Semi Wordless Wednesday

Later this month Steve turns the big 3 0! We were planning on doing a scotch tour of Scotland with some friends but unfortunately work is requiring him to be in Boston & NY for his birthday. I was really not looking forward to spending 8 days here on my own. As much as I like living here its still not super easy & being alone would have been really tuff. I was talking to my parents about the situation and I got a little miracle. Dad found a dirt cheap flight to Atlanta! So I'm flying home for 2 weeks when Steve heads to Boston for work. We're a little disappointed to not be spending his birthday together but we're planning a nice 4 day trip in August to celebrate.

I'll be spending the first week or so of my trip in Atlanta, running errands, helping my mom & dad, seeing friends and laying in target just breathing it all in. Then we are headed to Asheville for a week of R&R. These are my plans for my week in my favorite city in America!

I am finally going to try BBQ at 12 Bones

I can't wait to drink some Rocket Girl!

Dad and I are going to drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway

I can't wait to eat at the Grove Park Inn

Mom & I will go for drinks in the foyer of our favorite hotel, the Grove Park Inn

Asheville has some of the best breweries & I plan to drink lots of good beer

Even if we don't take the LaZoom tour I will love seeing the big purple bus around town!

We might take a trip to sliding rock and take a dip

Tubing! I plan to go tubing at least 3-4 times during my visit!

I can't wait to visit multiple waterfalls in the area!

I am over the moon that I am getting to home for 2 weeks. I am going to eat lots of Mexican food & chick fil a, visit friends, meet new babies & most importantly see my parents who I'm missing a lot!

Do you have any super exciting plans for the month of July? Fan of Asheville - anything else I should do?  

8 Photos of Happiness

I have been nominated for the ‘8 Photos of Happiness Tag’ by Angie Americana over at The Stereotypical American. She's a fellow American Expat living in Copenhagen & she's got an awesome blog!

Here are the guidelines for the tag:
1.Thank your nominator/s and link them in your post.
2. Link the creator Ariel's Little Corner of the Internet
3. Post your 8 photos of happiness
4. Pop in a brief description of the photo, why you chose it, or let the photos do the talking!
5. Spread the happiness and tag up to ten other bloggers!

When we moved I sold my big desktop that had years & years worth of photos on it. Steve backed them up on a hard drive but its probably still in a box so these photos are all recent photos.

This is a photo of my mom, me & Steve in Asheville at the Grove Park Inn hotel. My parents have a home in Asheville and it's one of my favorite places in the world. The weather is excellent, they get all 4 seasons unlike Atlanta. The beer is out of this world - there are so many different breweries and they're all great, I've yet to have a bad one. Tubing up the river is super fun, lay in a tub, drink good local beer & just chat with your fellow floaters aka my ideal summer day.

This is a photo from Steve & my first anniversary photo shoot. To say Steve went kicking and screaming would be the understatement of the year. He is not a fan of getting his picture taken but I really wanted some good photos of us so he agreed. We went to a lovely park near our house in Buford on a super hot day - why we both chose to wear long sleeves and pants I couldn't tell you. We didn't pack the ampersand but now I wish we had it to hang on our wall. 

This is a photo we took at Christmas 2014 of my whole family. From left to right its my brother Peter, Mom, sister Hannah, Dad, me & Steve. The dog being held by Hannah is Steve's old dog Gwen who we gave to friends when we moved to the UK. It was really nice to spend the holidays with everyone in Asheville even though Steve got the flu and spent most of the trip in bed. 

This is one of my favorite photos of my parents & I. We are at the Georgia Dome watching Steve & my alma mater Georgia Southern play Georgia State. We won by a landslide of course! Everyone had a great time.

This is Steve & I at the game. I just noticed we're wearing the same thing we wore for our anniversary pictures... I guess we really like these outfits? Haha. 

This was the way we announced our engagement back in February. Steve proposed at my family's country club when we were having pre flight drinks before we left to come to Reading to look for a place to live. We couldn't get a hold of my sister to tell her the good news so we decided to hold off making the big announcement on Facebook. We knew we were going to get bombarded with notifications when we did so we didn't post the picture until we were flying back to the US. When we landed we have over 500 likes, comments and shares between the two of us. 

My first Shake Shack meal! Steve had promised to take me after he went without me in Boston. There is one in Atlanta but we didn't get a chance to go before we left so we went to the one in Covent Garden. If you haven't been to SS I highly recommend it! We still haven't had the custard or milkshakes but I hear they're amazing!

Unfortunately I can't find the photo we took right after we got engaged so this is as close as I can get for today. This is the picture I took to tell my close friends. Mind you, they all knew so they weren't surprised. I was so thankful I had gotten a nice manicure so this picture looks nice, but if you could see what I was wearing you'd laugh. I looked terrible. 

Now it's my turn to nominate some bloggers to take on this challenge. I'm still getting into the swing of blogging again so I don't have 10 bloggers to tag, but if you read this post and would like to join in  please do!

