Sunday 14th February 2016

Valentine's Day. My husband took me for a wonderful and delicious breakfast at a little romantic place we like to call McDonald's. In Walmart. With the kids and mother-in-law. (I'm a cheap date.) It was the mother-in-law's first visit to a McDonald's and she quite enjoyed her bacon and egg biscuit. (British friends, for biscuit think crumbly savoury scone.)

Then the joys of Walmart. I seriously love Walmart. I love that it sells everything I could ever imagine I needed (this one had a fishing rod department) except for the things I actually know I need. Today's challenge - find a packet of mixed nuts and a loaf of wholemeal bread for diabetic Grandma. We drew a complete blank on both, but I eventually found a loaf of white bread emblazoned with a slogan advertising the absence of high fructose corn syrup in its composition. (It still tasted curiously sweet, though. Why, oh why, would you put any sort of sweetener in bread?)

Grandma finds the British foods section.

Cheese was on our list. We remembered from our last visit that America really doesn't do cheese well, so weren't too disappointed to discover that even in the deli section there were no blue cheeses (like Stilton or Dolcelatte), no soft cheeses (like Brie or Camembert) and not so much as a goat's cheese or a roule. We settled for extra sharp cheddar. It wasn't.

We did get some truly wonderful and delicious things, though. Four different varieties of Ranch dressing. Ranch flavour Doritos with a Ranch dip. Ranch flavour Pringles. Seeing a theme here?

We enjoyed a lazy afternoon, catching up on sleep, unpacking, exploring, and reading. I even did some writing. Not much churching, though, for a Sunday. Maybe next week.

Prepared for anything.

Not the view from our apartment, but not far away.

Now this is genius.