This Year

Decided to do a blog again for this year. After the horrors of last year there have been times when I thought I'd never want to think about things happening in my life, let alone 'blog' them...but as I write down a few thoughts in October I can report that Melvyn looks the picture of health and our wonderful, busy life seems to be back to normal. I suppose that once you've had cancer you never stop crossing your fingers, but life is good here and I hope it is with all of you.

December

I'm writing December's Blog even though the month has just started. We collected our friends from their cruise and today we drove them up to Tampa to catch their plane back to UK. Over the last few days the weather here has turned pretty cold (although as I write this I keep thinking of the freezing conditions back home), so it was quite appropriate to go to the theatre and see "White Christmas"...I even saw a woman in a fur coat...in Florida!!!!!

We had a Christmas get together with friends and neighbours which focused around Christmas cake and mulled wine. I found out too late about the joke over here about fruit cake. Only your worse enemy would give you a fruit cake at Christmas and then if you couldn't give it away to someone else, you'd use it as a doorstop! Having learned all this I still insisted they try it along with the mulled wine...(more shock and horror) and it went down much better than expected. Lauraine made some yummy versions of sausage rolls and there were plenty of nibbles and I think a good time was had by all.

We've still got 2 weeks left in Florida before flying home for Christmas. No doubt we'll find lots of jobs to do but hopefully there'll also be time to relax and catch up with friends over here.

Here's hoping you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year.

November

Two weeks after Katy and Mark got married we were celebrating another wedding. This time Samantha and Gavin's. It was a lovely event and fantastic to be able to enjoy it knowing that none of it was our responsibility. Two days later we were back on our way to Florida. We knew that there had been major builind work done on our condo over the summer so were prepared for the dust everywhere and spent a mad day cleaning and tidying before we drove to Tampa to collect friends, Bob and Hilary. They have been to stay with us several times so we enjoyed the routine of Florida life and found a couple of new places for them... including a boat trip to Egmont Key and the Ybor City Museum. Bob and Hilary broke up their two week holiday with a cruise to Mexico from Tampa.

As they left on the lunch time of 22nd of November, more friends arrived that evening. Paul and Lauraine hadn't been to this part of Florida before so we enjoyed showing them the places that we love.

October

So did anything else happen in October? I'm sure we went out for meals with friends. We might even have been to the O2 to see Supertramp (one of my favourite ever groups), but to be honest it was really a count down to the wedding.

Katy and Mark had planned it all. Every time I was given a job, I seemed to need extra help from Katy or Mark...( so did Admiral Nelson not wear a red jacket like all the costume hire companys show?)...but we got there and on 23rd of October Katy and Mark were married at Leigh Court. It was one of the best days of my life and made so much better by sharing it with so many family and friends....I wish everyone could have been there, but by now I realised there was a limit to my spending habits. We all enjoyed putting on our finery, Katy and Mark looked amazing and Sarah and 'Peachy' fulfilled their roles as bridesmaid and best man brilliantly.

September

By the time we reached September, the wedding was looming very near. The milliner suffered a hand injury so I had to start searching again for a hat! Again, the cost went out of the window as I persuaded a shop in Wokingham that they could have me one made in 3 weeks, not the usual minimum of 4 weeks! We went to another wedding...Nicola from school....and by now I was starting to know all there was to know about hosting weddings. However as I'd had very little to do with the organising, I was relying on Katy and Mark to have thought of everything (which they did).

We just had time to fit in another holiday, visiting Hilary and Bob's place in Crete with Sheila and Paul. Then began the mad panic to get rid of all my wrinkles, lose the extra pounds and grow my nails. Sadly I failed on all of that but the excitement about the next month left me grinning most of the time and jumping up and down at inappropriate times.

August

In August 2009, we had been booked on an Alaskan cruise, which of course was cancelled! Maybe the thought of losing someone very dear to you makes you act a bit rashly at times, but I decided at the last minute to persuade the family to go this August. Because I left all the arrangements so late, there was no time to check around for cheap flights and good deals on hotels. So I just let the cruise company plan the lot (and charge their prices) but every penny spent was worth it. Getting to the hotel in Seattle was a nightmare....never try to get through immigration in Chicago with less than a day to do it.....and don't plan to use a car that's seen better days to take you to Heathrow at 4am.....but once we actually arrived and started the holiday it was brilliant. We only saw a small fraction of Alaska, but what we saw was fantastic. I'll never forget looking in amazement as Josh, our hiking guide, assured me that I would climb over that huge mound of rocks on my way to some glacier....and I did it and it was worth it!

July

We seemed to pack quite a bit of socialising into July...one weekend we drove to Skipton in Yorkshire to celebrate Steven and Michelle's 'special' birthdays and the following day to Brighton in Sussex to a Rufus Wainwright concert. Maybe we could be forgiven for being a little harrassed, but I'll never forget seeing Melvyn running down the street chasing the concert tickets as they blew away in the wind. Anyone else's concert I might have missed but not Rufus, so you can imagine the screaming from me. Luckily (for Melvyn) he caught them!

Wedding number two happened this month. Deborah (next door neighbour) married Richard and we joined them in the wonderful setting at Cripps' Barn in Gloucestershire. So two beautiful weddings down and all the time I was taking notes!

I had 3 theatre trips this month 'Hair' with Paul and Laurraine..(a real memory jerker...we had been around for the original and were very relieved that the original cast had retired), 'The Tempest' at the Old Vic (brilliant) and a surprise trip for Hilary to see Cirque de Soleil..(a birthday present from her daughters). I was just a bit disappointed that the cast didn't choose me to join them on the high wire! NOT!