A weekend with my doggy friend

Well, actually we spent the weekend with my inlaws and also saw my brother and sister in law, but it was my inlaws' dog which seemed to enjoy my company most.

We travelled up on the Saturday morning and went to see my sister in law first, she'd been in hospital recently and still wasn't 100%, so it was good to see her on the mend. As soon as we walked in it was impossible to miss the enormous blue '4' and '0' balloons. It was the weekend before Andrew's birthday and I guess he should have known he'd not get away without some attention being brought to his birthday! After a cup of tea and a catch up, we left, complete with balloons and birthday presents, and headed on to Andrew's parents. Andrew's father was out, so we had a chat with his mother and tickled the dog's ears whilst enjoying a cup of tea and a lunch of oatcakes (love Staffordshire oatcakes!) 

We'd spotted that there were plenty of geocaches within a mile of their house, so we headed out, dog in tow, to find as many as we could. Bramble started off really enthusiastically, but she has only got little legs, and normally only covers about three miles so by about halfway round she was starting to flag a little. 

We carried on and ended up doing twenty caches, and I even managed to get her home clean. Result!

 We headed back at about 6pm for a tea of chicken in watercress sauce. Delicious.

The next day my brother and sister in law came over and we headed out with the inlaws for a meal at a local restaurant. Andrew decided not to follow in the family tradition of taking his balloons in to dress the table! To make sure we made the most of them I made him a birthday grotto in the corner of the front room when we got home. It's fair to say any visitors wouldn't be able to escape the fact that it was Andrew's birthday!