I've finally got round to doing another blog - the first once since our super holiday in June/July! We had so much catching up to do with household/garden stuff that I just never had time.
Anyway, this month we have had 3 birthdays and a visit from our granddaughter Maya, so I'll put in some photos with captions as that seems to be the quickest and easiest way, chuckle!
Mike's birthday:
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| Mike's birthday celebration dinner! |
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| On the actual day - Maya lighting the candles..... |
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| ......all ready to blow..... |
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| .....and the big blow out! |
Maya arrived on Mike's actual birthday, so was happy to light the candles and eat some birthday cake with us!
We had a lovely time with her while she was here, as you can see from the photos.
I had given her my old camera, so quite of lot of them are the ones she took herself.
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| Maya took this one of us when we went for a walk |
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| Playing noughts and crosses with Mike |
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| 'Hanging around' in the playground! |
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| Playing noughts and crosses with me |
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| Riding her bike on the way to the weir |
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| Chatting with her mum on Skype before bedtime |
Here's some more photos which Maya took when we went to the Castledare Miniature Railway. Our train broke down at the weir station, so we had to get off and wait for another engine to come to pull us back to Castledare station!
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| One of the little engines |
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| Two of the diesel trains |
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| Wilson Park Station (weir) where our train broke down! |
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| Maya in our train waiting to go! (I took this one) |
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| One of the little steam trains |
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| Our train - me and Maya are in the blue carriage |
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| Here we are again - I'm taking a photo of Mike taking a photo of us! |
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| Maya took this of Mike after a hard day at Castledare, chuckle! |
We had a lovely time with Maya while she was here, playing lots of boards games, dice, cards and dominos as well as making a wonderful underwater sea scene with crystals, which we don't seem to have any photos of!
She also took her bike on one of Mike's long walks and was less tired than he was when they got back!
The next birthday was Lizzie's, which we celebrated at home......
.......and also at the farm, where they made a paella for her birthday and my up and coming one!
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| Birthday paella |
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| More candles to blow out! (Liz had blown them out the evening before with the friends) |
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| This was taken just after I'd blown the candles out - and had a couple of drinks.....! |
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| Jo cutting the cake |
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| Me, having a quiet drink on my 'real' birthday! |
I had a lovely quiet day on my 'real' birthday, as we had celebrated the weekend before at the farm. I did absolutley nothing all day (it was a very hot one - 38 degrees on our patio) except watch some old family videos, read and swim in the pool!
Mike cooked me fillet steak for our evening meal, and of course there was planty of wine to go with it! Cheers!
Other news:
Jo astounds us all by continuing to win loads of awards for her paintings - so many that we can't keep up with all her exhibitions and award nights! She is also still teaching art, as is Alex who enjoys teaching the 'oldies' and is also still studying art and has done some lovely portraits. Lizzie is in the midst of exams at the moment so has been spending loads of time studying. Simon continues writing and cycling to keep fit. In fact all the family cycles everywhere now and the cars are hardly used - a very environmentally minded family!
John, Silvia and family and still all busy - the kids are doing well at school, Silvia is now doing some part time work there and writing a book. John is looking forward to his up and coming trip to Poland for the company he works for and he will also be spending time with some of the family in the UK on the way.
Mike has been walking when it's not been either too wet or too hot - the weather has been very unpredictable this month. As you know from the email I sent recently, his book 'The Ebro Camino' has now been published by Amazon.
I have continued to play bowls. The Pennant season has now started, so it's a bit more of the 'serious' stuff - not that that makes any difference to our team, as we always enjoy ourselves whatever happens, and that usually makes us play better anyway! I have also joined a ukele group that meets at the weir on Saturday mornings. I have only had time to go once so far, but enjoyed it very much so will endeavour to go more often in the future.
We have also been doing quite a bit of work in the garden.
I'm not sure if I will be doing another blog before Christmas, but will send out the usual email if I do.
Enjoy!
