The diet starts Monday ... !

I don't know about you but I am feeling fatter than a suckling pig!  After having four lots of visitors in as many months (to stay, not to eat), plus Thanksgiving and Christmas in between, it has been one continuous holiday since last October and some of us might have overindulged a bit ... ahem. (It won't surprise you to know that it wasn't Mr B who has been counting his calories daily for the last 4 years ... smug git)

As we said farewell to the last of our house guests for a while yesterday, I was thinking it may be time to get back on that healthy eating bandwagon **shivers and pulls face** and set about trying to lose that extra 5lbs that seems to have crept on whilst I wasn't looking.  Ugh.  Oh wait ... what's that? Do I fancy going to the Food Truck Festival today?  ... Never mind.

One of the things we said we would do more of when we moved here was take advantage of the beautiful weather and go out more at the weekends.  I know the weather has been grim across the pond and don't meant to rub it in, but today was the PERFECT day!  Temperatures in the low 70s, bright blue skies and warm sunshine ... plus a Food Festival!  What's not to love?!

You can pretty much find a Festival or some kind of outdoor activity every weekend in the Phoenix area until around May when it just becomes too hot and walking around outside for more than 10 minutes causes the skin to melt off your bones.  This weekend was no exception.  Apart from the regular Farmers Markets which are always fun to wander around on a Saturday morning, this weekend there was also the Barratt Jackson Classic Car Auction - a huge auction for ... er ... classic cars as well as the Street Eats Food Truck Festival, with 65 trucks offering everything from BBQ, lobster & Cajun to ice cream, waffles & key lime pie on a stick (yes, really).  Guess which one got my vote?

We even managed to lure out the Tween, who somehow managed to consume a huge waffle topped with Nutella, ice cream and a Hershey's chocolate bar followed by a large slice of pepperoni pizza within 20 minutes of arriving!

I, on the other hand, was strangely attracted to a lovely old blue truck which seemed to be advertising something ... oh ... tequila ... fancy that!

"Margarita madam?" ... Don't mind if I do 

There was a huge selection of food to choose from ... 

and my personal favourite ...

And of course we had to try the Key Lime Pie bars ...

Oh well, might as well wait till Monday to start the diet now eh? In the meantime, I've just found two boxes of chocolates, a Terry's chocolate orange and a box of Matchmakers in the cupboard with my name on 'em, so if you'll excuse me I have a lot to get though before Monday morning ....

Hope you all have a great week!

TTFN

Bev x 

Hello Weekend ... I'm so happy to see you!

Did I mention how much I LOVE Saturday mornings?

Here at Barlow Towers we all have to be up and out of the door pretty early during the week, which is not a problem for Mr B as he is always up at stupid o'clock anyway, but for Ethan and I (who are not morning people) it is a killer!  So at the weekends, whilst I am still awake early, I love nothing better than getting back in bed with a steaming cup of coffee & my iPad to catch up with everybody's news, read blogs and news articles that I might have saved during the week, watch The Pioneer Woman on the Food Network (every week I swear I am going to make at least one of her dishes and never do) and generally make the most of the fact that I have nothing to do and all day to do it in! Bliss!  I have to confess that the coffee is usually made and delivered by The lovely Mr B, (who has already been up for hours) often followed a little while later by my favourite Saturday breakfast ... a toasted bagel with honey walnut cream cheese  ... so I'm spoiled ... what can I say?!

This morning was no different (except the bagel was cinnamon & raisin) but was enjoyed all the more because I have had a dreadful cold for the past week and so dragging my sorry backside out of bed just after 6 every morning has felt particularly gruelling.  When I turned on the TV today thought, I was reminded once again just how fortunate we are to live in Arizona as the news was all about 'Winter Storm Jonas' - a massive snow storm currently slamming the East Coast where some areas are due to get 30-40" of snow before the weekend is out!  

Meanwhile in Arizona ... Lol!

Otherwise it's been a pretty quiet week as I have not felt like doing anything due to constant sinus headaches, a running nose and generally feeling pants for days on end. I should quit complaining  though as there are so many people who are far worse off than me.  As I write this, Mr B is at a memorial for a colleague he had got particularly close to since we moved to Arizona and who tragically lost his battle with cancer last week leaving behind a wife and three children.  Heartbreaking.  Sadly, I never got to meet him as time ran out before we could arrange the get together that the boys had been planning, but it certainly helps you put things in perspective and serves as a startling reminder of just how precious life is and how little time we have.  We owe it to ourselves to make every second count.  

