FLORIDA GOODBYES

Today was my last sunday at Forest Lake Bible church, so was full of goodbyes. God has really blessed and encouraged me through them and I'm gona miss them alot. Thinking back over the short time I've been with them. Sharing thanksgiving with them, having some very tasty BBQ's with some of the families, watching the super bowl together and having some very funny conversations over bring and share lunches.

This little church has given me such a warm welcome to the USA and an introduction to 'the south'. I have made some great friends, played some very serious board games and treated to sum tasty food. Thank you.

A

LATELY...USA

Amongst the busyness here a few things that have caught my eye, made me smile or have managed to be photographed.

1. On a recent trip down Walmart there was one thing I think I left of my shopping list...bother why didn't I write down lobster pots?! Thats George next to them, not a lobster!

2. Whilst popping down to my fav coffee shop to get my latest copy of monocle and enjoy the best white chocolate mocha money could buy, I popped into one of the local shops in Rosemary Village called Supply and Demand, a cool delicatessen shop that had these amazing drawer and shelf units. Might have to add that to my 'things to make' list.

                         

                          

3. If you ever have a spare moment, have a look on the animal board of Pinterest. Might try to persuade Hannah to get a Great Dane for our next dog, they look soo...funny! Maybe with long hair too. Haha

                            

                

4.  Somehow I see this coming my way for a christmas present from someone!!

What's been catching your eye lately?

A.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

The final count down has started! I am now in my penultimate week before travelling back home to the UK. I apologise for the slightly sparse number of posts due to prep for the move, the to-do list just seems to get longer and longer!

We are also trying to prep as much as possible for move out on the 28th, so have very little time to pack up the house and move Macintosh to his temporary holiday location in Dunstable at the in laws (he's very exited I'm sure). We have been doing a little bit of digital house hunting with rental websites and google street view, but have now given up as it would be so much easier looking around for real. I also found some crazy ones in the country that Hannah didn't really appreciate me adding to the favourites list.

Some of the guys have already gone home so before they left we had an big meal together; an actual sunday roast! It was amazing! Cooked by Paul, one of the guys here who's a brilliant chef. It made me realise how much I have missed a good sunday roast, it was like coming home from church and opening the boiler room door and smelling the roast waft through all over again!!

A.

Here's something that made me chuckle about where we are going!

MACINTOSH MONDAY

This past weekend I had my mum and sister come to stay for the weekend. It was the last Keble girly weekend...for a while. Amongst other things we shopped in Meadowhall until we literally dropped, we ate out at Wagamamas, we munched on Ben and Jerrys, we walked Macintosh and we watched 'Saving Mr Banks'. It was a fantastic weekend and I think we all felt like it was just what we needed in the middle of the chaos going on with the changes to our family's life. 

At the end of the weekend Mum really wanted to take a photo of the three of us. Having no Andrew around to play the role of photographer and Mac having a lack of opposable thumbs, we opted to place the camera on the side and use the timer. This was a sensible suggestion and provided some hilarious moments. It took a while to really get some good shots and had us pulling lots of silly faces. Fortunately for you Mum I won't put them on here! 

Macintosh never likes to be left out of something, especially if it looks like fun so he decided to climb on board! Literally...

It seemed to take him ages to climb up onto the sofa with us and resulted in a lot of pain for us and a lot of frustration from Mac. Poor old Mum may have been kissed by Mac accidentally too! Yuck! We didn't manage to capture any of those though, think we were too busy laughing! 

Oh Macintosh you are a fruitcake! 
H 


Photographic credit goes to my wonderful sister Becca! 

MACINTOSH MONDAY

Surprise surprise Macintosh is back to his old tricks! His wonderful streak is over and we are back to the chaos and craziness. It was just in time for my grandparents visit so they were able to witness the insanity. It involved licking out coffee cups on the floor, pulling fluff out of his bed, dragging towels around the garden, stealing gardening gloves and attempting to sniff Granny's face. That last one in itself is truly naughty as anyone who knows my Granny knows her dislike for dogs and she does cope well with Mac but that was a step too far! 

There were two hilarious moments though which unfortunately I didn't manage to get any photos of due to the nature of the incidents. The first involved the netting covering over a newly seeded patch of grass. Grampy had painstakingly worked over the patch of mud the mini had been sitting on in the garden and had laid down grass seed before covering it with a netting to stop birds, cats and in theory Macitosh getting to the seed. It had rained a bit so the patch of mud was getting muddy and obviously was very inviting to a beagle. So whilst we were all having dinner Mac decided to crawl underneath the netting and get himself stuck! Now when I say stuck I mean paws all in different holes with his snout and collar trapping him too. He would have been there for a while had Granny not spotted him out of the window scrabbling around and looking pathetic. I dutifully ran out to rescue him and obviously he was rather relieved to be free. (Didn't stop him putting his must paws all over me though!)

The second event involved the hail that fell early on Saturday evening. Macintosh and I had waited for a gap on the rain before talking our evening walk. When we finally got out we met lots of other dogs who had clearly had the same idea! We had a lovely walk but it slowly the sky became dark and it started to rain. As it began to rain harder and harder so Mac as I began to walk faster and faster. Soon we were runnig at full pelt as fear big hail stones fell out of the sky. We were almost home, I mean literally 6 foot from the garden gate as the first clap of thunder struck. Now Macintosh is scared of thunder. He hates it. His tail goes down, his eyes widen and he panics. In this case he heard he thunder and in blind panic pelted it towards the house but forgot that the garden gate was shut. This resulted in him hitting the gate at full pelt and crumpling into a heap! Now I know that sounds cruel laughing at an animals misfortunes but it was funny. Especially when he picked himself up and glared indignantly at the gate as if to say, why didn't you open you stupid thing! If I had been filming it we could have won the money from you've been framed without a doubt!! As it is I will just have to keep hilarious memory to myself. Oh wait you all know now... Oops! 

Now no post would be complete without a picture but as I have no relevant one you will just have to settle for a picture showing how hard it is to write these posts. He literally does everything he can to stop me, including laying on the laptop!! 

H

                         

KAYAKI KICK

So now the weather is picking up and the wind is slowly reducing, I needed to head outside and try to get my fitness back on track and get a little sun on my skin. With all the water around here, kayaking seemed the obvious choice, especially when we could hire them so cheap nearby. So last Monday and Friday we took to the water.

Monday was perfect with a very slight breeze, we covered a fair distance in 2 hours and dusted of my kayak skills. I hired an open top sea kayak, so the picky ones amongst you would call it a canoe but I wont get into that fight. Friday was sunny but the wind was quite high leading to it being a lil rough. Stupidly we went with the wind on the outward trip leading to a very slow choppy paddle back. It was hard work but I needed the exercise and it was good fun so didn't really notice the aching in the shoulders. Not until the next day anyway...

Hopefully we are planning to take to the water again on Wednesday if the weather's good.

A

MACINTOSH MONDAY

Hold your horses everyone but here comes another happy Macintosh blog post...

On Sunday the weather was wonderful so I decided to take Mac on a rather long walk along the canal from Burton Waters through to Lincoln, near the Odeon cinema. It was about an hours walk each way and with the sun shining and a few happy dogs to meet along the way it was a lovely walk. 

Macintosh behaved so well on the walk. He was friendly to all the dogs and children that wanted to say hello. He moved out of the way and sat down when I pulled him out of the path of cyclists. He even took care to avoid people who clearly looked scared of dogs. He didn't attempt to go into the canal. Best of all he didn't eat or roll in any wildlife poo! 

Overall the walk was a total success! Here are a few (poor iPhone) snaps of the trip.

                          

                          

                          

H