UK Bound - 2009 February & March

Welcome to the February & March edition of UKBound.

Hi - this started as being the February edition, but then we got busy and went on holiday, so we'll combine it for a couple months.

February

Not sure if you've been watching the news, but we have had horrible weather this year. Bournemouth received a dump snow, so sever that the road services were totally unable to cope. Yes, we had almost a half inch of snow. This extreme weather caused hundreds of accidents, the railway to freeze and motorways and major streets to become parking lots. It was so bad, that I was forced to walk to work, as there were no busses for over an hour (and none on the horizon). This caused about 40 schools to close in Dorset. The next day was even worse. The snow continued to accumulate, and by Tuesday morning, we had about an inch of snow. This shut the remaining schools that managed to stay open, and Seth and I had to stay at home (I was able to work from home, but Seth was housebound). So, what do you do when you're snowed in? Well, we decided to go outside and play in our new found white world. Before I had to start work, we had an exhaustive snowball fight. Unfortunately, by the time we had lunch, the winter wonderland, had turned into a slushy slip and slide. Sure, you could still throw soggy snowballs, but if you were tagged, you'd have a big wet spot. As you can imagine, we got pretty wet, and a warm bath afterwards was very well received. I've included a picture of our snowdrifts below.

If you check our website, I have completed our trip last year to BC. There's about 200 pictures. If you have any that you'd like to share when we were there, please email them to me with a description and I'll add them. If'd prefer, I can also send my pics on a couple DVDs if your connection is slow. The DVD's also would contain pics that I haven't yet catalogued (as you can imagine, each trip and page takes probably about 100hrs to create, which is why I'm really backlogged on them.) I've just done a count, and I've gone over the 10,000 picture mark. Sure, some are dupes, but still!

Seth has his half-term holidays in February, so, since we didn't have a Christmas holiday, we decided to escape the UK skies and decided to head south. At this time of year, the choices for a sun holiday are scarce and your option is really only the Canaries. We've been there before, so we decided to try another location. You're other options are Spain and Portugal. We've been to Spain a couple times as well, so, in the end, we decided on Tunisia. Bet you weren't expecting that, were you? Since it's north Africia, we'd hoped to get summer like weather, but, sadly, this wasn't to be. We had ok weather, but if it had been another 5 degrees warmer, it would have been a totally different trip. As it was quite cool, we only went to the beach a couple times, but mainly for a stroll. As we were getting hastled by camel jockeys and sales people, you couldn't really sit still in one place. We went to quite a few Madina's (open markets) where you're to haggle with the owners. We found that some people are better at haggling than others and we did get a couple good deals (right Kim?). We have a couple hundred pictures from the trip, so I hope by this time next month I'll have them all catalogued and then another month to write the comments.

For Chinese New Year, Seth designed a lantern and won a trophy for "Most Creative". At the Chinese school, they had an awards ceremony with The Mayor, but unfortunately, we were in Tunisia, so we were unable to attend. Seth is also doing well in school. His reading and writing is getting better, and he received 13/15 in a spelling competion. He is also best in his class for his maths, so we're proud of that. He's working on his times tables, and today (March 21) we did 4, 5 and 10 times tables. Don't get me wrong - we're not pushing him, but he just likes to do them. He also won Head Teacher's award a few weeks ago and top speller in his class during a Spelling Bee.

March

March has proven to be a quiet month. The only real noteworthy item is that Seth was able to move up a level in swimming. So maybe this year, we'll be able to have a little swim at the beach this year. He's been taking lessons at the local pool, as well as a short course at school. That, and March is only half over. We are working on some more news for March, but you'll have to either ping us on it, or wait until the next episode of this letter.

Work is quite hetic for both of us - working and worrying about our jobs too much. But, that's just because we take our jobs to heart. We are both team leaders for our sections so we come home and share our Team Leader woes! I really need a high paying civil job, where I can work 9-5 and make tonnes of dosh. Anyone know where I can get one like that? Maybe give me a car or motorbike as well. That'd be nice.

Anyway, that's enough about us. Let us know what you've been up to.

All the best.

Brian, Kim and (ever so slightly taller) Seth.



The first picture is of the snowstorm that devistated all of Dorset (taken from Seth's window, looking at our slice of snow covered lawn)

Our second picture is of Seth wearing his Henry (that's not Henry but Hon-ry, as he's French) kit. Football shirts are way way cheaper in Tunisia, so we picked up 2 for Seth. The other one is from Chelsea -- GO BLUE!!! For the rest of the Tunisia pictures, you'll have to wait a little.