I'm still alive...honest!

Hello!

I've had rather a busy few days so here's a bit of an update. We've had a visit to Manchester, a family visit today and I've also been trying to give my support to a family crisis so I really haven't been able to blog as much as I usually do.

On Friday we went to stay with friends near Manchester, a visit which had been planned for months. The traffic was abysmal and it took 8 hours to get there, but we soon got stuck into the festivities for my friend's 50th birthday. We had a pinata, which my friend Tim is sporting on his head in the photo below.

I don't know if you've ever tried to smash a pinata, but it's highly entertaining trying to break it open to get the sweets out of it, more so when you're a bit tipsy! There were 8 of us in turn bashing the guts out of this thing for over 15 minutes before it gave up the goodies. The stick provided to hit it with broke before the pinata did!

On Saturday evening we went to a rock pub nearby because there was a band on. A couple of our other friends had joined us by this point so there were 10 of us in all. What a motley bunch! I've known some of these people for 14 years, and some as little as a couple of years, but whenever we get together it feels like no time has passed at all. It doesn't matter what we do, we always have fun. We only see each other a couple of times a year so we leave all our troubles at the door and enjoy each other while we can.

I had a minor victory over anxiety on this trip. I've got bronchitis and a bad cold and I was stressing myself out about giving other people a cold or holding everyone back from doing things in my ill state. I did consider not going at all, but my friend reassured me we were having a chilled weekend, so I felt relieved. I woke up on Friday morning after a fitful night's sleep from coughing, but with a little voice within telling me things would be OK. Everybody went out to the pub on Saturday afternoon, and I knew I needed to save myself for later, so I stayed behind and chilled out. My friend had sprinkled boxes of tissues all over the house and I was absolutely fine. I slept a lot in the car on the way there (and back) as the chest infection is really taking it out of me, but I still had a fantastic weekend and I'm so glad anxiety didn't lead me to missing out.

We came home yesterday - another 6+ hours in the car. We came home, had takeaway last night then crashed out. This morning I got up and started cleaning like a demon as my dad and brother came down to visit us today.

My outfit today - I wore the Simply Be Em dress

My dad and brother today

My dad in the pub

Hastings Old Town

We had a lovely meal in a pub in Old Town and went in a few shops. It was boiling hot here today, far too hot for comfort, which is very odd since it's nearly October, but it was the perfect day for an outing.

I'll be back to my regular schedule from tomorrow onwards.

How was your weekend? Did you do anything nice? Thanks for reading.