What should be confiscated at Customs

Martin and Margaret have just gone home yesterday after a 10 day visit. They brought with them tea-bags, biscuits and some presents for the kids. Becky is a real tom-boy, but she has a penchant for dresses, so she loved this present and has pretty much lived in it ever since.
They also brought us some rubbish English weather. It had been lovely and sunny for few days, we even hit 80F then on the day they arrived we just had rubbish weather for the next 7 days, it rained on the first day they got here then snowed on the next 3. Here is the view out of our living room in May!

Now that they have gone home it looks like this (this is just 7 days later).

The lesson here is that US customs should stop asking if people are bringing in tins of beans and start asking if they are packing any nasty weather.

Still we made the most of it, we tried walking around one of the local lakes on the first Saturday they were here and then gave up as it was really windy and we were getting horizontal snow which was no fun. The next day was less windy so we went to Carver Park Reserve, about 20 minutes away and walked around one of the lakes there.

As you can see, there wasn't much wind but you can tell from their expressions that Martin and Margaret could do with it being a bit less chilly.

Andy and Becky are so used to the cold that this is a pleasant day out.Dan meets the resident birds, they have injuries and can't survive in the wild so the reserve look after them.Snakes tooPlus the obligatory kids playground

I had to go to Vancouver during the week so I missed some of the poor weather, Vancouver is a spectacular city and made me realise how much Minnesota needs a mountain or two; having 10,000 lakes is fair enough but if you can only see one at a time it misses out on the grand vistas.

On the last weekedn they were here we managed to get out to Minehaha falls, which was far less frozen than last time.






Then on the last day they were here we finally made it around Normandale lake, the bizarre thing is that you see loads of trendy teenagers fishing, it is far less of an anorak activity in Minnesota than back home.

Andy dropped Martin and Margaret off at the airport and then we had empty out the kitchen as it was due to be removed the next morning. We're trying to sell on the cabinets and appliances and have had some interest, we were just going to dump them but now it seems we might get quite a lot for them.

Anyway, we cleared out the food etc and you can check out the house blog for more details but here is what out kitchen looked like 4 hours after they got started.