BIRTHDAY TIME

Whilst we were back home and staying with my family it was my birthday. It was actually a pretty significant one, I turned 29. I was pretty excited about it for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I got to spend it with all my family and secondly because its actually the last one I can get excited about. Turning 30 will not be fun, especially after all the grief I've given to Andrew!

Anyway, my birthday was a pretty chilled out affair with pancakes and presents in the morning whilst we all chilled out at home. It was lovely to have a relaxed morning and just enjoy the company of family. There aren't many photos that are suitable to be put on a blog but here's one or two. 

There was a very obvious bear theme running through my birthday cards and presents. I loved it! Those slippers are the most comfortable ones ever. Elisha happened to like the ears of them and would occasionally play with them, which obviously makes me love them even more!

Lunchtime we took a stroll to Mum and Dad's "local" for lunch. It was really nice. We took up a fair amount of space but it was lovely just chilling out and eating. The food was delicious and we ate so much it hurt! We didn't manage to get the greatest photo of us all (Andrew's skills are going downhill!) but I had to share the one we did get because my brother-in-law's pose his hilarious! 

We did get one amazing photo of myself with my sister and Mum. It's such a beautiful photo and its been such a long time since we took one of the three of us. I love it!

The afternoon contained lots of naps from those of us who were full and play time for the others with Elisha. We played in the garden, did some water play and even attempted painting! It wasn't the most successful attempt at getting things on paper but it was funny. 

The evening consisted of food, games and fun! The girls thrashed the boys at Cranium and we introduced everyone to Irish snap probably to their detriment as its a painful game, especially when played with my brother! Finally we devoured this amazing white chocolate cake complete with polar bear that Andrew had spent most of the day preparing. It was pretty delicious. 

So there we go, my 29th birthday and the last one I'll ever look forward to again!
H

AV FAIR

This post is a little overdue (sorry about that). We've had a rather busy couple of weeks and the weekend was busy with our mini trip to San Diego so I didn't get round to writing this post.

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago Andrew and I took a trip to the AV fair with our good friends Christian and Nicole. They have a dog too called Penny (Mac's girlfriend) so we left Macintosh with her and went out for a night of fun and food.

The fair was similar to a UK one in most respects. There were rides, animals, food, stalls etc but it was on a much bigger scale. In fact there were so many food stalls covering just about everything you wanted to eat and even things you didn't want too! The boys also spent a little while looking at some steam machinery. Obviously Nicole and I were thrilled...

After we'd done a quick lap of the whole fair and scoped out what we wanted to do we decided to have something savoury to eat. The hope was that it would balance out anything that was consumed after that! So Andrew and I selected some tasty BBQ and a beer. It really was yum. America does BBQ so well!

Food was hastily consumed because by then it was time for the All Alaskan Pig Race. This was HILARIOUS! They had several heat rounds to determine which pigs would be in the final race. All the pigs were introduced and they had hilarious names. In fact Andrew's favourite pig was called 'Sloppy Joe' which was great. He did pretty well actually, got into the final but lost as he belly flopped on the last hurdle. Yes that's right they jumped hurdles too! It was so good. I think the four of us cheered louder than all the kids around us. 

After the pig racing the ferris wheel was the next thing on the agenda. The sun had set so it was all lit up and it looked good. Nicole and I had both forgotten how much we didn't really like ferris wheels until we were sat on it. By that point it was obviously too late! Christian made the carriage rock a tiny bit which set us both on edge. We are so alike! Note in the photo below how I'm gripping onto the edge of the carriage and how un-relaxed I look! 

Once we'd survived that ordeal and done some more looking at the animals on display it was time for my favourite part.....the fried food! I was so keen to taste it because I'd hear so much about how Americans fry anything apparently! Sure enough they do. There was fried snickers bars, red velvet cake, cheesecake and oreos. Andrew had a fried snickers and I had fried oreos. At the time they were pretty delicious. Afterwards I may have regretted the choice. Deep fried food is not good in big quantities! Still it was worth trying. 

It was then time to head home to the pooches. The fair was a success and we loved spending time with Nicole and Christian as always. Until next year AV fair...
H

OUR 5TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

We still can't believe that we have been married for five years. Time really has flown by. So much has happened during that time that it makes your head spin just thinking about it. We decided to spend our day out exploring with Macintosh as thats what we love to do best. 

The town of Kernville, on the Kern river, was our destination and it was amazing. We spent barely any time hiking but rather just spent the whole time at the river playing about with Macintosh. See yesterday's post about it here. 

It was sort of amazing in itself to see so much water in a river. California is in a major drought and lots of the water sources are lower than they should be. This river is still lower than it should be but it was enough for us to cope. 

We went to the Kern River Brewing Company for lunch. It was amazing. Americans do burgers and chips better than anyone else. We loved these waffle chips too. Cue the bad picture of Andrew eating....

