Neil's First Sports Day

In just under three weeks time, my wee man finishes school for the summer holidays. He will be finished his first year at school. It feels like only yesterday I was shopping for his uniform and worrying about his first day, and now the year is almost over.

Neil on his first day back in September

It has been a year of firsts. First day at school, first time getting the school bus, bringing his first picture home, first book read independently, first nativity. Lots of lovely firsts to cherish.

Last week saw what will probably be the last of the significant firsts for this school year, his first sports day. It is something I had been thinking about a lot as the last term approached. He has trouble with a lot of physical activity, throwing, catching etc, and he's a bit clumsy with his movements, and I really worried he would struggle and gut frustrated and upset. He hates losing, and usually refuses to take part if he thinks he might not win, so I was concerned about that too.

 The weather last week was pretty naff around these parts, you certainly wouldn't have known it was the beginning of summer to look outside! The big man upstairs was obviously looking favourably upon us though because for the morning of the sports day we got glorious weather.

Neil was on the green team, and we kitted him out in a pair of so bright you needed sunglasses lime green shorts and a matching t-shirt. He looked fabulous!

The first event was the 'beanbags in hoops thingymaboby', (sorry I don't know the names for the events), there were a load of beanbags in the middle and 5 teams standing around with a hoop on the ground. One person from each team had to run, collect a beanbag and run bag to place it in the hoop before the next person could run.


He did a fantastic job.Some beanbags got thrown out of place while kids were running, so he ran to pick them up and move them back to the middle before taking his beanbag back to his team, bless his little heart. Caitlin and I were his personal cheerleaders, standing at the side shouting him on.


 Neil is one of the clumsiest wee boys I have ever met. Before the race had even started he had dropped the egg about ten times. He did brilliantly in the race though, and opted for the slow and steady method. He concentrated so much for this one and only dropped the egg once or twice during the race.

He took part in a wellie throwing contest, jumping contest, a race, and then finally the sack race.


The sack race was the hardest of them all for him but he tried really hard. He fell over at one point and needed to be helped in before being carried over the line, which as I'm sure you can imagine, he thought was great fun.

He didn't win any medals this time but he was fabulous, and did his best in all of the games. I honestly couldn't have felt prouder. He even got a sticker which he was absolutely beaming about.