Be nice to each other and hope to see you again next time!

TTFN

Bev x

From Las Vegas to Laundry ...

... and when she woke up, Cinderella discovered that the razzle dazzle of Las Vegas was gone and she was back in the kitchen sorting laundry and cleaning the oven (although why she ever thought that would be a good idea I don't know).

Our friends, Jane & Sally, arrived on the plane that Ben went back on on New Year's Day, and what with Christmas, New Year,  another week of fun in Phoenix, followed by a girls weekend in Las Vegas (more on that in a minute),  I have had the perfect excuse to eat like a pig, drink like a fish and generally skive off all but the most necessary of chores since 23rd December ... Yay me!

One of the highlights of J&S's visit was a trip to the races.  They had been to a local racetrack called Turf Paradise on a previous trip to Phoenix several years ago and were curious to see if it was still there.  It was, and races were scheduled that weekend.  Having never been horse racing before - apart from a Corporate day at Goodwood once, during which I don't think I even saw the racetrack (far too muddy for my liking!) - I didn't really know what to expect other than the stereotypical chain smoking old men with nicotine stained fingers, flat caps and dodgy anoraks or cigar smoking Arthur Daley characters in trilbies and macs?  Whilst there was still an element of that, (except here they wore stetsons and cowboy boots - no anorak required), in general there was a wide mix of spectators, including lots of families, and it was a really fun afternoon out.

There were other people there, honest!

Whilst Marcus and the girls studied 'the form', carefully picking their horses based on the data available,  the look of riders, who'd had their Shredded Wheat etc.,  Ethan and I just went for those with the most appropriate sounding names.  A strategy that clearly paid off as Ethan managed to pick the winner for 4 out the 8 races whilst I had the biggest win of the day with a horse called 'Wed too Soon' and the longest odds (well, I found it amusing anyway!)

Winner!

So, back to Vegas.  After leaving us the girls were off for a spot of golfing, with a week in Las Vegas and a week in Palm Springs, before coming back to us for a further week before they flew back home.  As they were going to be driving to Vegas from here on a Friday, I wondered whether there was any reason why I couldn't tag along for the weekend and fly back Sunday afternoon.  It turned out there wasn't ... so I did! Yay!  The girls wanted to go via Lake Havasu to look at 'London Bridge' which was perfect as I had never been there before either and so we headed off after breakfast, amusing ourselves with singing and 'alphabet' games along the way, and arriving just in time for lunch.  One of the Newcomers group who used to live in Lake Havasu had recommended a restaurant called Shugrues which overlooked the bridge and we were not disappointed (thanks Jen!).  

After a fab lunch and a leisurely stroll across the Bridge we were soon back on the road again and a couple of hours later arrived in Las Vegas.  The girls had an apartment booked at the Wyndham Grand Desert resort, just off the main LV Boulevard, which was lovely, and even better had a free shuttle to the strip!  After checking in and a quick unpack and freshen up we headed out for the evening.  We were all still too full from lunch to eat 'a proper dinner' as my Mum would say, and so just popped into Ghirardelli's ice cream parlor for a small snack...

Chocolate Fudge Sundae ... Mmmmmm!

We visited several of the large casinos (all very smoky ... yuk!) before finally settling in The Bellagio (a much better class of smoke!) and largely stuck to playing the slots, which whilst not yielding any dramatic wins, did enable both Sally and I to leave with most of our assigned 'pocket money'  in tact.  Result!  The next day we headed to the Premium Outlets for a spot of retail therapy, which to be honest we found to be dramatically overpriced and mainly geared towards the tourist market, which I suppose was inevitable.   Much better bargains to be had here we decided (ask Jane about her $1 golfing shorts!).  Then it was back to the apartment for another quick change before heading back to the Bellagio for the 'O' Cirque de Soleil show.  There is no doubt that this is a spectacular show and one which I would definitely recommend as a 'must see', however, we all agreed that if you have already seen several Cirque de Soleil shows, as we all have, they do begin to get a bit repetitive as whilst the characters and costumes are different, the format is the same and even the acrobatics, whilst still impressive, were very similar to every other show. Sorry Cirque but I think I might be falling out of love with you just a little bit.  After Sunday breakfast and another amble around the Wynn and Encore casinos (still smoky but with much comfier seats!) it was time for me to head to the airport and home to Mr B - who had been in his element finally having the TV to himself and watching sport all weekend - and Gadget Boy,  who I don't think even noticed I had gone anywhere! A fab weekend and great fun - definitely to be repeated!

