One might certainly ask!

The THING is – I went into my blog, which I haven’t done for absolute ages and just for fun, I checked my STATS page and found that there are almost  more people reading it now than there were when I was writing! Can you believe it? Maybe I have FANS! Or maybe it is just my parents and grandparents logging in over and over, but anyway, I thought I’d use this as a space for reflection… So watch this space fo0r more.

Sands (COWGIRL)

Amidst (sp?) all the chaos of the hurried gettaway of Geoff and Lizette, Oom Piet and Gerhard, the carpets being ripped up and the blow dryers going crazy and moving all the furniture across the room, loads of Geoff and Lizette’s friends came over to give their support and see if they could help. Kurt arrived first. Matt and Sherry followed. Then Carol and Joel arrived. We were all supposed to go out to a Mexican restaurant on Sunday evening as Rizelle had never had Mexican. However, with everything that was going on at the house, we decided to remain at home and get takeaway Mexican… Think I mentioned leaving my blog-writing to go eat burritos???

Lizette phoned to see how everything was going and still did not know where she was going on honeymoon, but she was checked in etc and they were waiting to go to their gate… we each had a teary goodbye over the phone! I am sooooooo going to miss Lizette! I guess I will have to visit California again despite my ‘dislike’ for the State… or maybe I can convince them to meet me in New York… after all Geoff is born and bred NYC!

A huge amount of food arrived and soon Steve and Pat also joined us. We got out the wine and soon the girls began to ‘grill’ (you have to say the word by rolling the R, like Lizette does) the guys in keeping with what Lizette used to do… asking all sorts of deep questions… some fell into the trap of attempting answers, some took the ‘fifth’ and Kurt ran away!

Then when we realised that it was past midnight in London, we all wished Christilene HAPPY BIRTHDAY! It was around this point that the impromptu party began. Pat just couldn’t help himself… and I believe the first balloon that came out was in the form of a noose which went around my neck, then a black heart for me because I was asking too many probing questions! Then came the amazing birthday hat for Christilene! Isn’t it wonderful! We basically had a personal Clown and Balloon show and a totally unplanned birthday party.

The balloons started coming one after another in all shapes and sizes and of course more wine came out (Carol!!!!). At this point we got another call from Lizette to tell us she is in Hawaii! I am sooooooooo pleased they went ahead with the honeymoon… and I hope they are not freaking out when reading this as we are having quite a party in their house!

Anyway, as I was saying…

Pat soon made us all balloon weapons… L-R: I had a bow and arrow, Wynand had a ray gun, Steve a sword, Rizelle a daggar, and Christilene a snake and my black heart!

So I just want to end off with HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTILENE as it is still her birthday here for the next hour and a half!

Anyway, this is probably going to be my last post in the USA as I leave for my long journey home to London at 6:30am tomorrow morning. I fly via New York to Gatwick and get there at about 6:30am on the 27th Aug! Almost 2 months away and exactly 2 months as a nomad!

When I return home I will have flown on 10 separate flights; on 4 different airlines; stayed in 1 dodgy house, 5 motels, 2 friend’s houses, 3 family’s houses; visited 4 US States and one Canadian; been to or through 15 cities! I am somewhat tired! I am ready to go home!

I will be dossing again with friends in London for about 1 week, then hous-sitting for Liz and Alex Lugt together with Tamara in Twickenham for 3 weeks. May God bless me with a nice home with lovely people by the end of September. 

Lots of love

Sands

signing off from the USA

After being dropped off at home by one of Lizette and Geoff’s friends Chrystal, we arrived on the scene of a major catastrophe!

Some time after we all left for the wedding Gerhard had gone to the loo and the loo blocked up and began to overflow… He paniced and did not know how to stop it so after trying everything he could, he returned to the basement to watch his movie…

A few hours later the flowing water, which had by this stage soaked into the floor ( remember, American houses are made of wood so this kind of flood can really do some damage!) and the ceiling below and then into the garage ceiling below that, shorted out the smoke/fire alarm which began to holler! After I don’t know how many minutes for the siren going off, Gerhard obviously did not know how to stop it… a kind neighbour rang the Fire Department. The Fire Department, we gather, came at about 10:30pm and we reacon that the water was flowing from about 6 or 7pm. The Fire Department turned the water off, but by this stage all three floors were soaked. Poor Gerhard was in a state and very over-excited when we arrived back from the wedding!

