My big sister!

This is a photograph, as promised of my sister Leeta, who, unbelievably will be 76 years old next month! And several people said I looked young for my age!

My Birthday!

I finally reached my 65th Birthday on 27th September! And it was one of the best birthdays I have had. My friend of 42 years, Kay, arrived on the day and bought me the biggest basket of fruit I have ever seen! It had a huge pineapple, a melon, oranges, apples, pears, grapes, and bars of Cadbury's chocolate sprinkled about! All the fruit was very over sized.

In the evening I cooked dinner for 9 people which consisted of a huge dish of hot tuna pasta with a crunchy cheese topping, and another dish of vegetable crumble, accompanied by tomatoes and red onion in a herby dressing, and a rocket and watercress salad with home made croutons and a gorgeous dressing, all made by Sindie. I also cooked two large Norwegian apple cakes that were eaten with ice cream and double cream. I have put my picture on here to prove I was at my birthday, as I am missing from the group because I was taking the photo! All my photos will enlarge by you clicking on them.

My 65th Birthday Portrait!

The end of the meal!

After the meal came some surprise presents! Sindie and Gary had already given me theirs. It was a HUGE electric cooking pot with a lovely glass lid that you can also use as a serving dish on the table, thus keeping the food nice and hot. I will use this so much and am thrilled with it! Sindie also made me the lovely picture that she showed you on her blog:0)

Leeta and Arthur bought me an owl string holder to replace the cat one I had broken earlier in the week. It is a really lovely colour, and goes perfectly with my kitchen colours. When the scissors are put in the holder, it looks as though the owl is wearing specs! (They also bought me a fun present of a wind sock to put in the garden, and it is already up).

And Babs and Mo bought me, not one, but two books to read which I love. They also bought me a vegetarian cook book, as they know I am always on the lookout for new veggie recipes! I have to stop Lennie grabbing them before I get a chance to read them! (not the cookery book I might add!!) I am a constant reader. They also got me two boxes of my favourite wipes for cleaning my specs. I can't do without them!

Chris and Sarah gave me the money to treat myself, which I will have great fun doing.

I would like to thank everyone for their lovely birthday cards as well. Even the one from Tina in Spain arrived on time!

Everyone was in a happy mood, and we had great fun with the camera trying to find the right angle to take photographs that make us look slimmer than we are! My 65th portrait is one of them!! Poor Sindie cackled and laughed so much, that she had almost lost her voice the next morning! Great fun was had by all:0)

While my friend Kay was here, we went to Holmfirth which is The Last Of The Summer Wine country, and Kay was thrilled to find 'Sid's Cafe'!! I never watched the series, so didn't recognise anything, but the village was very pretty.

We also went to York for Kay to have some retail therapy! It looks a smashing place, and Lennie and I shall go back again to take in some of the sights of York. There is a museum there that apparently takes all day to go round, so we will have to make an early start! York is a lovely place with some really quaint streets.

The next thing I have to look forward to is next Friday. My brother Billie is coming to Yorkshire from Buckinghamshire to treat 12 of us to a Thai meal!! He did this last year as well, and we had a fantastic time:0) It is so nice being in the company of lots of people that you care about, all at the same time:0)

I am sure that one of us will blog about the meal and post photographs!

John the horse!

We have discovered that John, (the horse we feed when we take Pickles for a walk), is mad about Polo's! We were told by a local that he would 'climb trees for a Polo', so we tried them out. He absolutely loves them, and seems to prefer them to carrots, although I shouldn't think too many of them would be good for him! Here are a couple of photo's as promised:0)

Just click them to enlarge them for a better look!

I was looking at the new service on Blogspot, that enables you to look at hundreds and hundreds of bloggers photo's that have been posted on a public blog, (ours will probably appear on there), when I came across this which I thought would interest you.

One other thing. I went to the dental hospital today, and they have informed me that I have to have my tooth out, (the one next to my front tooth), as the root has cracked and is causing an infection. This has caused the abcess. I have to have a one tooth denture made first, and then they will put it in the same time as they extract my tooth!

I can't believe I have reached the age where I have to have dentures, even if it is only one tooth:0( I am not looking forward to it. It should happen in about a months time.

Today

Today we decided to go to Pot House Hamlet which is an area round Silkstone Garden Centre. On arrival, Lennie suggested we have a drink before we explore. We sat at a table overlooking a river with all sorts of ducks and geese on it. I waited outside while Lennie paid. 'That was the most expensive cup of tea ever' he said. For one tea and one cappucino it was £5.10!

We then went outside and found a track which we followed. We wondered what all the stones were, until we came across a little wagon filled with flowers. This had been a small track that coal wagons used to run on!

We followed it for quite a way, then decided to return and have a look at the garden centre. When we got back, we discovered that the garden centre was really just rows and rows of overgrown, very untidy tangled flowerbeds, set amongst lots of paths. What a waste of time!

A wasted journey as far as we were concerned, and we wouldn't recommend it to anyone:0(

Oh well, you can't win 'em all! We then took Pickles for her usual play around, and fed the horses. That reminds me. I must take a photo of 'John' our favourite horse. We always take him a nice bag of carrots and he always comes to us when we call.

