Success...

This past weekend we (Friendly Fire) played in the Bristol Wreck softball tournament, which is a nice low-key, low-pressure event, just right to end the season with. We were short of players for most of the weekend and relied heavily on help from "ringers" (players from other teams, playing for us too) but the good news is that actually won something for a change. We won the D Plate competition, which in reality meant we were the best of the worst 8 teams (32 teams competed in all), but we had to win a quarter-final, a semi-final and a final and we got t-shirts and beer as prizes! It was a good weekend, with lots of rain on Saturday and lots of softball throughout. And it is so nice to end the season on a high note like that. We have one more game to play this year (tomorrow night), so I hope our good fortune continues for one more day.

Also, as promised, here are a few of the recent pics of the kids:















All these and more can be seen on my Flickr pages.

Slacker!

Two months is a long time. Eh.

We've just returned from Devon where we spent 4 nights camping. It was a surprising success. I was expecting the kids to have a tough time with the whole camping experience but they actually took to it really well. They are almost new people since we've been back. More confident and seemingly more content. The weather was also fantastic, which really made a difference. We had one afternoon of bad rain, but apart from that it was perfect. Hopefully photos to follow in an upcoming post.

The bad side was that we had severe car problems. Two weeks ago we had to have the clutch replaced, then while we were camping the gearbox gave up - we were stranded in Devon. In the end we managed to tow the car (with Dad's help) to a relatively nearby garage, where it remains still. Hopefully it will be fully repaired by tomorrow morning so that I can drive the rental car back down to Devon and collect it. All very annoying, and very expensive!

In other news, our softball season is drawing to a close with only a couple of weeks to go, plus a tournament next weekend. It's been a disappointing season with only a few good performances... and I have not played well the last couple of games, so I am really hoping to pull myself together for the final few. The Premiership football season starts tomorrow (it comes round so quickly). Liverpool will once again try to challenge Manchester Utd and Chelsea, and even though they have made some good signings, I am still in doubt as to whether the squad is strong enough to be serious contenders. We'll see.