What followed instead of a shower and bed was the 4 of us getting every towel and piece of paper in the house and trying to stomp out the bulk of the water. The towels quickly became sodden and we have to recycle them to the dryer over and over. We did not phone Lizette and Geoff because we just wanted them to have a decent night’s rest and enjoy their wedding night without all this worry. We went to bed eventually at about 2am and began the cleaning and mopping up again in the morning.

Lizette and Geoff arrived back from their first night of marriage to this business! So many calls we made back and forth to their insurance and to contractors etc etc etc, that they almost called off the honeymoon… Lizette was trying to keep it together, but Geoff was really freaking out! I don’t blame him! Just before he bought the house the previous owners has a similar thing happen and it cost them loads of money!

We eventually packed them off into a car with Oom Piet and Gerhard, who were returning to South AFrica!

About an hour later, a guy came to assess the damage and then a crew came in to begin ripping up the carpet on two floors. They brought huge industrial fans in which have now been running for over 24hours!

The damage is apparently pretty bad and they will bedin the ‘demolition’ (their words) on tuesday or wednesday. Some of the floor and walls will have to be replaced etc etc, but it looks as though their insurance will cover most of it! Still, I wish we could have spared them all of this.

We got a couple of calls from them from the airport, and almost right up to the last moment, Lizette still did not know where they were going for honeymoon… I took this as a good sign, thaty Geoff’s focus was they honeymoon and no longer the aweful stuff going on at home!

More later… I must go pack!

Love Sands

Well, everyone, Lizette and Geoff are officially married now!

It was a beautiful wedding with only 75 guests so it was nice and intimate. Gerhard was too stressed and decided to stay home which turned out to be disasterous, but that’s another story!

As I was part of the wedding party I could not take pictures during the service so I will have to get hold of some photos and post them later, but needless to say, we all looked gorgeous and the men all looked handsome and Oom Piet was expecially glowing. It was an outdoor wedding in front of a small white gazebo which we decorated with sunflowers. As I said before, we were high up on a cliff so the backdrop was the Californian mountains very golden and summery. It was boiling hot! Just what Lizette always wanted.

The speaches were perfect and the food was delicious! 

THen we danced and so on, but the reception was very short so it was a reasonably early night for all… pity we could not have gone on dancing for a bit longer, but Oom Piet was very tired and it had been an emotional day for him especially as the speaches made reference to her late mother and Oom Piet kept on saying that Lizette looked just like her mother on her wedding day! To be honest, when Suzanne was singing and also when Christilene said her poem at the service, I looked at Oom Piet and he was crying and that just set me off!

Below are a few picks of us girls and the group of guys we have bwwn hanging out with since most of us had met them in Morocco and Vegas before…

Above: The girls and ‘Pat-in the-Hat’                                     Right: L-R: Geoff, ?, Pat, Steve

Below: The girls and Steve

That’s all for now… next post: ‘THE AFTERMATH’

After a dinner of Mexican food with the whole crowd… which is also a whole story to tell in a blog or two time, I am back to continue the tail about the wedding. This one is going to be about the flowers, which we started doing from about 7am on saturday morning… in our PJ’s… so appologies for not looking my best!

So basically, the bridesmaids, the brides and Christilene spent about 3 hours in the morning arranging the table centre-pieces, bouquets and the flowers for the men’s jackets… forgotten what they are called! It was actually rather fun as we watched the countdown clock someone had given Geoff and Lizette, and we listened to the soundtrack of ‘Mamma Mia’ the film! Oom Piet and Gerhard and Wynand were around, but mostly kept their distance!

Carol (the bridesmaid who is a friend of Lizette’s from California 8 years ago), kindly brought us some breakfast of muffins and doughnuts (remember, this is the United States so doughnuts are a food group on their own)… since we had all been up since early, this was all devoured. At around 10am we all went off to our respective hair appointments!

The following are a few preparation shots of the venue at Willow Heights in the mountains outside San Jose… beautiful: http://www.willowheights.com/Willow_Heights/willow_heights.html

It is owned and run by an New York Italian mamma who calls herself ‘The Godmother’… she is a bit scary!

Anyway, there was alot of preparation because Lizette chose to everything herself… we had alot of fun putting her creative ideas into practise.

More on the actual wedding next. It is Chrisilene’s birthday today so we are goiung in to San Francisco.

