Wish List

Mum, this post is for you!!

I am directing you to two things:

One on the Radley site

http://www.radley.co.uk/en-gb/CategoryList/?cid=RACCHAT&language=en-GB

Meant to be??? Surely??

The other..... also on the Radley site!

http://www.radley.co.uk/en-gb/CategoryList/?cid=RTINY&language=en-GB

I should never have gone on this website!

The Campbells of Carlisle (PA!)

I rented a car early on Saturday morning and drove over 200 miles to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to visit the lovely Campbell family! I was very excited to see them. The journey took me about 3 and 1/2 hours and was pretty easy. The car that I got from the rental company was a black Mercury Sable and was fairly nice. Insanely spacious (which I didn't need cos it was only me in the car!), excessively sensitive brakes (but then again, most cars have sensitive brakes compared to the truck I drive here!!) and poor acceleration (stopped me from speeding too much!).

I drove through a lot of rain so I was worried that the weekend would be a wash out but I came through the other side to beautiful sunshine!

I arrived at Craig Lane at about 12pm. Meg and Mairi arrived just after me. Megan's practice (I still haven't worked out what for!) ran on longer than they expected so when I arrived there was no one there.

We had lunch and then Megan and I found a geocache on the school's cross country route. Since they live right next to the school it wasn't a very long walk!Megan found the cache. She was very happy about it!

Meg introduced me to her fish which she got recently. He is rather handsome and very much aloof. Can you guess which literary character he is named after?? Of course, it is Mr Darcy!

After that we walked round to the church to meet Tina who had been paint balling with the youth group. After that we drove in my wonderful rental to Wal Mart to copy a photo for Megan. On the way we played Lou Fellingham really loudly with the windows down and we were, of course, singing along too. Carlisle needed it. We then tried to find a couple of geocaches but only had success with one (a virtual cache). One of the others I knew was up a tree. Well, if ever you need a tree climbed the best person to have with you in Caitriona Campbell! Only, she was wearing crocs! She put on my trainers and we tried getting the cache but couldn't place it. Oh well.

In the evening we went to Bonanza. Such a great restaurant! We ate far too much but it was all so delicious!

Megan had homework to do in the evening so Tina and I watched Hello, Dolly! I've never seen it before, despite it being about Yonkers! It is so wonderful! Very funny! The only thing was that both Tina and I were excessively tired by this point and the film seemed to go on FOREVER!

On Sunday we went to church (fairly obviously seeing as David is the minister!). The girls went off to their Sunday School and I went with Mairi to a class on James. It was really great. James is one of my favourite books in the Bible and it is always good to hear more on it. In church we looked at the first 4 verses of Luke.

There was a church luncheon so we stayed for that. It was good fun and there was lots of good food. When we went home Megan, Tina and I played and sang our way through most of the Keswick songbook and then went for a walk.

Then I had to head home. The journey was fine and I made it home soon after 8pm.

What a great weekend!

10 today! and my new charge.....

I also forgot to say:

It is Julianna's birthday today! She is now 10 years old! Hooray!

We just had cupcakes with Mary and Sal (Vinny's parents) and are having a party with more family tomorrow night!

The cupcakes looked like neither of these pictures but they are pretty and they are cupcakes so here they are..... and I really want to eat another cupcake now!


The fun never ends!!


Their Uncle Joe got Michella a Tamagotchi yesterday (very similar to the one pictured!). Now I have another child to look after (because I so desperately need more!!! :-S) but Michella says that she will give me Saturday and Sundays off as well as the holidays that they have from school. So I guess I am getting a good deal..... except, of course, that I am not being paid!

She only got it yesterday and I already had to confiscate it this evening...... that didn't go down well! Especially considering that it went to sleep at 8pm and didn't wake up until she was at school so she actually hasn't gotten to play with it much at all!

*I edited this post about 7 times!!*

Visitors

I should probably have written this post a couple of weeks ago...... because it happened a couple of weeks ago. But, oh well! Better late than never as they say.

I managed to meet up with my Mum's cousin, Marj, and her family one Thursday night in NYC. It was so nice to see them. We met at Grand Central (thankfully I was able to get off work a little early because Michella had gone to a birthday party and Robbin dropped me off at the station on the way home.) and then had some dinner. We caught up on the football..... no one is too impressed by George Burley (really, he is awful!) and how the rest of their holiday had gone so far. Sounds like they had a great time. They flew into Atlanta and travelled round a few places before heading to Memphis. They know some people from there through church connections so I think they had a good time catching up with everybody. So, the last stop was NYC. They were staying in Hospitality House which is the hotel that my parents and I have always stayed in. Pure coincidence though! And to think how many hotels there are in New York!

Olivia with Hello Kitty

We ended up wandering the streets for the rest of the evening just catching up and chatting. I did force them to help me with a geocache though. It was Ali who eventually found it so thank you to him!! I'm not sure that they are convinced about geocaching (I think they thought that I was a bit weird!) but we'll see! Maybe we'll have hooked in somebody else!

Ali found it!

Mike, Ali and Marj with the log. It was really difficult to get it back in the cache. It was also VERY, VERY full!

At the Berlin Wall.... in NYC (l-r: Laura, Marj, Mike, Olivia, Ali)

Marj also found a new connection to Rachael (the au pair who was here before me) as our grannies used to go to the same bible study. All these connections are a little bit scary now! There are too many! Scotland is too small a place!

In other news, the infrared rubbish bin opened and closed by itself the other day. That is what it is meant to do, I hear you cry!............ But not when nobody is in the vicinity at all!!! Spooky! lol