Coconut doughnuts and raspberry rolls

I had been looking forward to this weekend all week long. That is nothing unusual for me, I pretty much live for the weekends, even if we're not up to anything in particular. But this weekend, my sister Laura came to stay with us! Laura is two years older than me and we have always been really close. We seem to have a million in-jokes and we have so many amazing memories together. When we moved back down south I was looking forward to her and the rest of the family only being 2 and a half hours away, but no sooner had we moved than Laura got a job as a law lecturer in Liverpool and moved up north! And to think, the whole time we had been in Lancaster, she could have at least moved to Liverpool then, but no. It's okay though, we forgive her.

I was practically giddy with excitement on Friday at work and Laura was texting me regularly with updates of where she was. When I got the train home from work, she was at the station, ready to meet me as she had only arrived a little while before. Seth didn't get home until a lot later on, he works so hard, but we had fun, just us two girlies. We had dinner as we watched Strictly Come Dancing - It Takes Two (Mum, Laura and I are all Strictly addicts, it's so good! I want Holly Valance and Artem Chigvintsev to win). I asked Laura if she fancied anything for dessert. She was debating over it and when I suggested having raspberry rolls, although she'd not had them before she wanted to try them. So we ended up having raspberry rolls. Note the plural. They're nothing special, just mini sponge swiss roll-type things filled with raspberry sauce and vanilla cream.  Laura had 7 of them :), not that I can judge because I had 5! I think the funniest thing about it was that Lau kept saying how stuffed she was as she was reaching for another one. Chanchita! When Seth got home, we had a nice time together just catching up and talking. Seth gets on really well with my family and they love him too. We always say that he's Mum's favourite! He handles us very well, which isn't always easy as when we are all together, there are about 5 conversations going on at once with everyone talking over everyone else and yet, everyone there still somehow manages to keep track of each conversation and respond accordingly!

On Saturday, Seth couldn't come out to play with us - we were both giving talks at our church conference that evening and Seth had to work on that, so Laura and I went into Bromley to spend some time looking around there. Laura had been raving to me about a coconut doughnut from Greggs bakery and had described it to me in great depth so when she saw a Greggs, she suggested that we get one. I ended up getting a chocolate one, being the chocoholic that I am, although in hindsight, I wish I'd tried to coconut one, it looked delicious.

And you can see that Laura obviously thought so too!

We seemed to eat quite a lot on Saturday actually as we went for lunch while we were still in Bromley, then we went home, got Seth, drove to Maidstone for the men's part of the conference then we went into Maidstone and went to Caffe Nero for hot chocolates and a cake! In our defence, we did split our caramel slice. I miss Caffe Nero doing shots of coconut in their drinks, but a shot of almond is every bit as good, it tasted like liquid marzipan. Laura had a shot of banana in hers, but mine was nicer.

The conference was really good, all of the speakers spoke on really uplifting topics (we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - you can find out about what we believe on www.lds.org). When it was finished, we went for dinner. It was nice for us both to be with Seth as well, being as though we didn't really get to see him much that day.
When we got home that night, we watched "Strictly Come Dancing". Well, I think Laura and I saw about two dances before we fell asleep :)

Sunday was good, we went to conference again and then when we got home we just had a fun afternoon and evening together playing games and eating grapes. We had to get the healthy element in there somewhere, especially after the gluttony of yesterday (although it was so good and more than worth it!). And we pretended to be grapes.

Yeah, we're weird like that.

I'm so glad that Laura didn't leave on Sunday night as we would have just been watching the clock the whole time to make sure she didn't miss her train. Instead, we got to enjoy the evening together. Even though it was Laura's Birthday on Monday, we gave her her present on Sunday evening as we knew it would end up being a bit of a rush. She has a million watches (not literally) but she actually wears all of them (not all at once) and so, what better present to get her than a watch? She was pretty pleased with it. We chose well!

On Monday morning, Laura came with us to the station and we said goodbye there as she got on the same train as Seth to take her into London to get the train back up to Liverpool. The weekend went by so quickly, but we had so much fun. We always do when we get together.