Love and God Bless

Sands

Well, again, so much has happened over the last couple of days, I hardly know where to begin. On Wednesday night, Steve Rose (‘Rosie’ or ‘Mr Anderson’) and Patrick (‘The Hat’ or ‘Hat’) came over for a BBQ. However, although Geoff had spent hours putting together the huge, complicated BBQ, the night before and Oom Piet had finished the assembling on wednesday morning, we all forgot to fill up the gas, so we had all the chicken and sausage grilled/roasted in the oven instead… it was still delicious! Steve was most entertaining, doing a dance called ‘The Rosie’ (I have footage) and of course the China stories came out in full force! If you are now wondering why Pat is called the Hat, its because he is a Clown for a living and his character/performer name is ‘Pat in the Hat’ and his speciality is baloons… you can google him or you can find him at www.ballooncreations.com! That night there was also an attempt to put a fake cockroach into Christilene’s food… however, this backfired, because at first she did not see it and ate quite a few mouthfulls wondering why the rest of us were stifleing giggles… then when she was not looking we made it more visable, but when she saw it she did not scream and shout etc… it was worth the try… Lizette’s idea, my cockroach! (Thanks Tim and Heather for the cockroach!)… although, here in the States, they don’t like it when you call them cockroaches, here, its just ‘roaches’!

On Thursday night we had the rehearsal and dinner, hosted by Geoff’s mother who came all the way from Southern California, somewhere south of LA in Orange County. We all got dressed up… I am wearing one of Christilene’s dresses as I only had jeans. I think this is the first time I have worn a dress in ages! Years! Feels like centuries! Then again, it was soooooo hot doing the rehearsal outdoors and since I have a bit of a tan from being in sunny climes for a couple of months, it was appropriate. Don’t we all look gorgeous in this picture of the bride, bridesmaids and so on? L-R: Carol, Rizelle, Lizette, Christilene and I.

Friday followed with the sunflowers arriving and being a little droopy… we were a bit worried, but just hoped they’d recover! So Lizette went to the airport to pick up her other brother Wynand, and Christilene, Rizelle and I went into San Francisco! My main priority was to go to Chinatown. Christilene and I wanted to get Lizette and Geoff a dim sum or Chinese dinner serving set for their wedding in remembrance of the two China missions where we each met and got to know Lizette. At first we could not find something suitable, but after a bit of looking, found something perfect… Lizette was very pleased with this pressie when we gave it to her late on Friday night.

I left the girls to shop in San Fran and I headed back to Lizette’s with the pressie, which, as it was a dinner set and chopstix for 4 people, was a little heavy. When I go home, Lizette was frantic. The sunflowers were still drooping and had not recovered and some looked like they were dying. Wynand had left for Geoff’s bachelors and there had been some frantic, rather firm, phonecalls to the flower company about the state of the goods! As it happens in the US, they refunded the entire amount and made their apologies, but said it was too late to send more. Aparently they come from the East Coast so they have probably been in transit for hours. BIG PROBLEM! At this point a couple of Geoff’s friends from Berkley came around and very kindly offered to go from florist to florist to get new flowers. Two hours later there were flowers everywhere in the house and there was also a serious mission going on to recover and revive the flowers we could from the first batch. This consisted of cutting stems and refreshing water over and over again… and all this the evening before the wedding!

It was Geoff’s bachelor party on Friday night so Lizette organised a DVD night at her place with popcorn etc and about 12 ladies and, surprisingly, 1 man (one of the girls did not realise it was a girls night and brought a date… serious dating culture here in the States!), came. Garhard and Oom Piet stayed at home as well, so the one guy did not feel too out. We watched ‘Father of the Bride’ and made Oom Piet sentimental and a little tearful. It was a real success, but I think that Lizette was very tired and not very calm after the whole flower fiasco so I don’t think she got too much sleep! Waynand, after flying all day and previous night, did not get back from the guys’ night until about 2am. Apparently Steve, Geoff’s best man, hired a whole lot of convertable sports cars and they went for a bit of a joy-ride and had burgers from ‘In-n-Out’ Burger, and played ‘Rock Band’ on the X-Box. This sort of stuff is, in my opinion, best left for the guys! I’m glad they had fun!

More about the next chaper later… I am going to  eat Burritos!

Love Sands

This will be a short one to update the news, as people are coming over for a BBQ.

