Birthday Bonanza

Last weekend to celebrate my 39th birthday, Pete and I dumped the kids and took ourselves off up to York. This little break away nearly broke the bank as the room cost us £9 a night, how good is that!!

On Saturday we got up real early so that we could get into York while it was still empty to take some photographs in the wonderful sunlight. This is after I got breakfast in bed with it being my birthday which involved Pete throwing a banana at me from the other side of the hotel room - who says romance is dead?

We entered the city through here



with these guys looking down on us


We strolled around the nice and empty walls


to look at views like this


we then dropped down into the city centre

took a walk down the very empty "Shambles"


a visit to the castle


a phone call from my boys to wish me Happy Birthday



luckily Pete took this shot of me pointing at something I was telling Matt about on the phone which is my shot for today's prompt over at HSMSHS


and last but not least we went shopping where Pete got me this


which contained this

CROWD CONTROL

Last weekend we moved the doggy area to the back of the garden and as soon as we put the picket fence up Bilbo the border collie decided that he could jump it. For 5 years that dog has stayed put behind the exact same fence but now he decides he can get over it! Resulting in me spending the weekend painting lots of trellis so that it could be used to put him off jumping the fence anymore. A very tedious job but very handy for today's prompt of "paint" over at HSMSHS

The dogs are allowed in the rest of the garden when we are out there with them but left on their own they find their own amusement in the form of digging up my plants and swimming in the pond with the tadpoles and newts. This is the number one culprit don't be fooled by those sweet eyes he is trouble on legs and stupid with it.

Two plants that benefit with the dogs not digging are my 'tatoes which are growing very nicely and have loved all the sunshine

and my beautiful budding blueberries.

BRIDGE 32

Just a quick one from me today as I have loads to do and I am in work at 2pm so I can only hang around here long enough to do today's prompt at HSMSHS.

To divide, wound or detach with an edged instrument.

Taken on the canal last week. We had to go through a lot of cuts like this one. We spent a night in a cut under a haunted bridge we never have found out why a screaming monkey would haunt a canal bridge in the Midlands???

NO APOLOGY NECESSARY

It's been a while but I'm not sorry about it, I just didn't feel like it.

I'll just do a quick catch up with a couple of photos. On Mother's Day we went to Llandudno where we did this...

.... that's right we went all that way to look stupid at the top of the Great Orme.

Kyle had a birthday which turned him into a dreaded teenager, no photos of this I am afraid as for some reason I gave the camera to Pete and lets just say the delete button had to be pressed more than once.

Last week we spent the week ships ahoy on the four counties ring with 101 locks on a not so leisurely holiday.

Day number one about an hour after setting off while everyone was still walking and reasonably awake.

Towards the end of the week even I was brave enough to drive. Oooo aarrrr me hearties.

In another attempt to keep up with my blogging and photography here are my HSMSHS pictures for the last 2 days.

Taken at Coney Island Aquarium last year and I promise the only editing I did was to unsharpen it a little bit.

Taken in Oman in Feb

I know I haven't taken them today but at least I have managed to edit 2 pictures out of my HUGE to edit file.

I now consider myself caught up, even if it is very brief, so tomorrow I will hopefully start afresh and as I mean to go on.