New Blog

It finally happened – I ran out of space on my blog. All my new adventures will be at http://hayleyiraina2.wordpress.com but you can still read all of my old posts here. See you at my new page!

What We Got Up To In January 2019

We started off January by ringing in the New Year with Kim’s family, we went for Japanese food first and then back to Kim’s Uncle’s house who had a house party. Americans like to watch a ball slide down a pole in Times Square in New York for New Years Eve so that’s what we counted down to on TV.

We took a day trip to Amherst, Massachusetts and visited the hot tub spa.

We’ve still been visiting the cat shelter to help out that’s down the street from us, we’re getting some sweet favourites like this friendly little guy.

We took a trip to the Spa at Norwich Inn one weekend and had a lovely room with a fireplace.

I discovered Kim has never lit a match before… I didn’t know anyone could be bad at striking a match but now I know how talented I really am.

We’d been to the Spa at Norwich Inn before so we knew the drill, we had afternoon tea and scones.

Wine, cheese…and lots of spa time.

Kim has a very nice friend who is also called Kim and she and her husband, Cam, live in Cape Cod where we drove for their baby shower. The weather was not co-operative but it was still the shortest drive we’ve had to Cape Cod because there was no traffic!

Would you just look at these biscuits?

Our Saturdays have been occupied with foster/adoption classes in the mornings and we just finished our second class. The other people in the class are really friendly and the classes are fairly positive so far so it’s going well – lots of paperwork! So it was only right to treat ourselves after class today. We took a trip to a tea shop in Mystic.

We had a Harry Potter themed afternoon tea, Kim was in heaven.

We tried to walk at least one of the cakes off around the Lebanon Green which I’d driven past a lot but hadn’t actually had a chance to look round before, the houses are all old (for America at least) and there was a lot of revolutionary war history there.

January feels like it’s flown by!

Christmas 2018

It’s January and I haven’t even written about our Christmas! Ugh It’s been busy! We cheated this year and bought our Christmas tree pre-cut.

We went to bright nights in Massachusetts to get in the Christmas spirit.

We found out there’s a cat shelter just down the road from us in Coventry so in December we started volunteering which I just love, kitties galore.

We finally tried out this place called Little Marks BBQ that we drive past a lot. It reminds me of a band my friends and I used to watch play when I was a teenager and the food was really good.

We went to whole foods to stock up on good munchies.

On Christmas Day we went to Kim’s parents house in the morning and had Christmas cocktails Kim’s sister made

And eggs benedict for breakfast.

And both Kim and I were thoroughly spoilt, I got some awesome gifts.

And that was our December round up, albeit a late one!

Cornwall Part 3

The day before our last day in Cornwall Bronte, Chris, Kim and I went to the Eden Project (the others fancied a cider farm and walking).

The Eden Project is a large botanical garden with outside plants and then two biomes, one which creates a rainforest environment and one which creates a Mediterranean environment.

The tickets were about £30 which is pricey but you can visit as many times as you like for a year and walking around you could tell it must cost a lot for the upkeep. Everything was geared towards conservation and sustainability.

We had a nice morning ambling about the plants and reading the plaques. The Mediterranean Biome was a pleasant temperature and they hold weddings in there.

 The Rainforest Biome was boiling hot.

It had a waterfall and huge water feature which made it humid as hell, it had it’s own cold room you could rest in part way round. I think in the summer when there are a lot of visitors it must be horrible to queue in that heat.

Roul roul partridges live in the Rainforest Biome as well as lizards.

Once we were done and had had coffee and cake (vital part of all trips out) we took a ride back up to gift shop up a ridge in a tractor and we could see all of the gardens from above, it was built in an old mine.

After that we met Mum, her boyfriend Kerry, Charles and Ellen back at Crantock and took a trip down to the beach.

I made a highly artistic sand sculpture as I’m not much of a sunbather.

Then we looked round the caves and rock pools the others had found a few days before.

One of the caves had carvings in them, they had been head height but over time the sand had eroded away which made them look a lot higher up.

Charles and Chris headed up a sadly unsuccessful crabbing expedition which mainly involved them throwing bits of bacon in the water and poking rocks with a hot pink fishing net.

And then we walked back up the beach which took ages because it was a very large beach. We were lucky with the weather whilst we visited but the sea was freezing.

The next day we left Cornwall and drove back to Wiltshire.

We stopped off in Devon.

For a good old cream tea (for any American readers a cream tea is a pot of tea that comes with scones, clotted cream and jam – not tea with cream in it).

Once back in Devizes, Bronte showed Kim and I the miracle that is Derek’s Deals. Derek is the manager of a Spar shop who seems to have a lot of time on his hands and has become a cult figure in Devizes. Every week he releases a new youtube video every week detailing his savings often with a current affair theme. The video the week we went had Kim Jong Un in it.

Then we visited the white horse carved into the hill near my Mum’s house and petted the cows.

Mum drove Kim and I to Heathrow the next day, Harrods and a lot of the other shops were cashing in on the latest royal wedding. We picked up Kim’s Auntie Debbie a themed tea towel.

Our flight back was a day time flight this time and it was lovely, we had a nice lunch.

And watched some movies, although I was distracted half the flight wondering what the hell this man’s belt was supposed to be made of and why he thought that gold, silver and orange was a winning combination.

Then we had a little snackette before landing.

I had to have my photo taken a billion times re-entering the USA and made a game of it by pulling stupid faces until a security guard told me to stop smiling. Spoilsport. And that was our trip to England.