After my last post on Monday, we all spent a half hour in the hot tub… the rule is generally that we go from the hot to the clod to the hot etc… but some of us needed a bit more persuasion to get into the clold pool on Monday night. However, loads of fun had by all.

Yesterday we all went to Sam-Sum Cisco (Gerhard’s pronounciation)… not to be confused with Mos Angeles, via which Gerhard and Oom Piet will fly home on Sunday!

It was much chillier there than in San Jose, hense the jumpers and coats! About 58/62 deg F (15-17 deg C). The mist was coming in very quickly so later on the bridge was covered… beautiful. I have been there before, but never seen it with the mist so it was very different and quite beautiful.

We also went up to Twin Peaks which is the 3rd highest hill in San Fran, but the view was mostly mist! Still beautiful. The loo experience was a  little scary though! Almost like China. We drove around getting a bit lost as we could not turn left into any roads, only to discover that the ‘do not turn left’ sign often had a ‘between 4-6am’ note attached, so we could have turned… anyway, Lizette did very well getting us around the city and we had a lovely lunch at the Golden Gate Park.

This picture was quite comical as we went to the Bison enclosure, but couldn’t find the Bison which are supposed to be the largest land animals native to California. They are supposed to stand 6-foot tall, but we eventually found them lying down far from the fence.

The rest of the day we walked around the Fishermans Warf and went to see the Sea Lions… A wonderful day out!

Love to all.

Sands

Sunday went smoothly in the same vane as most restful Sundays. We got up and started preparing for church… Gerhard was NOT going to come to church with us until he saw Christilene and I preparing for church, then he got all excited, put on his best jeans and T-shirt and declared he was coming with us… he really goes anywhere we go now, especially following Christilene around and she is soooo good with him. Garhard is getting very confident and told us girls that he was going to find boyfriends for us at the church! The church service turned out to be perfect for him as it was a special children’s service at the end of a kids’ bible camp. There was funky kids’ praise music and a very interactive service where the pastor asked questions aimed at the kids and Gerhard answered many of the questions! He also danced and did all the actions for the songs. It was so sweet and it is very clear God knew what He was doing when He organised a kids’ service for the only Sunday Gerhard could be persuaded to go. After church we had a Mexican lunch with some of Geoff’s friends which was very nice because some of them I had last met in Vegas in 2006.

Rizelle arrived late on Sunday evening. Gerhard is very pleased to have another girl here although Christilene is still his out and out favourite!

This morning, as a surprise treat Geoff and Lizette decided to take Gerhard to a fancy car dealer because he is mad about cars and has been collecting magazines etc of cars for years (much to Oom Piet’s dismay!). Gerhard was sooooo excited. He told Lizette that if he was a doctor, he would buy her one and also one for Geoff! They has a ‘Do NOt Touch’ policy, but it was very tempting to get up close and personal with some of those cars! Oom Piet says that Gerhard will talk about this for years to come to anyone who will hear…

Then we all took a drive through the very windy road up through the Santa Cruz mountains which was beautiful. We saw some squirrels, but unfortunately no cougers (mountain lions)! Although Lizette, who was in the jeep behind us claims she saw a snake… she thinks we drove over it!

We stopped for lunch at the ‘Cowboy Bar and Grill’ in the small town of Felton (pop: 5564)… much bigger than the previous few towns in the rustic mountians which varied from pop:1800 – 2300! They actually have a tourist park there where they reinact the Civil War battles and you can take a train down to the beach… unfortunately there was no time for visiting that… next time. The Cowboy diner was great and I had a veggie burger… probably not quite the right meal for a real cowboy! I did find a bit of Film culture there though!

But the real highlight in Felton was when Oom Piet, in his state of renewed health, had a chance to sit on a beautiful shiny Harley Davidson!!!

We then went to the Santa Cruz beach and tried to brave the wind and sand blasting. Christilene managed to get Gerhard to go on the rollercoaster which apparently was hillarious as he kind of changed his mind about going on the rollercoaster after its first decent! 

As you can see from the picture… Gerhard (bottom left) and Lizette (top right) seem to be the most terrified!

Well, more later…

God Bless

Sands

Well, this week has flown by! I can’t believe I have been in San Jose for a week already!

