Ode to my family

Now that we have a fairly well functioning house we have began to receive guests as they say in the trade. They may not say that but i think they should.

We had my Liz, Simy, Morsies and the dog down for a weekend. It worked out well as we managed to enlist Liz in the garden for the morning achieving more beauty than me and Wylie had achieved since moving in.

They also got the usual tour of Maigh Nuad taking them round the grounds of Saint Patricks College. Thankfully this is both spectacular and long enough that they don’t realise that this is the only bit of the tour. Still it’s more than Portadown has to see.

Despite coming here for over a year I still hadn’t made my way into the chapel yet (though I stil forgot to take any photos so check out these incredible photos by my friend Florian instead) so we put that right too.

There was scrabble – which most importantly I won.

Frozen Lake

I find myself in that slightly awkward but always pleasant bit between Christmas and New Year. In this odd society that puts these major holidays together and where no real work happens in between.

Christmas was good, cracker food and some interesting gifts, of which my (second) favourite was this.

There were also the obligatory and most practical and appreciated socks and deoderant. Well appreciated by some people anyhow.

Much more excitingly on boxing day we managed to get wee Liz out in the canoe and make an attempt on Coney island.

We were thwarted by ice. Yes ice, a big dirty great sheet of it that seemed to run all the way out to Coney Island.

The good ship Pudge is not designed as ice breaker, though we tried all the same. In the end we gave up when the crunching noises became all a bit disconcerting.

Instead we paddled up the Blackwater instead fearing dive bombings by swans. We were fine.

I must say I did like the ice for dragging the canoe back to the car.

[Note my new hat, another cracking pressie]

The holy pictures

Wee liz is a talented woman.

6 weeks of art classes and has produced 2 of the following 3. One is an original.

Build that wall

The brother is getting a big whole knocked through his house and sun room or something put on. I got roped into moving furniture.

Though a good opportunity for fulfilling childhood ambitions of digger driving.

Incidentally, the builders sensibly didn’t leave us the keys.

You are making me so happy (for a change)

Turns out i can blame Simy for everything.