Has it really been 5 months?

Hello friends and family. I had a timely reminder to come and enter some news into our blog once in a while! I thought "Surely it's not been that long since we wrote something?" and was shocked to see it's been more or less 5 months since I last made an entry! That's no good!

Well, timing couldn't be better because we have a few pictures to share from a couple of recent trips away. The first was to the strange town of Blackpool. I had to go up there for a work conference and Mike came with me to use his camera. The town is up in the same county as the Preston Temple, Lancashire. It's one of Ballroom Dancing's world capitols. If I had to describe what it's like, I would call it tacky Vegas. We visited off-season, which was good because during the summer it is heaving with crazy partiers. We were put up in one of the nicer hotels and whilst I learned a lot about the issues facing female entrepreneurs, Mike wondered around trying to discover something cool to shoot. I think the pictures he came back with kind of say it all. There's not much cool there. We appreciated the trip though.

There was another reason to celebrate in March . . . OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY!!! Can you believe we've been married a whole year?! It's astonishing how time flies. To celebrate the best year of our lives we hired a "caravan" down in North Devon in a little coastal town called Woolacoombe. We weren't really sure what to expect because we'd tried to be a bit frugal and collected tokens to get a discount. Our place looked a little bit like some of the places we'd tracted on our mission!
Yes, we know. This is nothing new in beach holidays for Michelle, but probably the first time Mike had relaxed in a premium holiday trailor! There was a beautiful sandy beach about a 10 minute walk down the hill from our camp site, so we played the first day.

Second day we took a coastal drive down to Cornwall to see the Eden Project, a resurrected clay pit that had been reclaimed and turned into an incredible growing project that combines horticulture, art, science, engineering and anthropology.


Michelle was pretty excited to walk into the first Biome and see tulips - my favourite flower, and our wedding flower!


The Biomes have different climates, one is meditaranian and the other is a tropical rain forest. As you wonder through there are all sorts of species of plant, insect, bird and lizard wondering around! The tropical Biome was the biggest and best. So humid though! But it made us both want to go trecking.


Those were probably the biggest lemons I'd ever seen.



Sorry, I don't know how to flip these around on the blog, I'll figure it out and flip it later, but for now, could you tilt your head please? The tropical Biome:



Michael was the one behind the camera, and believe me there are plenty of pictures of me doing goofy stuff.


This statue was massive. It was called "WEEE Man" and was a sculpture made of the average amount of electrical waste thrown away by one person in the West over a life time. We have about 50 pictures of this guy. Spooky isn't he?



There were sandy beaches and stoney beaches. I'm sure I didn't need to prove it but I couldn't think of anything else to do in the picture!



The Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, but the sea was still freezing. When I say freezing, it hurt to put my feet in it. I've swam in cold water, and in the North sea in autumn, but this was unbearable. Perhaps it's my age. Michael was determined that I would go in the water!



But I didn't stay long.


That's just a few of our pictures. We had an amazing holiday. Thanks for the anniversary cards and kind thoughts that were sent. We are so grateful to be married every single day. It has been the very best year, bar none.

Of course the next day was Mike's birthday. He is now a 28 year old! There were some pictures taken that I don't have yet but they will be posted soon hopefully. He loves getting older as much as the rest of us, so we tried to cheer him up with a chinese, a chocolate M&M cake (made by Alice and Emily) and a Killer Bunnies/Guitar hero tournament. I don't know what else anyone could want really. He sends his love and thanks for all the cards and gifts.

Sorry for the slightly long post, but there has been much to catch up on. I will try and get to the computer more often from now on!

Love - Blogmaster Shell x