Kite Surfing National Championship

It's held right here on little ole' Walney Island about 2 miles from our house on Earnse Beach. It was the perfect day for it...windy as heck. Here are a couple snippity snaps from it.

Movin up in the world!

Kevin got an email the other day saying the rental car company wanted our Volkswagen back & in return we would get a new vehicle. We were a bit worried that we would either get a manual - every car over here is manual - or we would get the exact same car. We would have been able to handle the manual transmission but we were itching to get a new car. I went to the trade off point this morning and up drives a cute little Mercedes!!! Wahooooo! Might be the only time in my life I'll be driving a Mercedes so I'm pretty pumped AND it's an automatic.

Drives like a breeze.

A Walney Channel Walk

Where to go today? The sun was out, the seagulls were singing their usual songs and the clouds were at bay. We are going to a friends house tonight for a barbeque so we didn't want to be gone all afternoon. We looked through the books and came across Red Man's Walk which started right at our doorstep. Perfect! 2.5 hours and some nice pics later we're back. Another reason to love good ole Walney 8 )

I think JEM left her bike outside our house...

GASP!

York

York Minster: Gothic Cathedral

Us on the castle wall

I told Kevin on Friday that I wanted to get out of the house on Saturday so we started to look through our books to see if there was somewhere local that we could go explore - the destination: York! A very historic/touristy town 3 hours east of us...because of the long trip, Kevin had the brilliant idea of leaving Friday night, staying in a hotel so we could get up and start exploring first thing Saturday. Done & Done. We spent all day Saturday wandering the streets of York seeing the old castle grounds, dungeons, museums & churches including York Minster, northern Europe's largest Gothic Cathedral. Despite seeing some awesome places I think Kevin & I would have to say one of our favorites of the day was going into York dungeon which has been set up to be an hour long hands on haunted house/horror show. Unsuitable for children under 16! Swwwweeet. And this warning was well advised...there was one little boy in our group with his parents and I think he spent the entire time crying.

We were definitely thankful for having spent the night in a hotel cause we used the whole day and were pretty exhausted on the trip back home...couldn't have imagined driving 3 hrs there that morning, touring around and then driving 3hrs back home.

More pics in our album.

Back with my love

All the family :)
Me, Uncle Kevin & Olivia

Mary, Me, Narce & Maura

Me & my Mare

Fatema & I

Got back yesterday from my longest stay in the states since we left in January. I miss America but I'm happy to be back with my love in England. I can't imagine if we had tried to live apart for this long! I spent a week with my parents with part of it being the 4th of July celebration with lots-o-family to visit and then the last part just being able to relax, catch some rays & hang out with just my parents. Mary came on Wednesday, stayed the night & we left for her and Jeremy's house on Thursday. In usual form, we had a blast and squeezed in everything on my list of 'things to do while with Mary'. We met up with Maura & Narce for dinner one night and met Fatema for dinner another night - so nice to see all my friends and have normal girl talk..definitely miss that :)

The trip back was uber long got to the airport in DC at 4:30pm Monday and wasn't back in our house in England till 1pm on Tuesday. The plane ride was uncomfortable...had to get up to pee like 5 times, my chair wouldn't stay reclined & they had a bad movie selection. boooooo. Can't imgaine how uncomfortable it will be when we come back for good in November.

Glad to be back.

Home Sweet Home

Big Baby news, Dylan, Family & Fireworks = Fun times.

Kevin heads back to England today but I'll be staying for another week to soak in a little more of the US of A.

Update

Click here for the MOTHER of all posts!!