Funfair, hydrophobic sand and Vee

I went to see Vee this weekend and had an awesome time! There was a funfair in her area for a few days so we went there and I also got to meet up with some of her friends too:

Vee at the front and at the back, Julie, Mike and Emma

I've heard lots about them all in the past, but it was great to actually get to meet them in person and (as expected) they were all really friendly and chatty and great company. Here's some pictures of the funfair:

Chair ride which whirled round quite fast, this was lots of fun

My favourite of the fair

Took forever to get started, but brilliant fun when it did!

We didn't go on this one, because frankly, it looked insane!

VERY fast and lots of g-forces... fun!

Bear I won on one of the stalls where you always won a prize (this)

We also went on a fast tea cup style ride which made me feel VERY ill because of all the rotations! Sorry that I didn't get a picture, but I was a bit distracted with trying to not be sick and by the time I thought about it we were no longer there.

After this we headed to a nearby pub and ordered some food and I had this rather nice double burger with loads of bacon:


Although it doesn't look it, it was massive, it's just that the chips were also really big!

After walking back towards the car we said goodbye to Vee's friends and headed drove the two hours back to my house to spend the rest of the weekend. First of all we ended up going round my local Co-op shop to buy some food because Vee wouldn't tell me what she wanted until the day, but last minute (and often impulse) food shopping is always fun so I didn't mind :)

We only ate pasta with sauce for dinner (probably as we were still full up from the massive late lunch in the pub) and watched "Whip it" which is a fun film :) Other than that we watched silly music videos and played the Careers board game.

Sadly Vee was feeling a bit ill so didn't stay up too late (okay it was still about 1am!) but I stayed up a while longer and watched the new Doctor Who episode (which was fantastic!).

The next day we had a lazy late morning/early afternoon and I played with my hydrophobic sand. Vee had bought it for my birthday back in March, but I wanted to use it whilst she was there so hadn't tried it until now and WOW IT'S COOL!! It's basically sand that looks and acts like normal sand, but it won't get wet. You can put it in water and it clomps together, but if you remove it then it just goes straight back to normal dry sand. Here's a video I recorded:



Weird eh? It's VERY cool to play with and the best part is I have multiple colours and I was able to get most of this back for reuse too! Soon after this we hopped back in the car and drove back to Vee's and then I drove back home myself. Here's a montage of pictures:


Another fantastic weekend, thanks Vee! :)

Fanimal

I got my Fanimal!


It's the "thing" that I put in Carrie's fridge at the "Extreme BBQ" (you're supposed to keep Peperami's cool after all!). That was hers though, this is mine! You can actually buy them for £3.99 OR you can just win one and I did on attempt 6!

Apparently it doesn't cost you anything to try other than your standard text message rate (which is unusual as normal shortcodes reverse bill you), but that's what it says on the terms and conditions page! It does however say that they MIGHT NOT come out of inclusive texts, it all depends on your tariff, but I figured even at 10p/text that's still only 60p it's cost me! :) Bargain!

Oh and aside from being about a foot tall and flexible etc, if you hit him against something he shouts out random footballish phrases... :)

Father's day

Father's Day was LAST Sunday in the UK and my brother was going to someone's wedding so it was just me who went over to see the parents, but it was a good afternoon all the same! We'd bought Dad a solar powered train kit (it's more impressive than it sounds!) and he's since told me how much fun he had making it and apparently it works really well so that's good! We also got him the "Settlers of Catan" game which we've had our eye on for ages, but haven't actually played it yet as he wanted to read all the rules properly first as it does look rather complicated.

After lunch Dad and I went for a walk as there was a local "garden" festival with "Open Gardens" so we went to look at some of them:




Some people have way too much time on their hands eh? :) Of course I couldn't help but think of the topiaries in the Facebook game, FarmVille, but I kept that to myself as Dad wouldn't have got the joke :)

We headed back to the house and played a selection of board games, but also "Spiderman Uno"! I thought it was going to be really rubbish, but actually it turned out it was official and wasn't bad either! There was even a new "Spider-sense" card too. Sadly my parents weren't interested in changing any of the rules - Boo!


Next time for the rules changing eh? :)

Extreme BBQ

On Saturday Carrie hosted a barbeque and she called the Facebook event "Extreme BBQ" so now you know where the entry name came from! There was only about 10 people there, but we had some great weather, some fantastic food and lots of laughs, so it was a pretty great day!

There was a trampoline!

Usual BBQ food as you'd expect

Carrie and Lucy

Steaks!

There was chicken too

I tried making BBQ nachos, tasted good!

Celery and feta cheese, this wasn't so good

Check out the massive fridge... and something that shouldn't be in there...

:)

Germany

Three weeks ago I went on holiday with some friends to South Germany and had a great time! We drove all the way there which was quite a trek, but we passed through France, Belgium and Holland on route and later on in the week, whilst in Germany, we also popped across the borders to both Austria and the Czech Republic to look around there!

Here's where our journey began, 6am in Dover waiting for our ferry to take us to France

Leaving the UK, it's very cold and we've hardly slept either!

My SatNav whilst somewhere in Holland. As you can see we still have nearly 8 hours of driving to do (we've already done 5 hours to get this far!)

Our lovely house! 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, large lounge and decent kitchen and dining areas too!

From a village we went to where nearly everything is made of glass! (well quite a lot!) Lots of glass shops too!

Giant pick-up sticks!

We had some barbeques too!

No matter which way you faced, this was what the view looked like. No really.

Well unless you looked at the mountains, then it looked like this:

That's me at the top of Eagle's Nest and yes that is SNOW behind me!

The view from up there was breathtaking!

We're over 1.8km above sea level ON A MOUNTAIN and they still put in a souvenir shop!

Exploring whilst at the top of the mountain

There's so much snow up here!

No description needed!

This was zoomed in as well!

Salzberg, although it reminded me a lot of Dublin because of the river through the middle of it and the multiple bridges.

Also in Salzberg and no the man on top of the ball isn't real, but notice the railway behind!

Munich now, there are trams here!

We came on "Chuch Day" so there was lots of religious events going on.

Enjoying some German beer!

Even baby Isabel liked it! (we didn't really give her any!)

We found a shop selling all manner of medieval weapons!

We also tried shooting some targets

And searching for gold!

Domažlice, Czech Republic - Very colourful eh?

Typical cigarette store in Eastern Europe... Yes really!

Enjoying a final meal at the local pub

I took 1031 pictures in total and even after chopping them down there was still 400 which is just too many to post, but I hope you get an idea from the above.

I haven't spoken any German since I left school in 1996 and it's way back in 1988-1990 that I actually lived in Germany so it took a few days for the language to get back into it. However, by the end of the week I was able to work out most things without too many problems and impressed myself in the process. I'm nowhere near as good as I used to be, but as the week went on I saw more and more words I recognised and I was just really glad I remembered as much as I did!

The location was great, the company was fantastic and the scenery (as you can see!) was just amazing. :)