Andy and Gemma came down to visit Sar and I this weekend. It was great seeing them both again, as it’s quite hard to arrange us both having the same weekend free for these visits. The troubles of growing up and being a lot busier most of the time. It was a shame Andy and Gem could only make it down for around 20 hours, but it was great to see them all the same and we had a wonderful time. Went out for a meal together at a local Balti house (this is Birmingham, so we can’t avoid them forever ) and then had a fun evening in with cocktails (probably too many cocktails to be honest). Unfortunately Andy and Gem had to leave quite early the next morning, so Sar caught up on sleep for most of Sunday, whilst I got some gaming time and caught up with mum and dad who have just returned from a cruise in the Panama canal to celebrate their Ruby Wedding anniversary. They sound to have had a wonderful time, and we’ll be looking through their pictures next time we are up I am sure .
Sar and I tried to arrange for some champagne to be taken to their room on the day of their anniversary however the cruise line company (Princess Cruises) could not arrange that without 10 days notice and we had only thought of this idea a few days before hand. So instead we arranged to have some flowers, wine and chocolates delivered to their house on their return home.

One of my sisters in law, Wendy, had her birthday last week also. Unfortunately we couldn’t travel up north that weekend to see them, however we rang around a few florists in the area (a surprising number of whom offer no delivery service) and managed to find a florists quite nearby who would deliver for us so that we could send her some fresh flowers for her birthday. We had to go through verbal descriptions of the flowers in the bouquet since we would be unable to come to the store in order to select the flowers ourselves, and the company did not seem to have a website for their store, however I believe the bouquet we ordered worked together well as Wendy seemed very happy with her flowers and sent us a few pictures of them

Sarah and I have recently decided to volunteer for the St Johns Ambulance. It was Sarah’s idea originally, however I am quite surprised I never thought of it sooner as I’ve always had an interest in doing medical based work (in retrospect I would have quite liked to have trained as a doctor back at the start of university rather than in computing and kept computing as a hobby – but I do like my work so I’m not unhappy about having missed this – I’d just like to make a difference to peoples lives – directly) and on those notes I volunteered to help at the local hospital whilst I was at university, but it took so long for them to respond I was about to leave university by the time they offered me a place. For some reason though SJA just never occurred to be as something I could do until Sarah suggested it as something we could do together. We’d both like to take the medical / first aid as advanced as we can, and then I believe Sarah is currently interested in helping as a leader of the youth club (Beavers and Cadets), where I am interested in taking my emergency medicine training and helping on ambulances.
Still – these options are little father down the line just yet, however we had our first SJA meeting yesterday and we are now awaiting our CRB returns in order to join the organisation and begin training.