Ella’s great idea – A new job for Granny!

The youngsters talked to their grandparents on the webcam the other day. Granny showed them a set of new plastic golf clubs that she had waiting for them, much to their delight. Now the kids are golf enthusiasts because they get to take golf lessons every year at the EBB golf course, with a bunch of other middle class and rich kids from the area. They enjoy the comforts of a Club House (with satellite tv!), soda on occasion at the Club House bar, and people who retrieve and gather up the golf balls that the kids have knocked around.

In Ugandan English “pick” is used the same as “get” in American English. Sometimes we use Ugandan English but with an American accent. Yeah, it’s weird.

So Ella has given these poor young fellows the label of “Ball Pickers.” Nice. I can barely keep a straight face when she matter of factly discusses The Ball Pickers and I think of these, sometimes rather shiftless lot of young men, standing around, um, picking balls.
Ella started pondering (out loud of course) golfing at Grannie’s. Her and Frankie will have the golf clubs. Her and Frankie will have three golf balls. All good. But who will keep fetching those three golf balls for them? There will be no Ball Pickers at Grannies (thank God!). Shorty, Granny’s Corgi, would just run off with them, so he wouldn’t work. Hmmm. Moment of contemplation, then the “aha” moment and she states matter of factly, “Granny can get the balls for us.” Ha ha!! Case closed. Granny’s going to be a Ball Picker next summer. The thoughts of Granny running around the 3 acre front field repeatedly “picking” the three golf balls for her pampered EBB grandchildren is funny enough – but at least it’s not Grandpa!! Grandpa standing around picking balls? NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Of course, after this old picture that I found, Granny just might be game for it! She made a pretty good horse holder for our photo shoot, in her awesome umbrella hat, so why not fetching golf balls for her grandchildren? Sort of a jack-of-all-trades, our Granny ;)

Tis the season to be.... GOLFING!

Tis that time of year when the H's start to golf! This will be Ella's third year of golf lessons, and Frankie's first (officially anyways). As usual, they are loving it!

These photos are courtesy of Sarah, who takes them for two hours every morning while I'm at work.

Third year Ella flanked by first year Frank

Steady

Aim

Fire!

Frankie's got the first step down - balancing the ball on the tee

A little coaching...

A year ago this would have made Frankie freeze and go limp. But not this year!

Ker Pow!

According to Sarah, everyone is quite impressed with little Frankie's golfing skills. To be honest, I am not too surprised as he's always had extremely good motor skills and can usually do things as good, if not better (don't tell her!) than his sister, who is 2.5 years older than him.

I come home and Ella tells me all about the different squabbles and drama's that happened amongst the golfers that day, Sarah tells me about Frankie's plays and what the instructors have said about him that day, and Frankie just hangs around with a little smile on his face :) When asked he tells me that he "golfed up" really well. Ha! What he failed to tell me, and his sister did for him, was that he told a kid at golf that they would go to hell if they killed his grasshopper! Whoops - better start working on this kids theology more I guess...

He's pondering something alright. Maybe the other kid going to hell?

The end :)

One little, TWO little golfers!

It's that time of year for GOLFING! Never thought that was something that people in Africa do, did yah? Well, they do! And we did too again this year.

This is Ella's second year and Frankie's first. Sarah took them the first four days (and got their pictures) as it's only a short walk from our home (we don't quite live 'on' the golf course but close enough!) and Tanya and I took them last Friday. They have one week left to go.

Frankie gets to golf for free since the instructor decided that he was a bit too young. Apparently he couldn't quite handle the one on one attention from someone he doesn't know and is comfortable with and he did his "blobbing out" thing :(. Poor Frankie. He's come a long way in the last year and doesn't totally disassociate anymore but when he's feeling under pressure with someone he doesn't know well he still has the tendency to "blob out". His body becomes limp, his mouth will fall open and he just can't think or function. As debilitating as this is to his future in golf I'm trying to encourage myself in that it rarely happens and he has come SO far in the last year... But still, it leaves me a little sad :(. He's got better eye hand coordination than his sister and isn't quite the spaz so i know that some day he will do really well at golf and have fun!