Lets see… since I last wrote, so much has happened. I will try and tell everything in chronological order. On Wednesday we thought we’d have a quiet restful day consisting of taking Oom Piet (Lizette’s father) to the chiropractor and then getting home to sort out wedding stuff… I thnk we had in mind to ly around at the pool for a while. But things did not go so smoothly. Oom Piet had been complaining for ages about how his back was so painful and how he takes about 200 pain tablets a month etc etc, but until we saw those x-rays we had no idea how bad things were. Turns out that Oom Piet was boorn with an extra vertebrae and then all his life his back has been compensating for this by getting twisted and compounding on the lower vertebrae… the doctor took another x-ray as Oom Piet’s x-rays were about 15-20 years old… wow… even the rest of us who cannot read x-rays were shocked at the difference, no wonder the man has been in so much pain… I cannot imagine how painful his 30 hour trip from South Africa must have been! Anyway, we thought we’d be at the chiropractor for about 20 minutes, which turned into 2 & half hours! The next day when we took a train trip into downtown San Jose, after the treatment on his back Oom Piet delighted and entertained us by attempting short bursts of running including running accross about 6 lanes of traffic at an intersection when the pedestrian lights came on… Lizette and Gerhard and I had to run to catch up with him and he was very frisky and flirty the whole day! He is acting about 10 years younger and flirting with all the girls and threatening to dance with us at the wedding! What we can’t believe is that his doctor in Vryheid did not pick this up! To have and extra vertebrae and not know! Unbelievable! He is going for a few more treatments before he returns to SA… then begins the search for a decent chiropractor in Vryheid!

Anyway, I digress… On thursday we took the train downtown to the Tech museum, which is very much like the Science Museum in London and there we went to an Imax show called ‘Monsters of the Deep’ and we did all sorts of interactive games including virtual arm-wrestling, space travel and a simulated earthquake! Lots of fun was had by all! 

Gerhard was really funny because he got very scared in the simulated earthquake and you can see from the above picture that he is uncomfortable… he ended up running off the simulator!

Can you see my face in the space-man suit?????

On thursday night late, Christilene arrived from London and so on Friday morning, when Lizette took her dad for another chiropractor appointment, the two of us went on the light rail (which looks like our trams) and the Caltrain to Stanford University and Mall.

As you can see, there are no clouds in the sky and believe me it is boiling! This is me on Stanford University Campus. Christilene and I shopped for a bit at the mall, which is really high class… basically all the shops are Cartier, Louis Vitton, Crabtree & Evelyn, Tiffany’s etc etc etc… not really in our budget. We did however have some Clam Chowder at a cafe called ‘La Bagette’ as you can see.

On Friday, we again took the train to Blossom Hill near where Steve, one of Geoff’s groomsmen lives, as we are a bigger party now we need another car so Steve is lending us his Jeep. WE picked up the Jeep and drove to Alam Rock reserve… ‘reserve’, here, means ‘park’ or ‘nature reserve’.

On the way there, we had to go on the freeway and got rather wind-blown! As you can see, I went for the ’glam’ Hollywood look of wearing a scarf on your head… or in this case, a jumper! Christilene’s hair was sticking up properly and she spent most of last night treating her hair!

At the reserve, we walked, or rather, climbed, for almost 2 hours and it was soooo hot, but so beautiful that it was certainly worth all the effort in the blazing sun! Gerhard ‘raced’ us the whole way up and down again… he just could not cope if it looked like someone was going to overtake him. We had alot of fun and I felt sooooo much better for the exercise. When we got home all sweaty and wild-haired (from the jeep trip) we enjoyed a relaxing soak in the hot-tub. I think we all had rather early nights last night after all the fresh air and exercise!

Thinking of Mom and Dad as they travel up the South Coast towards the Kruger Park… have a wonderful time and I’ll text you!

Love to all and God Bless

Sands

Well, I am really starting to miss home now… I have been in North America and Canada now for nearly a month and a half and still have about 11 days to go! Can’t believe I’ve been living out of a suitcase and sleeping in different beds for so long! This is not good for all my comfort-zones! Lets just say, I’ve really been stretched to the max this summer… hope the character-building is all for a good cause!

No prizes for guessing … its HOT in California! I might regret saying this, but I’m longing for the cooler temperatures of London!