1. Cole over at Weiner Tales - she was my first follower and her blog is adorable!
2. Jamie at lifeSTYLEsmith - she's my cousin and her style is impeccable!
3. MRM the author of Preppy Girl Meets World - one of the first blogs I ever followed
4. Julie from Across the Ponderings  - an ex-expat in Oxford who's just returned to the US
5. Megan at Megan in the Middle - she's an expat living in France, lucky girl!
6. Sarah & Eddie from Wicked Brilliant - fellow expats living in London

Update!

Sorry Ive been quiet the last couple of days, my computer has decided it didn't want to connect to the internet so Ive been without for a few days. Thankfully I have built in tech support - AKA Steve. Not sure what he did but I think it worked (fingers crossed).

So here's a quick update on whats been going on.

Saturday: Steve and I took a quick trip over to visit the town of Windsor  - lots of shopping & of course a castle. We took an open bus tour (cause we love them and we're lazy and its an easy way to see the city). Here are a few photos from our tour:

Windsor Castle

Queen Victoria

Old car driving by the castle

Thames River

View of the castle from across the park

This is the famous crooked house - its not open anymore, it used to be a restaurant I think. Its super close to the castle so an easy photo opportunity.

Later in the afternoon we took a river tour up the Thames. It was a nice way to end our day in Windsor but we sat behind a couple with the most obnoxious kids! They were crawling all over the seats and kept jabbering on. Don't get me wrong, I love kids but I love the well behaved ones. Picky, I know. In spite of them I got some pretty good photos. 

Sunday was our lazy day. I didn't get out of bed till about noon. Yes, I know thats terrible but with this stupid head cold I haven't been sleeping all that well. I stay up way too late, like tonight, its midnight and Im here on the couch blogging while Steve is snoring in the other room. Of course Ive gotten myself hooked onto another TV show - Dead Like Me. Anyone ever watch it? Its pretty good. Of course there are only two season on Netflix, which means Ill be done with the show in about a week. Anyone have a suggestion on what to watch next? Remember I only have access to UK Netflix. 

Tonight we had dinner.... wait for it... with friends! Yes we have actual friends here in Reading. Its kind of amazing to be able to chat with someone in the same time zone as us. Plus she's america, from Tennessee (aka she gets Southern stuff, not just american stuff). We went to this Sushi place called Yo Sushi... I think thats whats its called. On Monday every plate is $2.70 (pounds not dollars but I don't know how to make the pound symbol. It was cool, the sushi goes around the restautant on this conveyor belt and you just pick the plates up you want. Very cool and the sushi was pretty good too, more expensive then we're used to, but still good. 

Our blue plates

Beer in a wine glass - pretty good. 

Wordless Wednesday

This past Sunday Steve and I went to the 21st annual Reading Beer & Cider Festival! We met up with some friends (yes, we have friends here!) and met another really nice couple at our table. We had a blast, tried some yummy beers, a few not so yummy. 

The tent (and Steve)

All smiles after a few pints

Belgian beer

Bubbles!

Check out the sky!

More Belgian Beer

Steve's favorite stout of the day

There was even a bagpipe group!

Wordless Wednesday Food!

Beer & Magners

Fish n chips & mushy peas

$7 for a box of lucky charms!?

Pizza Express pizza

Much better fish n chips & mushy peas

Mmmm Starbucks

Sandwich 

British Mexican food aka nachos

British Mexican food burrito 

So Much Travel

It's 9.30am here in the UK. That means in GA its 4.30am.... It's also 10.30 in Belgium and 1.30am in AZ. Hello jet lag! It actually wasn't that bad now that we survived it. So from being up at 8am Saturday, our 8 hour flight here and staying awake all of yesterday we were going for 31 hours with no real rest and only 1 cup of coffee. Just call me super woman! Just don't tell my dentist or my optometrist - yuck!

Now that we've had a walk around town, Steve has found his office & 4 Starbucks within a 5 minute walk from the hotel we're starting to feel normal. Mind you we did go to bed last night at 8.30 our time, 3.30 GA time!

Can I just tell y'all how small our hotel room is! Its MAYBE 30 sq ft! The toilet is separate from the shower/bath and the closet is maybe 2 ft wide! The bed is like a rock and the two measly pillows they gave us are awful. I typically don't complain about hotels but I am kicking myself because it has terrible YELP reviews & now I know why. Hopefully my back won't kill me after a week of staying here.

Last night Steve wanted a beet so we popped into a local pub. Now I don't mean like the Americanized "British pub". I'm talking low ceilings, mismatched chairs, 5 beers on tap and no menu. As soon as we walked in everyone was sating at us & not in a friendly way. In a "who the hell...?" kinda way. Well Steve sauntered up to the bar and ordered himself a cider and myself a beer. Then he handed the guy an American Express. Que face palm! D'oh! The guy had no idea what it even was! And of course we didn't have cash. So we trudged to a nearby ATM and got cash. Not sure Ive ever drank a pint that fast! Plus we paid $17 for 2 beers!