Back to Blighty!

Just back from a great week in England and I'm tired. Why? Because the cat was SOOOOO excited to have us back that she chucked up her gob at about 4am. And when she was supposed to be sleeping with me this morning (see previous post) she decided to just pace around the bed and scream at the top of her lungs instead. I guess she missed us.

So yeah, we had a great time in England! Big shout out to the weather gods who kept the sun shining for 95% of the week. The 5% was when they allowed it to rain while Wes was running in the Bristol Half Marathon. Fortunately it stopped so I could pop out of the coffee shop and cheer him on. Here's a picture of him at mile 10. I yelled, 'Go Wes!' and he's looking right at me, but he says he didn't see me at all. Nice.

One of the highlights of the trip was a picnic in the park on Saturday. I guess I should give a little background: one of my friends that we visit is a girl I met on UK-Yankee when I was first planning my move over to England. She's American and moved to Bath with her Scottish husband just a few months before me. We had coffee in the first week or so that I was there and we've been friends ever since. She had a baby three years ago and another one is due this month. My OTHER friend that we visit is a family friend that I've known, literally, my entire life. We didn't keep in touch much, but our parents did. My mom was talking to her mom about my move to Bath and her mom was all, small world! She married an Englishman and now they have two kids. ANYWAY...still with me??? I introduced them and even though I don't live there anymore they still hang out and their kids love each other. I'm insanely proud of my matchmaking skillz.

Since they're moms and are awesome at planning play dates, they planned a picnic in the park on Saturday. It was a great time and the kids were run ragged. So was Wes. Here is a picture of him when we made him run the kite up the hill. Hey, he was the fastest and there wasn't much wind so we really needed some speed!

(Look for the blue speck in front of the tree)

After a few days in Bath and Bristol, we headed up to Manchester. Wes had a conference and I was lucky enough to meet up with a woman from UK-Yankee. We've been 'friends' for years and she was nice enough to entertain me for the day. I met her in Leeds and she showed me around and I got to sample some local brewskis at a couple of very cool pubs! I'm not sure why I didn't take our picture together. Oops.

I didn't take any pictures of Manchester, but it really is a lovely city centre. At one point I was bopping along thinking how it could be nice to live there. Then I passed an employment agency which had some jobs posted, listing their insanely low salaries when I had my sanity slapped back into me.

I'll end this really boring blog post by sending a shout out to Manchester airport. We were at the WHSmith in T1 and they had People magazine. People is the best magazine to read on a plane, hands down. I even blubbered to the cashier about how excited I was to see this.Yes, I'm that much of a dork.

Okay, I'm going to take a nap now.