I am now on the last leg of my summer story – kind of like the closing chapter… I arrived in San Francisco at lunch time on Monday 11th Aug and was fetched by Lizette and her brother Gerhard. We loaded my luggage in the boot (trunk) and drove off to Crystal Springs for a mile or so walk around the lakes. Gerhard was not coping with the heat and was not keen on the walk, which led to some tantrums, but Lizette and I won the battle…

Apart from doing some wedding stuff, Monday was rather a quiet day, so I’m not sure how we only got home by about 7pm??? Time is funny how it flies . I also met Lizette’s dad, Piet, or Oom! Piet is 77 years old and I think the 30 hour trip to the US west coast really took it out of him because he’s just aclimatising after almost 2 weeks! Luckily when Lizette booked their plane tickets she booked them both as having special needs and they were assisted to the gates in wheelchairs. This helped Oom alot as he has huge back problems, but Gerhard is able-bodied so he just had fun making beeping noises to make the people/ crowds at the airport stand aside for them… I’m sure this was much to the frustration and dismay of the attendants who escorted them. Gerhard cannot stop talking about how fun the wheelchair ride was! Lizette made us some Meatloaf … this was a first for me and it was delish! So, of course I had to have a picture taken… mmmmm, I’m sooooo predictable!

 Its been great spending time with Lizette and we have laughed alot! Its just like old times inm London. San Jose, where Geoff and Lizette live, is very like many US west coast cities… lots of highways and huge, interesting, spralling malls and housing clusters with communal pools etc. They have a lovely house in the Santa Clara county and it is gradually filling up with wedding guests. At the moment we are a party of 4, but Christelene arrives tonight and Rizelle arrives on sunday so… one big happy family!

On Tuesday, 12th, Gerhard turned 38 and like a little child, he was very excited about his birthday… telling anyone we came in contact with. Geoff took the day off work and we drove down to Monterey. We drove through the home of garlic (Gilroy) and you can actually smell the town from a mile off! They even have Gralic-flavoured ice-cream! Scary! I, of course did not taste it! In Monterey we visited the famous Monterey Aquarium which was lovely. 

Monterey Aquarium’s highlight for me was the jelly-fish display… it is amazing for me how beautiful and detailed such a small creature can be!

This is Lizette and I inside a simulated wave! Gerhard had a great birthday and managed to get himself a Monterey Aquarium ‘Happy Birthday’ badge with his name on it… He was so excited and pointed out every fish and shell and jelly-fish he saw. It was really funny because he speaks very little English although he thinks that he can…. to him Afrikaans is just a change of accent… so at one point we were in a darkened room and he started tapping on a woman’s shoulder saying “sandi, kyk here, kyk here!” and of course the wrong womnan turned around and even when I explained, she was not impressed… Gerhard just laughed and giggled about this for ages. Some other funny moments happened when he asked an aquarium empolyee where he could find the toilet and managed to make himself understood without speaking any English, he also managed to get her to escort him to the loo and back and asked her where he could find the sharks… all she could really hear was “shark…xxxxx…xxxx…xxxx shark…xxxx…shark!”. Needless to say, she pointed us to the sharks! When Oom needed some water, Gerhard went into the back door of the kitchen, which was closed because they had stopped serving, and proceeded to ask for water in Afrikaans… We had to do some explaining as it must have been a bit unnerving for the chefs to deal with a 6 foot 3 man speaking in a foreign language barging into the closed kitchen! This all kept us all in stitches, but Gerhard was having so much fun and being so well behaved that we could not stop him!

On the way back we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called ‘The Whole Enchelada’, which was really yummy… Gerhard rather wanted MacDonalds, which we got him on the way home! But his highlight was that they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him and gave him a candle in some ice-cream! The whole restaurant sang and you couldn’t take the smile off his face!

On the way home, Geoff had to stop for more ice-cream at a place called ‘Marianne’s'… we suspect that he is having an affair with Marianne as he now has about 4 tubs of ice-cream in the freezer… much to Lizette’s disgust! I must say that even I have been over-indulging a bit and this is not having a good effect on the waist-line as I went for a dress fitting on Tuesday morning and if you remember correctly, they told me at the shop in Burbank a month ago that I was a size 0… well, now, as I’ve been driving everywhere in Vancouver and San Jose, I am a size 1! I hope this does not continue because then I will have to have the dress re-adjusted!  PANTS!

Just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to:

Ruth Buchanan (11th August) and Mark Angus (14th August) and Sally Turner (14th August). Hope you all had a wonderful day!

Well, more next time!

Love and miss you all!

Sands