My 2009

This year I have:

• attended a Ludy Discipleship Conference in Windsor, Colorado.
• found my 100th geocache in the US.
• travelled to Nashville & Memphis, outwitted tornadoes and fell in love with Country Music.
• cried at the Little Mermaid three times, met Drew Seeley twice and received a letter from 'my chef'.
• also seen Wicked and Billy Elliot.
• knitted a hat.
• 'met' Daniel Radcliffe.
• turned 23.
• attended my first baseball game. Go Yankees!
• mourned a snail called Leaf.
• seen Julianna and Michella finish 5th and 1st grade and Alex graduate middle school.
• ate a few deep fried Mars Bars...... in NYC.
• ate at a fondue restaurant.
• surprised Meg and Tina in Pennsylvania.
• said goodbye to New York and my girls and broke my heart.
• went to Keswick, Edinburgh and London over the summer.
• got the sweetest new hamster in the world.
• got my first car.
• gone to a few football matches - Scotland and Darlington..... both teams being a frustrating as the other.
• gone to Beamish with my cousins.
• wished my Grandpa a Happy 89th Birthday.
• gotten really immersed in Strictly Come Dancing.
• been employed by the hospital as a Health Care Assistant.
• received a new GPS amongst lots of other things for Christmas! Hurrah!

It has been a really good year.

I pray that everyone will have a blessed 2010.

New GPS

The other day we went geocaching (well, we looked for one!) to try out my new GPS. It was really rather fun, albeit somewhat treacherous. The path that we had to follow, one which we know very well, was covered in ice and was really slippery but we still had a good time and Hattie had an absolute blast. Getting to and from the cache was much more difficult than actually finding the cache itself.
Ooops! At least one person ended up on their behind!The new GPS works really well, not that there was anything wrong with the old one but now I am a paperless geocacher! This was my first cache for a while and I will not be leaving it so long until I go caching again.

The Weather And The Guests

It has been a fun couple of days.

It has been mighty wintery too. I thought I'd seen the last of snowy or icy winters when I said goodbye to New York.

As you can see, the snow that I spoke about in the last post was just the start of it all. The pavements are still lethal. Walking into town is a challenging adventure in itself. I can't believe that I haven't landed on my butt.... yet. Believe me, with no sign of gritters or the weather warming up anytime soon there is still plenty of time for that to happen. Apparently we are going to get more of the same over the next few days too..... Forgive me if I'm not overjoyed at the prospect of it.

We did have a White Christmas though which was nice.... It was an Official White Christmas too with snow falling on the day itself.

The week before Christmas we had two little guests staying with us until they could move into their real home at Christmas. The reason that I didn't write about them before was because they were presents and I couldn't risk anyone seeing something that they shouldn't.

So, more about these guests. They were two tiny dwarf hamsters - Winter White Russians to be precise. I totally fell in love with the little monsters. I nicknamed them Gilbert and Sullivan (which probably contributed to the loving them business but I couldn't have them to stay for the week being nameless). I still haven't heard what their official names are yet. But here are some pics of Bertie and Sully. I had such fun with them. They were so adorable.Such sweet boys! Bertie is the grey one and Sully is white.

Don't worry, I have by no means forgotten about this little minx. She is still sweetness itself.

Snow Is Falling

The snow is here! Will there be a chance of a White Christmas this year?Magical! I know the pictures aren't great but they give you an idea!

BTW, this post makes 2009 officially my most bloggy year to date. Wonder how I'll get on with it in 2010...... Guess we'll all just have to wait and see!!

Mange Tout and Hail

You know, I think I know which one of these munchkins........gets a better deal when I'm taking pictures.....

Hattie is very unimpressed with me right now. Hattie, just so you know, if I was able to take Phemie outside to take photos in the hail I would. If you could sit on Phemie's head, then I would take pictures of that too. Unfortunately, you just don't look as cute when you are eating mange tout (although you are just as cute when not eating) or I would take pictures of you doing that too!

What would I do without my sweet pets!

The Art of Eating A Tunnock's Tea Cake

Today I am going to walk you through something that is very important to me:
The right way to eat a Tunnock's Tea Cake. Really, this is the only way to go about it.
So, here we go.
1) Get your Tunnock's Tea Cake.2) While the tea cake is still in its wrapper, break the chocolate covering the marshmallow. Ironically, I really dislike it if the chocolate is already broken. So irritating.3) Now it is time to unwrap the chocolatey, marshmallowy, biscuity goodness.4) Woohoo! Nearly there!Look! It is all ready to go!5) Pick of all the chocolate that is covering the marshmallow. This is why we broke it before.Keep going until all the chocolate has been eaten.6) Then you have to bite off the chocolate that is covering the biscuit base.Yup, you have to get right around it.7) Next you eat the marshmallow.8) You should be left with the biscuit base. Eat it!9) Savour the last bite because that is the last little morsel....10) Done! So now you know the proper way to eat a Tunnock's Tea Cake. Next time the topic will be Cadbury Creme Eggs (freeze them!), Twix (bite off all the chocolate, eat the caramel and then the biscuit - pretty much the same concept as the tea cake) and KitKats (separate the two fingers and snap each in half, bite outer coating of chocolate off and then eat layers separately).

I'm a creature of habit, what can I say?

Madness

Hahaha! Even my sweet Phemie thinks I'm crazy.

(Please ignore the fact that I have no neck or front bottom teeth in this photo, have only wisps of hair and a enormous spot in the middle of my forehead!)