Wentworth Castle Gardens

Today, instead of a cache, we decided to go to Wentworth Castle Gardens. It was a perfect day, and it took us about 1.5 hours to walk round them. The paths were all newly laid as they are in the process of renovating a lot of the buildings and gardens. There wasn't much to see in the way of flowers or flowering shrubs, but the distant scenery was lovely.

We came across Stainborough Castle, which is a Gothic Romantic Folly. Lennie climbed the tower to a veiwing platform which is 600 feet above sea level. It was a spiral staircase which frightened me! Far too strenuous for me. I waited in the grounds below:0)

The picture above is me waiting below for Lennie!

We also saw the conservatory, famous after featuring on the BBC TV series 'Restoration'. This elegant cast iron glass house remains derelict, but restoration will begin as soon as enough money has been raised. I couldn't get a photo of this as it was behind a high wire fence, and supported totally by scaffolding. Trees were growing through the roof, and glass was missing. You could see the complete errosion of the ornate cast iron framework.

There was a very nice tea room there, but we were not at all hungry, so we had a drink on arriving, and another one just before we left. Lennie is pictured sitting on the wall of the tea room patio where we had our drink and looked through all the leaflets we picked up. We will be visiting a lot of these, although some of them are in North Yorkshire. All in all another lovely day, and I must say, that although this walk around the gardens was all uphill, I am beginning to feel better for all this excercise!!

We have not yet decided where we are going tomorrow, but go somewhere we will. This weather is set to continue, with the only hiccough on Friday when we may have a little light rain, but Saturday the sunshine will be back!

PHOTOS

Just thought I would show a few of the pictures that we took when we went for a walk with Chris and Sarah. Again it was along the river Don, but this time we walked in the opposite direction. It was lovely:0) The one of the lake is just to show you the size of the fish in the water!! All my photos are clickable to enlarge.

HOLIDAY WIPE OUT!

Chris and Sarah set off for their week in The Lake District, and they were all very excited and looking forward to it. They couldn't go anywhere for the first three days because it was Sat, Sun and Mon of the Bank Holiday, and of course the roads in the Lake District were jammed. By Tuesday, when they should have all been able to enjoy the rest of their time their, they were hit very hard with what they thought was food poisoning. First the youngest, Jo who is just over 18 months old vomited and had diarrhea, a couple of hours later it was Sarah's turn. Sarah is expecting her baby at the end of November, and unfortunately only just made it out of their people carrier before she was sick all over the path. She went inside, where it continued. Then I am not sure if it was Aaron, who is almost six, or Chris, (the daddy) who was next. They continued like this until the day they had to come home, when they seemed better. Chris was taken ill again on the journey to us, with a bad headache, and when they arrived, he looked awful! Still they thought it was food poisoning, so were not worried about passing anything on to us.

Sindie came round that evening, and cooked us all the best vegetarian meal we have ever tasted! It was vegetable paella, with a lovely side salad that had the most yummy dressing and hot croutons! I had to take these photos for you.

We had a lovely evening, and Sindie had even bought two different kinds of cheesecake for dessert:0)

The next day, I was sitting with Aaron in the lounge, and Sarah and Chris were having a rest upstairs. All of a sudden, Aaron threw up all over the settee, (which is fabric). Chris came rushing down, and it took me and him to clean Aaron down, while Lennie was frantically trying to remove the seat covers and cushion covers! Thank goodness the settee was an expensive one and had removable covers.

We thought that was the end of it, but by the time Chris and Sarah were ready to go home on Sunday, I was feeling exhausted, hot, cold and ached all over. I don't know how I kept my eyes open for the last hour of their visit. I didn't want to tell them how bad I was feeling, because I had promised to baby sit that morning while they went to Meadowhall to get some maternity clothes. And I had to prevent Jo from having his afternoon nap so that he would sleep on the way home.

Anyway, once they had left, I literally collapsed on to the settee, and I was shivering with cold, and had a thick fleece and a fluffy blanket over me. I was feeling very sick, and all my bones ached. It couldn't have been food poisoning, and must have been a bug. I didn't eat anything for two days, but as soon as I was well enough to get up and shower, Sindie was throwing up and felt awful, and Livvie her 12 year old, has passed out in the shower!

Poor Sindie has been feeling very 'tender' today. Apparently they also had the shivers. Livvie went back to school, as it was her first day after the summer holidays, but she felt a little shaky apparently.

So that was the last week of Chris and Sarah's holiday.

The first week they were here was grand, and we went out and about. Sindie will probably blog about the walk they all did, while I baby sat again.

We may not see them again until Christmas, when they will have just had another addition to the family. Chris asked if we could go and see the baby when it is born, but whilst I was explaining that it was too near to Christmas, and they would be coming anyway, Sarah said 'And where do you think your mum and dad are going to stay if they come. We will have an extra cot!

Dear me, space is at a premium at the moment. We have decided that when they come for Christmas, we will have Jo in our room in the travel cot, Sarah will have the baby in her room, Chris will sleep in the spare room, and Aaron will have a bed made up in the computer room again. There isn't enough room in Chris's room for the travel cot, but our bedroom is quite large and we have plenty of room. I know he wakes up most mornings before 6.00a.m. but we will have to cope with that:0) I am sure we will have lots of fun!!