London to Brighton

This weekend was the London to Brighton mini run.  Since we were down south we decided to call in and see Richards Grandma since she’s never met Austin.  Richard had called her on the Friday but she couldn’t hear him so we just had to hope she’d remember us and be ok with us visiting.  As soon as she spotted me she said “long time no see…the one with the car”…so she obviously remembered me!  She is now 93 and her memory isn’t as good as it was, she seemed really well though….doing brilliantly for her age!  She still lives alone in a normal bungalow and just has a home help call in, her hot meals delivered and has an alarm fob.

She loved Caitlin’s hair and said her mum would have loved it as hers was curly.  She let the kids play with her dominos which she thinks are about 100 years old!!!!

After we’d stayed just over an hour she seemed to be getting a bit tired so we set off for our B&B which we’d booked nearby.  Strangely the owner of the B&B had a mini!!  In the morning we headed off to Brighton for the mini show.

There were reportedly 3,500 minis on the run….

Austin seemed especially excited at seeing the minis and spent the first half an hour shouting mimi at every mini that passed!!!

Caitlin was on the look out for all of the pink ones and wanted her photo taken with them all….

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…and was even more excited when she found a pink and a purple mini together!!!!!!

We even got to see some famous people….Ed China (from wheeler dealers) and Paddy Hopkirk (famous mini racer) who were driving a mini turned into a sofa around….

…it’s really cool, it has a pizza for a steering wheel!!

There was also a cool Spongebob squarepants mini…

and a not so cool….thing that claims to be a mini but is about twice the size…nothing mini about this mini!!

But a cool mini towing a tiny mini….

We thought they would all fall straight to sleep in the journey home but Austin managed to stay awake pretty much until 10pm when we got home!!!!!!!!!!

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The mini’s lost…

It was a poor show by the minis at York Dragway today, and so by having more contestants the beetles won, only by 8 points to 7, which isn’t bad considering beetles had about 5 more contestants! So maybe, just maybe if we’d have raced the minis would have won…. But at £30 to take Elvis down the strip we had decided against it. For the past few years the minis have beaten the beetles, and maybe if the original event hadn’t been snowed off at Easter we would have won again!

Yesterday Noah watched about an hours worth of drag racing videos and LOVED it, so today he was well practised at saying “ready, steady, go!!” He also bent down to look under the jet car, I think he likes cars (which is good for being in our family!!)

Caitlin looked very at home just taking in all the drag racing, as if she see’s it all day every day!

She was, however, quite shocked at Noah trying to put a piece of copper pipe he found into someones wheels!!

You should have seen Richards face when he spotted him moving onto the air intake (that hole just above the wheel!) where the pipe could have caused some real damage! We moved away soon after the above photo! Soon it was time for the jet car which is really loud, has tonnes of flames and loads of smoke, but they both loved….

When it was time to go it was nice to see which car they loved enough to kiss……….

My big collection of cars

I couldn’t have found a more appropriate t-shirt!!

We do have rather a large collection of cars!!! We have the 6 and a half minis (obviously) but also we have a Megane and a Peugeot!! Some people may even say we are “white trash”!!!! When someone said that to us I wasn’t at all offended I found it quite funny, we are just lucky that we are both happy to have cars (be them whole or in bits) in all of our garden photos!!

Today I’ve been shopping at Cheshire Oaks and it is a miracle Caitlin has finally out grown the boots I bought her last August! So she got new trainers, in a whole size bigger which means that although Noah has grown half a size she is now 1 size bigger than him (for the moment…) We also got cool sunglasses which have flower stems for the arms….

Yesterday while I was at work Richard, Caitlin and Noah had a picnic and watered the garden…..

And earlier in the week Caitlin washed her bike! Our friend Spam would be proud!!!