Lions lose again

Well, the Lions’ hopes of qualifying for the semi-finals took another dent yesterday as they were unluckily beaten by Auckland, 29-22. Although the Lions had their big name All Blacks back (Umaga and So’oialo) and had most of the possession AND scored more tries, they still lost the game. And despite the fact that, in my humble, unbiased, one-eyed-fan’s perspective, the first of the two Auckland tries included a blatant forward pass and the second was scored from an offside position apparently didn’t matter – they were both still given. So, despite the fact that the moral victory was the Lions’ they only scored one point for NPC purposes. We’re therefore going to be dependent upon other results both this week and next to determine if we’re able to climb into the final semi-final place. Oh well, time will tell ….

Passport for Isabel

Today we have been sorting out a passport for Isabel – at this point, we are applying for her New Zealand one but will be looking to get her British one as well in the not too distant future! I couldn’t believe the palava involved though, just for passport pictures – the rules state that babies have to be looking at the camera, they aren’t allowed to smile (which is quite tricky in Isabels case!), they have to have their mouths closed and both ears must be visible – how bloomin’ STUPID! She’s 5 months old for goodness sake! We had to take about 10 pictures of her until we came up with one that was acceptable – the lady in the shop told me that they had a lady with a 9 day old baby come in and the passport office had REJECTED her baby’s pictures………how on earth you are supposed to get a 9 day old to comply with all their regulations, I’ll never know!
Anyway, we have our pics now and the form is filled out – on Saturday we are going to see Zoe as she is going to verify Isabel is who we say she is – given the requirements are that she has to have known her from birth and being from the medical profession we thought she was highly qualified for the job!

Latest Isabel Gallery

We had a great time when Granny Radcliffe was here visiting her great grand-daughter (the fact that Dan and I were here too was completely coincidental!). I’ve added a new gallery of photos from her stay, although you will probably notice that most of them are of the Munchkin!!

Click here to view the gallery, or click on the photo on the right hand side.

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Welcome to our new look website!!

We’ve finally got round to updating our web-site. Hopefully it all looks good on your screens too – the joys of having a widescreen laptop is the fact that things look a bit different on a normal monitor. Please let me know if there’s anything that doesn’t quite work.

The layout of the site should be self-exaplanatory, but in case you can’t work it out … I’ve copied across a number of our previous pages, mainly the ones to do with our time in NZ and Slug’s diary these can be accessed under “pages” (we’ll add posts to form an Isabel diary as we go, so that will create itself).

The gallery is still there, and you can access it from the “Gallery” link under “pages” on the left hand side. At least, that will take you to a page containing a link to the gallery. This will present you with a full screen gallery so if you want to return to our home page you’ll either have to use your browser’s “back” button or re-enter our main page URL. (If I get a chance I might see if I can set it up so that the gallery can be viewed in a frame rather than full screen, but for now you’ll have to put up with it!)

The categories will link through to the posts in a given category only, and the archives will link through to the posts in a given month. As we’ve only just set-up the new site there isn’t much history there yet, but hopefully these will build up over time.

Finally, for those interested, I have added a neat little plug-in that gives the current weather situation at Wellington Airport. Given we live about three minutes’ drive from the Airport (and can see the planes taking off and landing from our lounge window) it can be taken as a fairly good indication of the weather at our house!!

You should be able to add comments against each page and each post, as well as in the gallery as before.

Enjoy!!

Go Lions!

Having just managed to overcome the Bay of Plenty last week, we went to watch the Lions’ last home game of the season (unless they finish first or second in the table, of course, in which case they will play a home semi / final) not quite sure what to expect. The opposition was Southland, not normally regarded for their rugby achievements, but having had a number of reasonable results this season.

In the end it was a relatively one-sided affair, with Wellington running out winners 53-12 and scoring seven tries in the process. That consolidates our position in third place in the table, and means with a bit of luck we should make it through to the semi-finals. Having said that our last three games of the season are on the road, including away to Canterbury next week (they’re currently top of the table) then away to Auckland the week after (they’re currently second in the table). Oh well! We can but hope.

We were all able to go to the game this week as Rodney was on holiday in Rarotonga so his ticket was going spare. Unfortunately, having started off as a bright sunny day, the clouds came in mid-afternoon and the wind picked up. We’re due to be experiencing a southerly over the next few days too, so it was also a very cold wind.

Wellington win again – just!

Today was a glorious day in Wellington – bright sunshine, blue skies without a cloud in sight. Just the weather to be watching the Lions play rugby. Kate was a bit tired, so I ended up taking both Granny and Isabel to the game.

Wellington played in fits and starts. Having managed to get to a 23 – 8 lead at halftime, they decided not to play for most of the second, allowing Bay of Plenty to score 24 unanswered points to go out to a 32 – 23 lead. Fortunately for those of us who have paid to go and see them the Lions realised they were losing and chose to step up a gear in the last 15 minutes. They scored two more tries, one of which they were extremely lucky to have been given (it even went up to the video ref), and a penalty to end up winning 38 – 32 and move up to third in the table.

Lions win at last!

Having put up two dismal performances against North Harbour and Otago, the Lions finally put in a decent performance and beat Waikato 41-17. Unfortunately for us they were playing away in Hamilton, so we had to watch it on the TV. Still, it might not have been a bad thing, as it didn’t look to be too warm.