MACINTOSH MONTHLY

Macintosh has always been a bit shocking off lead. He's never really nailed the basics of the recall command 'come' and just tends to do his own thing. However recently he's been behaving a bit better. As a result we have been allowing him off lead a bit more, in select locations. 

He behaves really well off lead on the aqueduct (pictured above) so we let him off whenever we go there. He's also been behaving pretty well on the Pacific Crest Trail up near our house. He loves running ahead but always waits for us to catch up with him. So again we have been letting him off there.

Until the other day. 

Above is a picture of the area of the Pacific Crest Trail we usually walk. It doesn't really show you how steep it is but you can guess its fairly high up because the wind turbines look small. Anyway we went for a walk along this trail with our small group from church. There was quite a group of us and despite the cold wind it was great fun. However Andrew, in his infinite wisdom, decided letting Macintosh walk off lead was a great idea, despite the fact there were lots of people and it was harder to keep an eye on him.

At first it was great. Mac ran backwards and forwards between all the groups of people and kept the children amused as they chased him. So I began to relax and not worry about him so much, especially as Andrew had "got it under control". Then it happened, the inevitable. Macintosh smelt something and off he went. Slowly at first, but then gathering more speed. We watched him zip down the side of the hill we were on and up the next. I began to panic obviously and this only got worse when we saw the rabbit he was chasing. Now I knew we were going to lose him! 

Up until this point Andrew was insisting that Mac would simply come back when called, but despite pretty much everyone calling him Macintosh was simply ignoring us. When he went over the brow of the next hill Andrew decided that my stress and panic was clearly too much so off he charged down the hill after him. Thankfully my husband runs like a mountain goat when needed so he got down pretty rapidly. After a few mini games of hide and seek, and being cut off from the other side by another rather quick lad, Macintosh was eventually apprehended and placed firmly back on the lead. 

I wish I had some pictures to show you but in my panic I didn't take any. All I could think was; that dog is never going off lead again, we nearly lost him, I'm going to have words with Andrew and other things to that effect. 

So there we go, Macintosh inevitably broke his good streak and we are back to walking on the lead at all times!

H

LAKE TAHOE - PART II

The second half of our Lake Tahoe trip obviously involved a lot more playing in snow. Macintosh absolutely loved spending every day just wandering around in the snow. Its definitely harder work than you'd expect clambering around in deep snow but it was so much fun. 

One thing Andrew and I had been so excited to do was to cook a traditional Christmas dinner for our friends. We had already cooked one on Christmas day, but making one for a larger number is much better. We didn't manage to snap any photos of the dinner, other than one right at the beginning because we were all too busy munching away! 

New years eve was going to be the highlight of the week for me as we were going to attempt to ski for the first time. Andrew, Nicole and I had signed up for a half day of ski lessons. Nicole had done it a long time ago, but Andrew and I were novices. I was super excited prancing around in all my snow gear and the first half of the lesson went really well. I didn't really fall over but Andrew did. I was beginning to feel confident. Then we went onto the slopes. It all changed. 

Our instructor was a bit of a wally and I didn't really get on with him. He kept pushing me to go further or faster than I felt comfortable and I just kept crashing out. Andrew was maddeningly good (as always). He was trying to help out a little bit but I just couldn't seem to stop crashing. Then on the final slope of the morning I got my revenge, albeit accidentally. I was skiing down the slope, as instructed, and ended up heading straight for him. He didn't hear me coming and I couldn't stop quickly enough so I took him out! Was not so amusing at the time as he landed awkwardly on my knee but Andrew and Nicole were rather pleased I did it. 

The afternoon however was better. I managed to stay upright and skied a fair bit. It was possibly made better by the fact that Andrew kept falling over on the last slope of the day. It may have made me feel a little more excited. But here are the few snaps we got. The last one is us at the end of the day feeling cold but happy with ourselves. 

We celebrated after skiing with a meal out and then some rather exhausted partying back at the cabin. The dogs, who had spent all day in the cabin just chilling out pretty much looked how we felt!

But we pressed on, played some games, watched Jools Holland (via the wonders of the internet and delayed tv) and rang in the new year pretty much as we crawled into our beds! 

Some of us partied harder than others! 

One New Year's Day our final lot of friends arrived having had an awful journey saga. They had tried to fly across the country to Lake Tahoe several times but due to a variety of insane issues they didn't make it until the penultimate day. As we waited to hear whether they had finally made it Andrew and I took a walk and spotted a guy being pulled along on his snow board by his dog. Obviously that got us thinking and we tried to get Macintosh to pull us on a sledge. The affect was no where near as cool. 