Viva Las Vegas!

Cheers

This week it was back to earth with a bump and all was eerily quiet at Barlow Towers as my Vegas partners in crime have gone off golfing for a couple of weeks,  Mr B has flown off on another jolly work trip, and Youngest is at school.    So with nothing to distract me further,  I could avoid it no longer and reluctantly dragged myself back to reality.  As well as oven cleaning (it seemed like a good idea at the time but after five minutes of scrubbing the shelves with one of those evil green wiry things I had rapidly gone off the idea), I washed and dried four loads of laundry (I swear the boys wore nearly every item in their bloody wardrobes during the two days I was away),  shopped for groceries (dull), restocked the fridge (although looking at it now it seems to be mainly wine and chocolate ... no clue how that happened) and the piece de resistance, dealing with the somewhat unscheduled task of sorting out the tyre pressure warning light which had helpfully chosen this morning to show itself.  Thanks for that.  Never mind, I thought ... only mildly irritated at this point ...  no big deal.  I can pop into the garage and top up the air in the tyres on the way back from the supermarket ... it will only take a few minutes. 

Now, when I was in the UK, providing you had the right change for the machine, topping up the air in your tyres was a relatively straightforward, although admittedly not a favorite, task.

1. Pull up to machine.
2. Scrabble in purse for change. 

3. Punch in desired type pressure.
4. Begin adding air.
5. Stop when machine beeps to indicate correct level reached.
Easy.  The trickiest part was having to run round the car like Annika Rice on speed to complete all four tyres before your 40p ran out whilst trying (and invariably failing) not to lose any of the little black caps you needed to screw back on afterwards.   Today's experience though was somewhat different.

1. Pull up to machine.
2. Look for slot to add coins.
3. Determine there aren't any ... must be free?
4. Check it works ... it does! ... good times.
5. Look for where to enter required pressure ... there isn't anywhere.  Sigh.  OK.  Never mind, will just have to rely on the gauge.  Now, if I can just find that  ... oh great ... there isn't one.  Bad times.
6. Curse loudly several times.
7. Get back in car and set off to find another garage.

Drive 10 minutes to next nearest garage.

1. Pull up to air machine (helpfully hidden behind Rhino gas canisters)
2. Look for slot to add coins ...  ah ... here we are ... 4 x quarters ...
3. Scrabble in purse for correct change and miraculously find 4 x quarters
4. Feed into slot. So far so good.
5. Look for where to enter tyre pressure ... not on this one either ... grrrrr
6. Curse loudly whilst simultaneously noticing driver of large truck watching with some amusement as he sits in his cab eating his lunch
7. Large, Heavily Tattooed Trucker slowly disembarks from cab and makes his way towards clearly pathetic female
8. Actually very nice Trucker, helpfully explains that gauge is hidden in end of air hose and proceeds to demonstrate ... well, how bloody stupid is that?!! Asks pathetic female if she would like him to do it for her?
9. Somewhat indignant female, replies that she will be fine now thank you very much and Helpful Trucker gets back in cab to continue with lunch.
10. Run round car to remove black caps from tyres
11. Attempt to add air to first tyre ... nothing ...  try again ... still nothing ...
12. Notice Helpful Trucker disembarking from cab again  ... oh god ... pathetic female now dying with embarrassment
13.  Trucker asks pathetic female if she is sure she wouldn't like some help?
14.  Pathetic female admits defeat and concedes that maybe she does need some help after all ...
15.  Helpful Trucker promptly determines machine is broken and advises finding another garage ... Oh FFS!

Now that I knew what to do (thanks to Helpful Trucker) it was a relatively quick exercise once I found another garage with a working air machine (apart from needing a bloody magnifying glass to read the miniscule numbers on the tiny gauge).  I later discovered that air machines without gauges are quite common and apparently you have to carry your own ... what?!! ... well that's just ridiculous!  

On recounting the tale to Mr B when he called earlier that evening, he told me that the tyre pressure warning light had also come on on his car a few weeks ago.  

"Oh ... so you obviously managed to work out the air machine then?" I remarked, feeling even more stupid

"Nah ... never even tried.  I just took it to the garage on the way to work and they did it for me". 

Good grief.

Hope you have all had a good start to 2016.  How are those New Year Resolutions going? Would love to hear what they were and how you are doing with them - leave me a comment below!

Thanks for dropping by and see you next time,
TTFN
Bev x