I'm back

I'm just back from a fantastic month of holidays, so at last, my poor neglected blog is at last getting a little attention!!! Mark celebrated his 60th birthday this month so we began the celebrations with a family holiday in Norfolk.  By family, I mean our three children, Kelly, Sarah and Alex. Their husbands/partners, Jim, Chis and Tiff plus our five grandchildren, Ronnie, Amillie, Isla, Seb and Callum. We found a lovely log cabin set on the waters edge of Pentney lakes. Such a beautiful setting but the weather was pretty rubbish. Still, it didn't stop us from getting out and about and having an amazing time together.

Mark and I were only home long enough to unpack and re-pack and head off to America for the second leg of celebrations. We flew to Los Angeles and drove up the coast road to San Francisco. This is something we have both wanted to do for a long time and so were really excited to be able to tick it off our wish lists. Sadly, the weather for those couple of days was really murky and dismal so our photographs are not quite what we had hoped for but I would still recommend this trip to anyone, the scenery is fantastic.

We also got to see a whole beach full of these guys......there were so many of them and they were fascinating to watch even if they were very smelly!!!

There were many really funny things that happened on this trip, I'll share a few of them with you as it's making me giggle again just thinking about them. The first was a trio of breakfast incidents and because we were travelling a lot, we stayed in many different hotels so these happened on consecutive days but in three different hotels.

Day 1: Without asking if the seats were taken, a Chinese lady sat down at our table with the first of her many breakfast items that she had selected from the continental style breakfast on offer. It was a serve yourself style breakfast and she certainly tried pretty much everything on offer....she was such a tiny lady too. She started with her large bowl of Cheerios which she had filled with hot water.....yes, hot water, not milk!!!! The Cheerios were floating in a liquid that looked just like dirty dish water and them she preceded to add a dollop of strawberry jam to the mix and gave it a thorough stir. It nearly killed me trying not to laugh. Then she decided to pick up the bowl and slurp very loudly until the bowl was completely empty. This was followed by two slices of toast, an apple, an orange, two muffins, a bagel and a banana!!!

Day 2: I saw a lady sitting behind Mark with a slice of wholemeal toast, covered in Strawberry jam. She rolled the toast up like a Swiss Roll and promptly dunked it in her coffee!!!

Day 3: A man of sizable proportions ordered the biggest breakfast I had ever seen, part of which was a stack of six or so pancakes. He poured a whole jar of maple syrup over said pancakes and then promptly licked the jar!!!!!

I'm now thinking that you may not find these stories as funny as I did....you kind of had to be there!!!!

We visited the Lick Observatory which was also fantastic. The journey up the mountain was incredible, just when we thought we couldn't go any higher, we turned another corner and the journey upward continued. I think it was about 7,000ft!!!

Whilst admiring the view from the top of the mountain, Mark and I were passing the time of day with a family and the lady of the family asked where we were from. Then, really randomly asked if I was at all interested in crafts!!!!! I of course said yes and she said that I may know of her brother. I asked his name and when she said Kaffe, I nearly fell over.....I was talking to Kaffe Fasset's sister.....unbelievable!!!!

Our next destination was San Francisco which was even better than I had hoped it would be. We had a trip over to Alcatraz....look at the colour of the sky......the bluest sky I think I've ever seen.

Mark will kill me for posting this picture!

You can't go to San Francisco and not ride the cable car......that was a lot of fun!

We took a couple of tours around the city, one during the day and one night time tour. It was one of those hop on/hop off style tours which is a great way to see everything.

The Golden Gate Bridge

We took a trip across the bridge to see the very tall trees at Muir Woods.

Across the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island

Then we headed off towards Yosemite National Park. We couldn't believe how hot it was 107F, it really was hot, hot, hot!!!

As for Yosemite, I have no words other than spectacular, I'll let the photographs speak for me.

The only sad part about this trip was that they are in the midst of a drought in the US and of course all the lakes and waterfalls were completely dry. Here I am standing in the middle of Mirror Lake!!!

During our slow drive back to Los Angeles, we had an over night stop in Pasadena. It's not every day you see eight peacocks just strolling down the road is it????

We had a trip to the observatory in Griffiths Park (if you haven't guessed by now, Mark is a bit of a star gazer). Sadly, the planetarium was closed that day, but the view of the Hollywood sign was pretty good. 

It really was a fabulous holiday, we did loads more than I've shared here but there's nothing more boring than looking at other peoples holiday snaps when there are hundreds of photos. Still, I thought as I have been AWOL for so long, you may have wondered what I've been up to.

After I've tackled the mound of laundry, it's back to normal life and it starts this coming weekend. I'll be demoing at the Craft Barn on Saturday and teaching a class there on Sunday and Monday. The demo days at The Craft Barn are always fantastic, I know that the classes are sold out  but if you would like to pop along on Saturday to see the demos, it's all free of charge and it would be lovely to see you.