Nearly holidays

Well - we're off on our summer hols tomorrow - to Donegal. And that is with the 5 kids, 2 grandparents and the dog! Of course Ben and I will have an enforced break in the middle - as already mentioned we have to go to Manchester for a chess championship. It should be a nice relaxing holiday - out in the country near the beach and no distractions

(Ben) "Bobby" Fisher!

Ben plays chess at school - he is in the school chess club and also chose chess as his Thursday afternoon activity. The school has been participating in the British Land Chess challenge, in which the kids play against one another, and if they win 6 or 7 out of 7 games they are eligible to go forward to the regional heats. Ben managed this and he has just spent the day at the Northern Ireland Megafinal. He won his first 3 games running and seeing as 4 wins out of 6 qualifies for the next leel - the Gigafinal in Manchester! - things were looking good. He then came up against the 2 best players in his age group (under 10) and lost, partly because they were pretty good. However he managed to win the last game and so he has qualified for the Northern Regional Gigafinal in early July - right in the middle of our hols!

Latest news

If you hadn't noticed there hasn't been much activity on this blog recently - due to other things on my plate - including a major furniture building exercise (Ikea strikes again). However I had to update the skiing countdown "widget" - seeing as we have been and gone to Alpe D'Huez in March and are now looking forward to Les Deux Alpes at Christmas (we would have gone to Alpe D'Huez again but some creep bagged one of the rooms!)
The other change is the addition to the left sidebar - which I hesitate to say is not me but a member of the more extended poisson famille - my bruvver- who has become insane and decided to run the Marathon. So if anyone has any spare money - it's a good cause!

Tara has arrived

Well the kids (and adults!) wait is finally over and Tara came to stay with us as of late this afternoon. She whined a bit as we drove away from her old home but she seems to have settled in very well so far - as I write this she is fast asleep in her basket and we are trying to decide whether to put newspaper down on the floor or get up in the middle of the night for a toilet break!

The latest member of the family

Tara is coming tomorrow - we were hoping it was going to be today, but she was a bit off colour and they felt she needed wormed so it has been postponed for 24 hours. The kids however can hardly wait - they have been running around playing at puppies for the last 2 weeks

Our new addition

Meet Tara - our new puppy (although she won't be coming to stay for a couple of weeks yet). She's a cross between a Gordon Setter and a collie.

Now and then

It's a bit of time since I last posted (funny how you start things and then they sort of gradually fade). Maybe I'll get to fill in the gaps someday but for now here is how things are.

• Our extension is nearly finished (short of tidying up a few things)


• Beth has finished her 2nd transfer test yesterday so all she (and we) have to do now is wait for the result


• We're going off this afternoon to see some puppies with the aim of getting one! (it's a long story but we were sort of lined up for a labrador cross from a rescue centre -Pippa- but that fell through so we're not sure how the kids will take the change)