Busy few days ahead

Well that's Louise and I finished for the half term holiday. We both have a teacher training day at our schools for which we're not required to attend. The other two and Daddy all finish tonight for a week. Nigel has booked the full week off work - we have no definite plans but might try and get over to Bath to visit my niece who started university there this term and is only about an hour away.

It's also a weekend of rugby with the third/fourth place play-off tonight between France and Argentina and of course the Rugby World Cup final between England and South Africa tomorrow evening.

Much has been made in the media about England's defeat by the Springboks at the start of the tournament. However it is a different, far more confident squad on the field tomorrow and I think it will be a much closer game. I feel that, although my heart says I desperately want England to win and I will support them to the end, it will be so close that it's impossible to predict the outcome - only time will tell.

On Sunday Sarah has County Squad training, fortunately that's in Taunton itself at the local 6th Form College so we won't have to trail halfway across the county to take her to that.

We will also have a real house full for the weekend.

Leigh and John with their 22 month old son Toby will be heading down from Gloucester to stay with us on Saturday morning. Leigh was Louise's class teacher in Year 1 (when Louise was 5 going on 6) and when she realised that I quilted asked my advice as she was a real beginner at the time. Through this we became firm friends. She has had a really tough time since the baby arrived fighting skin cancer but is well on the way to normal again now. John is a massive Gloucester rugby club fan (like our Sarah) and they will no doubt enjoy watching the final with us all. Not sure if they have good enough ear plugs to drown out my shouting!!!

On top of this we heard earlier this week that a good friend of ours from America (Pennsylvania PA) is over here on business and will be at a loose end between finishing the work he's come over to do this afternoon and flying out on Monday. Steve and his family lived near us in Gloucester for part of a three year posting to the UK and their boy is similar age and was great buddies with Louise. They have an older daughter who might even have been taught by Leigh and is around Nick's age.

Finally their younger girl was born 14 weeks premature while we were in France on St Patrick's Day 2002. Her amazing survival is in no small way down to the marvelous neo-natal unit at Gloucester Royal Hospital where our two youngest were also brought into the world. She is now a lively, completely normal almost six year old - isn't modern medicine fantastic?

We couldn't bear to think of Steve stuck on his own away from his family for the weekend and invited him to stay. They hosted Nigel in similar circumstances on a business trip to the US about four years ago when he had a free weekend in the middle of a two week trip. It's great to be able to return the compliment. We have pre-warned him about the rugby and he's up for a good night in too :o)

So as you can imagine I may not get much time for stitching this weekend - lots of chatting, eating, drinking, sport and general catching up - wonderful!

Finally as I have no quilty photo to share with you I thought you'd like to see how well Tazz is making himself at home on the chair in our sunroom - his owners next door started work yesterday on their conservatory - so the poor 'mouse-hound' has builders and toddlers to contend with at present. Mind you I'm not sure we'll see that much of him while Toby is visiting :o)