The final day at the cabin was a sad affair. We absolutely loved our winter wonderland, but we took one last stroll and play in the snow and then packed up to go home. Poor old Macintosh refused to get in the car, I think he wanted to stay forever. He is definitely a cabin sort of dog. But I think we've decided that a snow trip is needed at least once more this year!

H

LAKE TAHOE - PART I

Excuse the lateness of this post. Other things have taken precedent!

Over Christmas and New Year Andrew and I took the opportunity to head up to Lake Tahoe for a winter holiday with some friends. Lake Tahoe is half in California and half in Nevada so we managed to tick off another state during the trip, which is always a bonus.

We rented a cabin which from the photos looked idyllic and did not disappoint when we arrived there. It was set back slightly into the woods and surrounded by snow. There were giant icicles hanging off the side of it and it just look picturesque. The amazing thing about it was that the backyard was sloped which made it perfect for sledging!

The first thing we did when we arrive was obviously to start building some runs. Andrew and Christian naturally took the engineering role and started building. Poor old Penny was still a little unsure of the snow at this point, which was natural as it was the size of her. However Macintosh was fully embracing it and spent the entire time exploring. 

Macintosh quickly discovered that running down the sled run ahead of the person on the sledge was rather exhilarating and began to do it quite often. Thankfully he is a rather speedy dog so there were no collisions! We spent ages the first couple of days just enjoying the snow out the back. I don't remember when I last saw snow that deep.  

The lake itself is stunning. Its nestled in the Sierra Nevada and its actually the biggest alpine lake in the whole of North America. I was struggling to capture the sheer size of the lake and its beauty, but we did manage to have a wander around by it one day. We captured some sweet couple shots of us and Nicole and Christian. The dogs mostly behaved for the photos. 

Obviously with such a large lake just sitting there you had to make snowballs and see who could through them the furthest. That's just a must! 

The first half of the holiday finished up with the arrival of our next set of friends and more time just messing around in the snow and playing games. One game we played, that I was rubbish at, but enjoyed playing was called Suspend. It's basically a balancing game that you take in turns playing. I was so rubbish at it because I struggle to grasp the basics of physics but it was fun to play.

So there we go, there's the first half of Lake Tahoe. Hopefully it won't take me too long to put up part two!
H

HOME TO LINCOLN

After the first week of our trip in Dunstable we hit the road and went to our old city of Lincoln. We left super early and managed to get there in time for church which was great. We got to see so many people there and it was lovely to spend the time back with our home church. The rest of our time in Lincoln was split between visiting old haunts, eating and drinking way too much, catching up with our friends, doing a spot of shopping and just being tourists in our amazing city. We spent almost four years in that city so we truly love it. 

Here's a selection of photos from the few days we spent there. 

First things first I had to have my belated birthday cookie from Tim. That's a small tradition that started out of nowhere but he's kept up every year, despite the distance!

Just a small sample of the amazing food we ate. This is from Cafe Portico, our favourite place to eat ever! It was really nice to be back there and have a chat with the owner again. We frequented it that much when we were living there that he knows who we are!! 

One of the coolest things we did when we were there was to visit Lincoln Castle. It had been under renovations for a while and opened since we moved away. We went to the Magna Carta exhibit which was really impressive, sadly you couldn't take photos. I really wanted too because that little scrap of paper was impressively older than the entire United States and I thought it'd impress some of our American friends. 

We also got to take a walk through their Victorian prison which they actually used in the TV drama, Downton Abbey. 

There were some costumes to dress up in, I assume aimed at children. Obviously we had a go! It made a few people laugh who wandered by and poked their head in. 

They had loads of kids activities around the place. We even had a go putting some pottery back together. Not sure I can quite remember the purpose of pottery in a prison but it was fun attempting it. We didn't get very far!

The visit to the castle was finished off with a walk round the walls. It was lovely to look out and see the amazing city of Lincoln. Just a shame I had to go with these two!

Thankfully the views more than made up for it. Our amazing cathedral. 

And that's about all the good photos we got. We unfortunately never thought to get photos taken with the people we caught up with, too busy eating or talking! But we did get one of our breakfast on the day we left. Can't beat a good English breakfast. 

Next stop back to Dunstable! 
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