Amazingly we didn't take many other pictures of the day, except a few of Macintosh swimming. We were too busy enjoying ourselves on the river, and taking a camera onto it without waterproofing would have been disastrous. We did manage a group selfie shot and I took a sweet one of Andrew and Macintosh. 

I love the hair parting Andrew has going on! 

For the evening celebration we decided to head to a restaurant we'd never been too called Fresco II. The food was soooooooo good! We ate so much I actually felt sick the next day! Andrew obviously had the most meaty meal he could find and I had an amazing chicken feta dish. The restaurant is a Mediterranean based place so we felt rather at home as it was much more European that some of the other restaurants near us. They had a guy playing guitar there too which added some nice atmosphere. It was a great way to end our celebration.

And the only thing to do now is to show you our most ridiculous joint gift...

Yes that is a giant 7 foot replica Sopwith Camel propeller. It is made out of wood after all!
H

MACINTOSH MONDAY

Andrew arrived home from a work trip very very late last night/early this morning. He struggled to sleep a bit due to the jet lag, so was up rather early this morning having had very little sleep. Macintosh was obviously pleased to see him and once he was awake he was hungry. Andrew fed him, did some other bits and bobs until he felt tired again, before crawling back into bed. 

I woke up later than usual, due to the late night, and saw Macintosh was awake. Figuring that he was probably very hungry by this point I shot out of bed and walked through into the lounge. Macintosh started hanging out by his food cupboard and looked positively famished. I quickly threw some food into his bowl and he wolfed it down.

Fast forward until around 11:30am. I had been out and about and come back to find Andrew still asleep. Conscious that he wouldn't be able to sleep if he stayed in bed I woke him up. In his groggy state he mumbled lots of things and enquired whether I had walked Macintosh because he fed him at some unearthly hour this morning. This rung alarm bells because I had fed Macintosh when I woke up because he clearly looked famished! After clarifying with Andrew in his slightly more awake state we have in fact discovered that our food motivated beagle has in fact had two lots of breakfast this morning!

When I confronted him this is what he did....

He just sat there. Totally unbothered. No real show of emotion. He is so deceptive this one! I will have to watch out for him in future. 
H

LA FARMER'S MARKET

A couple of weekends ago Andrew and I took a trip down to LA. We had a concert planned so we figured we'd stay in LA and do some of the other tourist bits that we never get to do. The first port of call was the farmer's market. It has great reviews and supposedly has great food so we were eager to try it out. 

It was amazing. The market itself is quite small and tucked away but its attached to a shopping area which is nicely laid out. So we went straight to the farmer's market to check it out and in between eating food we would saunter into the other shops to have a look around. We had pizza in the farmer's market and because it was national ice cream day we obviously partook of ice cream, despite the rainy weather.

We didn't manage to get too many photos, probably because we were too busy taking in all the sights and amazing smells but here's what we got. 
H

#TIMONTOUR - RANDOM SNIPPETS

There was lots of little bits that we did the first week Tim was visiting where we took some photos but it wasn't too many. So I decided to save you all the bother of having to read lots of posts by shoving them together into one. 

We took a trip to Famous Dave's, a BBQ restaurant. It is the most meat filled place ever and you know that everything you are eating is bad for you. Tim was so happy and excited about it, as you can tell! 

We went to see the Lancaster Jethawks play. It was absolutely freezing (for a May night in California) so we were pretty wrapped up. They lost the game but there was fireworks at the end so it was all worth it in the end. Plus Tim got a foam finger, so there's that....

We took a day trip up to Santa Barbara too whilst Tim was here. Its a beautiful place. We did a little bit of shopping and some sight seeing, but most importantly we had fish and chips! There's a fish and chip shop there called Macs. Its owned by a British guy. It was the closest thing to proper fish and chips that we've had over here, so it was nice to be reminded of home. Macintosh really enjoyed it!

So that's it for the random snippets, next week I'll be telling you all about San Francisco and Yosemite! Hooray!
H

MACINTOSH MONDAY

This weeks Macintosh Monday is going to be more of a photo dump. There have been some comical moments with Macintosh this week which have provided some light relief. He has been a bit of a pain and we've had some issues with wee in the house. I am not best pleased and have been busy trying to get him straightened out. At least the funny moments have made it better. 

Some of you have seen the photo of Mac in a bobble hat this week on Instagram. It took quite a lot of bribery in order to take that shot and as you can see he didn't exactly like it!

With all the rains this week Macintosh has fully enjoyed the puddles that have been created out in the desert. It's been funny to have to bring him home and hose him down again like we did in England. He's loved getting muddy and dirty though. 

We've caught Macintosh sitting at some quite hilarious angles this week. He seems to think he's human from time to time. 

Finally the funniest thing that's happened all week is that we have been trying to do some more training with Macintosh to improve his ability to leave food alone. We tried with bacon this week and managed to get bacon on both paws and him sitting for about 30 seconds before I allowed him to snap it up. Just time to take a picture...

It's a little blurry but you can feel the frustration radiating from him towards me!!!!
H