Peaceful weekend

All this walking is definitely having an impact on me. For the last few nights, I've been in bed before 10 pm, and up early in the morning too. 5 am wake up call this morning, which suits me just fine because I get time in peace to do what I need to before the day starts. I'm sleeping better, and we've been extra toasty this week with our fleecy bedding and hot water bottles because it has been cold. 

We both had a walk together yesterday afternoon. The usual route we take, coupled with the steps we've taken in and around the house, usually pulls in around 8000 steps. I suggested to Mr G that we maybe try and extend the route by around 20 minutes or so, and this would bump our step count up to around the 10,000 steps that we 'should' be taking. So, instead of turning up St George's, we carried on down to Cadnant. Steve has lived here for 20 years next month and he has never walked down there before. We got some lovely new photographs too.

You can just see Bangor pier off in the distance. That's on my list of walks too, once this latest bout of promised bad weather is over. 

We carried on up St George's, round the pier, round the bowling green, did the detour around the bridge, because the road is closed due to bridge maintenance. Round the prom - creepy doll who has been locally dubbed Bridget - has been taken from there. The prom was really busy, plenty of dog walkers, children letting loose with their scooters. 

Around Church Island, over the last few weeks we've noticed that the daffodil bulbs planted in and around the old graves have started springing up. There's change almost every day in them. 

I don't know what he's spotted. Probably a bird. We've seen some birds down there this last couple of weeks that we've never seen before. Or never noticed before, one of the two. Normally it's just ducks and seagulls, with the occasional swan. 

We carried on walking up, and we took the route around the rugby pitch. When we reached the top of the hill, I suggested walking as far as the cemetery, because there's a footpath there which takes us to opposite our street. We did this, and three doors down from my house, I hit my 10,000 steps :-) 

I'd already prepared our two curries for tea, the Chicken's Vindaloo and the new Chilli Chicken Masala. I have to admit, I wasn't blown away by the Chilli Chicken Masala. I wouldn't go out of my way to make it again; it was quite bland, oddly enough, compared to the Chicken's Vindaloo, and the Garlic and Lime Balti. But there you go, if you don't try, you'll never know. We all had half and half of each curry, with rice. The kids had mini garlic naans and Mr G and I had a brown pitta bread as our Healthy Extra B. It was one hell of a plateful, too much if I'm honest.

On the menu tonight is a variation of Two Chubby Cubs Hawaiian Pizza Pasta Bake (recipe here - if you like Hawaiian pizza, you'll love this. Even if you don't like Hawaiian pizza, like Mr G, you might still like this - he does). I baked a ham the other week and sliced it quite thickly on my meat slicer and froze it in portions. I will tinker with the recipe slightly, I'll omit the bacon and just use ham, and I like to add sliced mushrooms to this, and top with jalapeno peppers as well. We usually have a bet on the football on Saturday and use all our syns for snacks then, but I decided yesterday not to bother. Almost all of League Two was already cancelled by yesterday afternoon due to frozen pitches, nearly all of the lower leagues, and no doubt there will be other casualties today. So, I may do a slice of cheesy garlic bread to go with this, and syn it.

Tomorrow, Valentine's Day, also has another special meaning to our family, it was my lovely Taid's birthday. And tomorrow, he would have been 100. So, some of the family are going down to the cemetery to release some balloons for him. We are going down, and hopefully we'll be able to go on foot, if it's not too wet. 

Looking forward to a parcel today, I've ordered the new Two Chubby Cubs cookbook, some replacement La Vie Est Belle perfume - which has gone AWOL after my daughter took a liking to it. Also, with the money we received from family on our anniversary, I've ordered some RGB light bulbs and a blingy light fitting for our bedroom. I'm looking forward to finally getting that up. All I need is for those bloody drums to be sold once we're out of lockdown and I can get a seat for that corner and the room will be done. I'm not a huge fan of these bulbs, they're ok for youngsters, I guess, ours will only ever be on the white setting. But the reason we want them specifically, is because they're remote control and it's easier and safer navigating our bedroom (and getting onto our high bed) while it's light. 

According to the weather app on my phone, we're in for some snowfall between now and 3 pm. No sign of it as yet, anyway. I don't know whether to go out walking today or not, chances are I'll be alone if I do... I'm not keen on walking alone, I'd rather have company. I may just bed down in my cuddle chair, stay in my pyjamas, fleecy blanket and do some editing. I've been thrown off for the last week or so, between the walking and the Most Haunted every evening. The good news is, although it's going to be wet this next week, the temperatures are going up to around 10C. So at least it will be a little warmer out there!