My last week of August was spent in Wales with my bf and his son. It was a good week and we did lots of different things, including celebrating 2 birthdays! Below is some photos from the week:

We spent our days playing and visiting his family. I got to try out Mario & Sonic at the london olympic games on the wii whilst visiting his sister and nephew and nieces. The kids managed to beat me quite thoroughly but I enjoyed it and it reinforced my wish to have this game in my possession sometime soon. Hopefully I will be able to convince my bf he will want to play on it occasionally too.

We visited his other sister for tea one evening as well which was highly yummy and was to my knowledge the first time I had eaten chilli and I enjoyed it!

A soft play area was visited and a walk round some shops was indulged in afterwards for the adults whilst the child slept.

We spent sometime at a place called Gypsy Wood (which I think was most definitely for the adults) which had a model railway set-up and you could look for fairies as you went exploring. A trip to the swimming pool was included and was an experience which was enjoyed by all.

Since getting home I spent my birthday money on amazon purchasing some items of my wishlist. These items include: Brothers & Sisters Series 5, The big bang theory series 5, Life Season 1, Ladybird classic collection 1000piece jigsaw, The greek myths: The complete and definitive edition (book), Best shop in town jigsaw (1000piece), The hour I first believed by Wally Lamb (book), For One more day by Mitch Albom (book) and The IT crowd series 4.

That was some good money birthday spending. I am still waiting for it to arrive though as I went for super saver delivery and I got an email yesterday saying they had been delayed and wont be dispatched until the 10th.

After spending my birthday money I then continued to browse online at different things and managed to find christmas presents for my bf and his mum at some bargainous prices. So they were also ordered and bought and still being delivered in the post. I am going to feel extremely popular over the next few days with lots of different parcels arriving!

A hotel stay

So on the 22nd August I used the raffle prize that I won back in May. A night in the Lincoln Hotel for 2 with complimentary dinner included.

The lincoln hotel is a pretty posh hotel and our room offered us a cathedral view.

We arrived in Lincoln wednesday morning and did some shopping in the centre of Lincoln before moving upto the hotel, checking in and then browing some of the shops in the bailgate area. We also went into the first part of the Cathedral so I could show D the interior of it. I on principle refuse to pay to visit a church or cathedral as I dont believe you should pay to enter a religious building (I would however willingly give a donation if I was to enter a building like this), so we didn't go round it and consequently I've still not seen the famous Lincoln imp in there.

We then went back to the hotel to get ready for our evening meal. I must admit we both scrubbed up very well! I wore a dress for the second time in a week (!) and D wore a very nice shirt and black trousers. The resturant was really rather posh and 'fine dining' indeed! I had mushroom soup, steak and chips (6 chips on the plate!) and D had roasted leg of duck, corn fed chicken breast followed by chocolate fudge cake. The fudge cake was so rich that it was basically chocolate covered fudge rather than cake!!

After the meal we went for a walk down steep hill and then back up it!!

The hotel breakfast was particularly sublime. I dined on cereal, fry-up and fresh fruit. It was the most I had eaten for breakfast in a very long time!! We then checked-out and made our way back down into the main part of Lincoln and visited the Range. Where we purchased a couple of photo frames to adorn D's living room walls and a couple of other pieces.

The experience was amazing and there is no way I could ever afford to stay in a hotel like that just because. We worked out with the room we was given and everything that was included in the evening meal it should of cost around £400 to stay there!! Thats a crazy amount of money to spend on one night away.

Picture

So I saw this is on facebook and downloaded it! It made me chuckle. I would of preferred a working pancreas but this is what life gave me instead and hey if you can't have a laugh and a joke things just get abit too depressing!! So as CEO of a Diabetic Body I love it!!

Quite frankly my body wouldnt even miss my pancreas if it was removed completely, seeing as it hasnt produced insulin for the last 8 years and has never worked in its capacity to produce the required enzymes to digest food, hence the ridiculous amount of tablets I need with food. Does the pancreas even do anything else apart from those 2 jobs?????

