Phew - good to stop and take stock :o)

Whew - thank goodness the world has stopped revolving at a million miles an hour - now I can catch my breath.

The pile of bullseye quadrants was cut up on Friday night - once the house had settled down after the whirling dervish of a departure by DH and the two youngest. I should have enough to do the centre of the top and some of the outer border - we'll see, I haven't had a full count up yet - just kept cutting and stitching - over the next few days I should be able to pull them together and see how far I've got

Saturday dawned bright and early (thank goodness, I hadn't slept too well worrying that I wouldn't hear the alarm and we'd be late) We slung everything in the car and headed off up to Clevedon, just below Bristol to meet up with one of Sarah's team-mates and her dad who was kindly taking us with them to Worcester. The lift was much appreciated as having the responsibility of driving 130 of the days miles taken from me made the day do-able. We will return the favour and take Catherine with us on the second date in July as her younger sister is playing the lead in 'Annie' and understandably both of her parents want to watch her. It's always good to be able to return a favour - after all that's what makes the world go round :o)

Sarah had a terrific day training rugby - they worked them exceptionally hard - she's still aching today but playing/drilling with that level of coach and among a group of that standard of girls was a real privilege. Plus she thoroughly enjoyed meeting and chewing the fat with girls from other regions - in fact I think she enjoyed that as much as anything.

The weather was glorious, sunny and warm, almost too much so but the coaches were terrific and there was a copious quantity of sports water for them to take on board at every opportunity so save them from getting dehydrated. You could actually see the improvement in the girls and their handling skills as the day went on. An excellent opportunity and a real honour to be able to participate.

After a very pleasant journey chatting to good company all the way back to Clevedon we collected our car and headed off down to the campsite in Devon. Luckily late Saturday afternoon is generally reasonably quiet on what are usually very busy motorways in the UK. We have an excellent road system over here - just an ever increasing number of cars filling it up :o(

We made excellent time and arrived at the campsite just as the barbecue was starting up - so with a welcome cup of tea in one hand and an equally welcome bottle of beer in the other I sat down and was waited on hand and foot with a lovely lamb and mint burger for starters.

The party was made up of some of Nick's football team and their families making a total of around thirty adults and children. Fortunately some of the boys had older and younger siblings so there were mates for both our girls too.

The campsite is set in the upper reaches of the River Dart which joins the sea about 15 - 20 miles south at Dartmouth. The river winds it's way through a beautiful wooded valley and is in the grounds of an old mansion so a lot of the garden area is filled with rhododendron and specimen trees. The areas of the grounds near to the river have man-made lakes which are shallow and have assault courses and a pirate ship for the kids to play on - Brilliant! A real adventure playground where the kids could go off within reason and explore and play to their hearts content. The picture shows the lovely woodland riverside view

Only one down note - the kids played the dads in the afternoon in a game of football which seemed to be dragging on at stalemate into valuable drinking time - the rules were amended to 'golden goal' - first to score wins! This was fine until DH scored the decider - much to the disgust of DS who wouldn't speak to him for the next hour! Such competitiveness!

Much barbecued food was consumed, more than a little beer and wine washed it down and we all sat round enjoying a bit of a sing-song and lots of chit-chat before heading off to bed just before midnight

Sunday was a gorgeous day - we had to vacate our pitches by around 11am but were quite at liberty to park up in the car park and enjoy the site for as long as we wanted before heading back up the motorway for home - thankfully relatively clear again.

We went on the weekend slighly knowing only one of the families - however they were such a friendly bunch that by the end of the weekend we felt totally accepted and all ended up going back to the house of one of the boys to watch England beat Ecuador to go into the quarter finals of the World Cup - a lovely way to round off a super time

Of course the down side of it all was the fact that the children had had less sleep than they should have and were subsequently very scratchy and very difficult to raise for school this morning - like waking the dead!!!

I simply went back to work (thankfully at one school only now) for a rest!