Boy Wonder getting some instruction

Isn't this line up hilarious? Who ever saw such cute golfers!

Ella getting a little one on one instruction

Thinkin'

Frank got a wee bit of help from a fellow golfer. Sarah said this kid was hilarious trying to give Frank a hand!

Girl Wonder trying to balance her ball on the tee

*No child or spectator was harmed in the shooting of these pictures, despite the spastic little Miss H golfer

He/She who learns, teaches...

L's three weeks of golf lessons ended last week so now we have a (near) professional little golfer on our hands. In order to keep up with the game, she has recreated a highly sophisticated (because that's just the type of people we are!) little golf course in our yard and has also begun to give lessons. Learn one week, teach the next...

She managed to filch a golf tee from the golf course and wrestle up a ping pong ball that used to be Cody's. Perfect for practicing ones drives!

Her club is a plastic purple baseball bat. It sort of matches the pink ping pong ball...

And she makes the drive!!

Not one to keep her newly found knowledge/gifting to herself, she immediately began to give her little brother golf lessons as well.

Ella using her best big-sister-teacher face. Pleasant enough but all business.

And the promising pupil! (when his leaves stick out sideways he looks like a faun :)

The teacher shows the attentive pupil how to balance the ball on the tee

Next, a demonstration on good stance

Lining up for the swing....

KERBLAM!!! A successful drive!

And that my friends, is how you golf.... She will start booking lessons on a first come, first serve basis :)

Ella takes up GOLFING ;)

So today young L donned her skort and sun visor, packed up her little brother and mom, and headed for the golf course for her first day of golfing! A funny sport for a H to pick up, I know, especially a four, almost five, year old H... I think we're climbing the social latter!

The golf club here give childrens lessons through the school holidays for about $6.00 for three weeks of golf lessons, two hours a day, five days a week. Not bad!

I counted 15 kids there on the green, aging from 3 to 14 or so. There were two or three instructors and I was impressed that each kid was able to get individual attention and plenty of time to play. They divided them up pretty well into cooperative and uncooperative (Ella was of course in the cooperative group ;) so the cooperative kids weren't getting screwed up by the uncooperative ones.

They started out practicing shooting drives (I think that's a golf term...) Each kid had a pile of golf balls, a long club, and a golf tee.

Our friend Aquila was there for his second month of lessons so being a seasoned golfer (and a pretty good one!), he helped answer some of my questions! It was really nice for Ella to have a friend to hang out with.

"This is how you swing."

Ella was pretty intent and serious about the whole thing. It was a little bit more intense than playing miniture golf with her Aunt Becky this summer (and probably a whole lot safer for the surrounding people... ;)!

"Do I really want to listen to you? I just want to wack that ball... "

"Like this? This is crazy!"

The "practicing your swing" did not go over too well with L - she looked like she was opperating a slasher!

Setting the ball on the tee

Take aim

Fire!

Frankie amused himself by climbing around on this tractor implement. What a cool place a golf course is - they have dogs and tractors!

Watching and learning....

After all the kids practiced their long drives, they practiced their putts. I just loved this three year old! Her and L were quite the serious little golfers!

This is about my favorite picture. Aquila putting, the "catcher" waiting to catch the ball, and the two little girls watching the whole thing with interest! All these children golfing was really a hoot. Hysterical!

Ella tries her hand at putting - she actually got it in a few times! Aquila is there fetching the balls.

Aquila scraping the balls into the hole

To top it all off, we had Sarah's sister, Lillian, driving around in the golf cart! She is our "inside source" in the golf club since she works there :).

Ella started crying twice (imagine how proud that made me!), once when they were done putting and she wanted to putt some more, and when we were leaving. She wanted to "go to the clubhouse and watch tv." HA!!!! I couldn't believe those words were coming out of my four year olds lips! Clubhouse?? My have things changed since I was four!!!

She did decide that she liked her teacher, which was a good thing. She's not exactly used to a man telling her what to do, epsecially one that she doesn't know but she soon found that he was the ticket to making sure she got a turn and no one took her golf club. Smart girl, my little L :) Nor is she used structured teaching, which will change when she starts school in a couple months! All in all she did well, except for the few tears ;)