World Cup Party, Dinner with the fam, and Shopping

Saturday we had a big bbq with Sam's parents, brother and his significant other and his/their kids, and some of their friends, family and people from work. I know Sam has put up with a lot of picking on from his nieces, nephews and their friends and relatives, so I tried to give him a little bit of a break. Almost every time they came over to ask him to jump on the trampoline, they would ask me after he said no. So I said yes. Please remember that I sometimes feel awkward, ok, usually feel awkward around people I don't know too well and do my best to make a good impression. I really feel that my jumping on a trampoline for over an hour helped with this. It also might have helped with the burning off of several thousand calories.


Those kids have soooooooooooooooo much energy! We were having bouncing competitions, doing cheerleading jumps, and trying get people to go from sitting down to standing up just by bouncing them high enough. It worked. Several times.

When the bouncing became a little too much for me and I had to take a break, the kids found all the crazy England stuff that was around; a bullhorn that could either make your voice really really really loud or play a song equally as loud, flags, a blow up hand, and these lovely things......

And the only thing worse than a little girl with one of these, is a twenty year old boy with one and his fourteen year old nephew with another.

It was a lot of fun watching the battles of the blowup hammers go on pretty much until the game started.
The game itself, supposedly the highlight of the night, the main event, was a tie. England's goalie let a ball slide and ended up making the game a draw. The big England fans were a little disappointed, but not too upset. They said I was lucky because they really didn't have anything to make fun of me for now, even though I was sporting an England jersey for the game.

Sunday, I was privileged enough to experience an almost full English breakfast (it didn't have the sausage in it). For those of you who aren't aware of what is in a full English breakfast, let me enlighten you. A pig, an egg, a piece of toast, and a few fried tomatoes and mushrooms. And when I say a pig, that's pretty much what it is. You have several slices of bacon (when I say bacon here, it means a strip of meat from a pig that is roughly the equivalent of four really good, lean slices of bacon we usually get at the supermarket. they are think and wide), black pudding (pig's blood and back fat, no joke), and usually sausage as well. Now I'm not usually one to judge food until i've tried it, but the thought of eating blood from anything mixed with barley and any kind of fat was not exactly appetizing to me. I almost gagged when I read the ingredients. But, I was somehow able to put that thought aside as I tried it with some fried tomatoes and fried mushrooms and eat it. It actually isn't all that bad, as long as you can forget entirely what it is made out of. It still makes me nauseous knowing that I ate blood and fat mixed together.

Any way, for tea that night, we met up with the rest of the semi-immeadiate family (Sam's brother Sid, his significant other Samantha, Sid's son Jordan and Sid and Samantha's daughter Jasmine. Sam's sister Vicki and her husband Tony and their children Sarah, Sophie, and Max) for dinner at a really nice restaurant. I've never been the type to order more than one course for several reasons.....one, it costs more. Two, I'm usually not that hungary. Three, I wasn't raised in a family that ordered starters, never the less, everyone ordered their own starters. I ended up going with chicken pate (after hearing several people go on about how good it was), more weird stuff, chicken liver. Then for a delicious main course of red pepper and goat cheese risotto. After dinner was over, Sam and I and his parents went over to Vicki and Tony's house. It was very lovely.

Today I went shopping with Judy (Sam's mom), Vicki, and Sarah while Sam was doing his training all day. It was a lot of fun, but I'm now very tired from all that walking. Have a great night everyone!