increased his gap and was leading by about 30metres. The pacemakers dropped off and Nick continued to hold his lead but the chase pack were gaining on him and as he hit the back straight o the final lap and passed where we were sitting Team Willis rallied all they could to try and bring Nick home. 'Go again' we shouted as Nick entered the home straight but it wasn't to be and Nick ended up finishing in 4th place after an amazingly gutsy race! He nearly had it and if the pace had been slightly slower in the early stage of the race he would have held on to win. We were all super excited to see Nick running from the front with confidence and know that when he hits his peak in a couple of weeks and runs with the same confidence anything can happen! His next race is this Saturday over the 1500m at the Monaco Diamond League.



 

Caro, Noah, Bella, Sari and Mieke in the 'Team Willis' uniform

Youngest members of Team Willis, Phoebe 7 months and Elijah 9 months



Team Willis

Tomorrow we are all off into London to see Uncle Nick run at the London Grand Prix Diamond League meet at Crystal Palace. He will racing the mile and the meet is in the afternoon so it is perfect for us all to go and watch. This website has the start list and will have the results.

The kids are all super excited and we now have an official Team Willis uniform! Even Elijah and Phoebe have Team Willis t-shirts with 'Go Nick!' on the front, 'TEAM WILLIS' on the back and then 'Niece' or 'Nephew' on the side. Sister-in-law seemed a bit long winded so Mieke and Caro decided Caro's should just read sister! The last time Bella had a 'Go Nick' t-shirt was when Aunty Gilly got them made for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. She was 6 weeks old and the smallest t-shirt they had was a size 2 so you can imagine how cute she looked. Well most of you know what happend at that Commonwealth Games with Uncle Nick pulling away in the final lap of the 1500m to gap the rest of the field and win the gold medal by a huge margin. Well from 6 weeks old to 6 years old and Bella is still Nicks no.1 fan and tomorrow she will be wearing the 'Go Nick!' t-shirt again. It is really just a warm-up tomorrow or Team Willis but I think it is all coming together for a great race and then the gold again in the race that matters! Bella is now much better at cheering having spent many hours at the training track shouting encouragements to Nick so tomorrow will be her chance to show what she has at a proper race. Sari is pretty good too and they are teaching Noah. The favourite cheers to listen for are 'Very nice!', 'Looking good Nick', 'Come on Nick relax those arms!' and 'All the way Nick!' They sound very impressive coming from 2, 3 and 6 year olds!

The Allotment

Mieke and James live in an old '2 up 2 down', thats a small attached terrace house that has 2 rooms on the ground floor and 2 rooms on first floor, and the house is over 100 years old. The house is surrounded by farm land and backs onto to a field and was probably built as accomodation for farm workers. About a hundred metres down the road from their house Mieke and James have an allotment; a garden plot on a farmers land, and they have an amazing vege garden growing. It has been so much fun for the girls to go down to the allotment and for Noah to show them all the veges as well as the sand pit that is there. The exciting crop at the moment is strawberries and there are so many that the novelty of picking them has almost worn off! Today the weather cleared up and we spent time down there with Bella really getting into the weeding. Noah and Sari had fun in the sandpit and filling and carrying the watering cans and we all ate strawberries and peas! 

Sari and Noah at the allotment, with Mieke and Bella in the background

Knowle Library

We have spent the last couple of days with Steve and Mieke's Uncle Evan and Aunty Joanna, who live in Melbourne and cousin Julia who was over from Berlin. We have had lots of fun with them including a very wet walk in the woods trying to spot horses and avoid stinging nettle and a wonderful meal out at The Orange Tree pub where we sat on reindeer rugs and tried to control the 5 boistreous cousins!

Visiting the library has become an important part of our travels and the girls just love being able to go to the library wherever we are and sit and read. In Ann Arbor we were lucky enough to be able to sign up for a library card and get books out and some weeks we would come home with 20+ books.

Today we all had a treat when Mieke took us to her local library in Knowle. The library is in a 16th century Elizabethan townhouse with parts of which date back to 1400. Originally known as Chester house it is right on the High Street of the village. It is fantastic that such a beautiful old building houses a public library and means many people can enjoy it. Walking through it is just amazing to be able to see so clearly how it is constructed with big exposed oak beams some of them in huge curving arcs. In Michigan Bella got out books about the birds and mammals of the area but today from the historic Knowle library in which we can imagine all sorts of exciting adventures having taken place over the centuries we got out a book about castles! Very fitting!

The local Knowle library

We have arrived in the UK!

We have arrived in the UK and the next stage of our adventure has begun. It was sad to leave Ann Arbor and we will miss so much; swimming in the pool everyday in 30degree+++ heat, string cheese and goldish crackers and the great friends we made! Right now we are playing musical beds and Caro occasionally feels like she has just stepped off a boat but other than that we survived the trans atlantic trip well. Caro has to adjust back to driving on the other side of the road and cannot remember wether that is the left or the right now so watch out for her when she gets back to NZ! The girls need an extra layer of clothes and maybe a pair of wellies (gumboots) as we have gone from 40c in Ann Arbor last week to 16c today.

We are staying with Mieke, Steves sister, and James and their two boys Noah (2yrs) and Elijah (9months) in their beautiful wee 2 bedroom home in Solihull. They are so amazing having us to stay and we are all enjoying the chaos and the fun of doing life together! Caro and Mieke are looking forward to many adventures with the cousins and lots of time just to hang out together which they never get. Mieke and James live on the outskirts of a beautiful old village called Knowle and their house feels like it is in the middle of the countryside. We went for a walk today past the canal and through many wooded lanes.

We parted from Steve in Paris with Steve travelling to Belguim to support the NZ athletes competing at a meet in Huesden last night. Nick had a great race over 800m storming home to finish in 3rd in 1.46.18 watch it here. He looked really strong in the home straight which is awesome and now he and Sierra have gone to Italy to a training base while Steve flew to Cardiff today to meet up with the rest of the NZ Oympic Track and Field team. They are having a training camp based in Cardiff in the weeks prior to the Games. It is all getting very exciting and England is very pumped for the Games. Now that Wimbeldon is over they will be counting down the days!

Phoebe, Sari, Noah, Elijah and Bella