What I've accomplished in the last week

Thats right, alot of jigsaw completing with a little bit of home baking (it was my first attempt at egg custard)

Some casual observations/musings

WHY, why does your entire body decide to hurt and ache when you have a period? Or is it just me (please don't let it just be me). Why do your boobs have to become so tender and sore? I dont really understand how they are related to your internal plumbing in that way. Then my stomach hurts so I want to curl up to make it better but then my back also hurts so you want to lay straight. How are you meant to get comfy like that???

Also why is it so expensive to buy the required products for the time of the month?? Seriously, you would think they could provide these things a little bit cheaper than they are. I am guilty of stocking up when I see them on a particularly good offer because they are just so expensive!!

Final thoughts and musings on this topic- why have they not developed packaging that is more discreet? I don't need the whole world and his wife to know that I am using their products, which lets face it if you are using public conveniences then they all know as noises seem to echo in there. Also I really don't need bright purple, blue, green or rainbow (or any other appropriate colour here really) packaging in my bag so that every time I go into my handbag for my purse anyone stood near by can clearly see them. The day one of these companies provides a discreet wrapper that doesnt rustle and rattle and is a more discreet colour I will become their biggest buyer!!

Anyway rant over...........

quick catch-up

Thursday I had a pretty quiet day after clinic. I went to my friends house and spent some time with her and my god-daughter. We spent some time outside which she loved and seems to calm her down when she gets grouchy!

Friday I travelled to my bfs ready to go to wales for the weekend.

My weekend was spent in Wales with my bfs family. We didn't really do alot. He spent a lot of time sorting out some of the stuff that he has in storage to bring down to his new house. We popped in and saw all of his siblings during the course of the weekend also.

Monday I went to cadbury world (see previous blog post).

Tuesday and wednesday was spent at my bfs house. He was at work during the day but we had the late afternoons and evenings together. They were both thoroughly enjoyable evenings. Tuesday we sat and did our own hobbies side by side on the living room floor (I was doing a jigsaw, he was doing his lego kits) and wednesday he helped with my jigsaw. We sat and talked at the same time and it just felt right. It was comfortable and content and felt like I could do that for years to come and still be happy.

Today I came back to my house ready for tomorrow. When I got back into town I went and got my phone upgrade-woohoo!! Then this afternoon I saw my god-daughter again. I got some free headphones with my upgrade that have a RRP of £150. I was never going to use them so I put them up for sale on a fb page and got £80 for them. This was quite cool considering they didn't cost me anything and I now have some spending money for my holiday in a few weeks time without having to worry about bills as well.

Tomorrow I am at the hospital for Part 1 of my annual assessment. Tomorrow is the day of tests and then in a months time I get an indepth review of all the results and how things are going. It's never pleasant but just one of those things I have to do.

Friday evening and saturday daytime I'm spending with my bf before coming home again to babysit my nieces sunday daytime for my brother.

Cadbury World

On monday we finally made it to cadbury world- woohoo!! We had talked about it being a place to visit a few months ago and this week we finally acted on it. I was really quite excited about it.

We got there about midday and had some lunch in the cafe. Our tickets for the 'main exhbition' were for 2.20pm (you most definitely need to book, we did and that was the earliest time slot we could get). So we did the other bits there first, which include the bournville experience and the essence tour.

At the end of the essence tour we got our first free chocolate sample- yay!!

During the main exhbition tour we got given a crunchie, a curly wurly and a dairy milk. We got our photos taken on the green screen (we pretending to be surfing on a giant dairy milk board), during the cadabra ride (which is quite cool we were in car with the reg plate Bean 10) and again when we got 'moulded in chocolate'. They were all pretty good photos but none that we felt were really worth the £6 price tag on them, so we just mainly did them for fun.

The shop was a little disappointing, although D managed to get some chocolate quite cheap that he likes. We thought about getting our nieces and nephews some souvenirs but there wasn't really anything great there or suitable that wouldn't cost us the same amount as our entry fee (in total there would of been 12 kids to buy for). So we didnt get them anything in the end but did also get a bag of chocolate misshapes ready for the birthday party at the end of the month instead. We also got to write our names in chocolate and below is a photo of mine: