As promised yesterday, my alarm went off at 6am, a time which beat my record of 7am the previous day. I was impressed with that, but to be fair, I knew that if I wasn't awake by 0630 that Hannah would come down and wake me up, something which I knew would go badly, as I'm not too keen on being woken up and usually say some choice words that an 11 year old should not hear!
So anyways, having arisen at stupid o'clock, I proceeded upstairs, so that Hannah could open her presents. Was a pretty good haul that she got in my opinion. 11 isn't one of those birthdays where everyone makes that big of an effort, having done it myself 10 years ago, it's just after the 10th Birthday, which is a huuuuuuuuge deal as you're entering into double figures, so it's kind of like the come down after a massive sugar rush!!!... she'll find out when she reaches the milestones of 16, 18 and 21!! But to her it is a big deal, as it should be... as she got to do what she wanted, eat what she wanted and make as much noise and be as hyper as she wanted to be!! Never a good thing, especially when Hannah has Komi-itis (an incurable disease where before she acts, she has to ask WWKD, What Would Komi Do? Not a nice disease, as it means there's going to be more than one of my sister in the world...)
Well anyways, whilst opening her cards, Hannah stumbled upon the old Harrod Card curse. I should point out that my mum's side of the family are Harrod's (yes that's right, we owned that shop before the greasy Egyptians did). But anyway, the Harrod's card curse is that in which you can usually guarantee that you will get two of the same card, from a two people on the same side of the family, in this case, my family and my uncles... I can say that I wasn't involved in this, having got Hannah a card from me two days before. But still, you'd think there'd be some communication within the family group along the lines of:
"OMG I've just got Hannah this amazing card, please don't get it because it'll invoke the Harrod's Card Curse"
"Ok, let me know what it looks like and we'll avoid getting that card, so that Hannah has a greater variety of birthday card designs to admire"
"Sounds like a plan"
Instead what happened goes more along these lines
"Adam sign this card for Hannah. Uncle Phil wants you to give her this one. Got it? Good"
I sense a disturbance in communications somewhere! But just for proof, here's Hannah with the two cards:
Epic Fail there!!!Anyway. We had these yummy squidgy cinnamon buns for breakfast, chock-a-block with sugar and calories, just what one needs to start the day at 7am!! Whilst we were eating breakfast, Hannah had her first birthday call of the day, from her uncle on Uncle Dave's side of the family, which consisted of her having Happy Birthday sung to her about a billion times by her cousin... rather sweet if you ask me. All the while her breakfast was getting cold, and I was getting to the stage where I felt that it'd be best to finish hers up... and then she got off the phone and scoffed the lot down.
Having finished breakfast and gotten dressed, we dropped Hannah off at School for the day, and came back home for a while, to chillax and for Auntie Lizzie to find out that Paul McCartney was touring again in the area which made her rather excited... however she'd have to wait until we got back from the outlets (basically an open air mall) to book the tickets!!!
As I just said, we went to the Outlets to get the last couple of things that I required, a decent pair of sports shorts, having looked like Matt Lucas' depiction of Marjorie Daws before going to soccer, and also a couple of pairs of trainers, having totally screwed my other ones up playing soccer. It was a pretty productive trip to the outlets, coming back with two pairs of awesome trainers and a pair of lightweight shorts for me to wear if I wanted to face the world of exercise at any point in the near future.
On our arrival back at the house, Auntie Lizzie was straight onto her laptop in order to book tickets to see Paul McCartney in concert, dunno why, they've seen him before, it's not like he'll have changed now is it (although he wouldn't have that money grabbing one legged thing with him I guess). And pretty soon it was time for us to go to get Hannah's Birthday lunch and bring it to her in school.
I'm a big fan of subway, so this place just blew me away... think subway, but Mexican style. You chose what you want, and they make it in front of you, with you saying what you want in it... it was awesome!! Having got the food, we whisked ourselves off to her school, where we met Hannah and a few of her friends for lunch. It was lush!!! Hannah didn't finish hers, and I was denied the opportunity as her friend Gina, ate the rest of it, as well as her own lunch, I've never seen an 11 year old eat so much so quickly... kudos to that girl! After lunch, we went around the school, with Auntie Lizzie proving how popular she is within the school as pupil and teachers alike came up for a little chat, and an introduction to me =) When I was last out here, I met the previous head of the school, and in the same fashion, this time I met her too... a very nice lady.
Having managed to prise ourselves away from the school, we headed down towards where we thought there'd be a soccer shop, still on the quest to find an England shirt to wear (mine's still 4 years out of date and isn't getting any younger!) only to find that like yesterdays one, the shop was no longer there... nor were there any at the next two places we went to. It's fine if you support teams like Mexico, Spain or Aston Villa (WTF!), but if you support the country that invented football... you cant find one anywhere, it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack!!
With this search seeming rather fruitless, we went to pick Hannah up from school and went back to the house, again for a nice relaxing couple of hours, giving me a chance to speak to mum back in England for the first time since I arrived.
One simply awesome thing that happened on this drive to pick Hannah up, was a moment where I really do wish that I had had my camera with me. We'd driven up to an intersection, and the lights were red, two cars in front was a pickup with a double mattress really badly tied to it. Anyway, the lights turned to green, and said pick up accelerates off... forgetting that he's not tied this mattress on very well. Half a second later, his mattress has done a triple backflip off of the back of the pickup and performed a perfectly executed landing on the road. A gold medal winning performance if I ever saw one!!!!! Now, Auntie Lizzie was on the phone at the time, on hands free to Mrs Polly... and both of us, just cracked up mid sentence whilst Mrs Polly was wondering what the hell had happened. It's kind of hard to explain really, but once we'd passed this pickup, which did an emergency stop (thank goodness nothing was behind it) and three students went sprinting out of the pickup to retrieve their mattress... I dunno if it sounds funny to you, but as I'm writing I'm creased up with laughter inside! I guess you had to be there!
Around 6pm, we headed out for Dinner, again Hannah's choice, to a resturant called Cheesecake factory... sounds good doesn't it! I'll tell you what, we all had stuff from the snack menu, the portion sizes were about 2x what you'd get for a main meal back in the UK... follow that up with the biggest slice of cheesecake I have ever seen (I'm gutted I didn't finish mine... but I bought it home for breakfast tomorrow nomnomnom). Mine was called something like the "30th Anniversary Chocolate Cake Cheesecake" and my goodness was it chocolatey. I managed about half of it before being defeated. Was soooooooooo good and so filling, I didn't really mind that I didn't finish it in all honesty! None of us finished what we'd had, so all's good in the hood.
So that brings me really to now, sat here at just gone 9pm, writing my blog for the day, thinking to myself how great the day has been, Hannah seems to have had a good birthday... and should sleep well tonight I hope!!!
In the meantime, I will leave you with pictures of mine, Hannah's and Auntie Lizzie's Cheesecakes, just to make you jealous =)
x
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