So, I realized that I never did post the last day of the Tweedy’s stay here.  Which I can’t leave out, because it was super fun.  

First Stop:

We let the kids run off some energy in the city

Nora’s dress was wayyyyyyyy too short.  Which has since prompted me to pull out the next biggest size of clothes from the garage.  It is so weird to be putting her in clothes that Alanna wore after she was born.  

Wow flickr made this next really sharp…

But isn’t he just so cute????  

I love this dress on her…

We took a walk and saw some fun walls.

Ariston is such a stud.

His serious face:

The girls were being super sweet.

I saw this and thought, why not?  I’ll take a picture of it.

Saw a strange siting…

Found out later that there was a wrestling match going on in jello.  Which they call jelly here.  Which jelly is called jam.  So we don’t eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, because peanut butter with jello would be gross.  But, they don’t eat peanut butter and jelly (jam) sandwiches anyway.  I know, I know, you can pick yourself up off the ground now. They all survived childhood without peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  

Nora can’t fathom life without peanut butter and jelly (jam) sandwiches.

We went out to dinner without children that night.  It was heavenly.

Saw another one of these:

What are the odds?  Maybe it’s a sign that the Tweedys should move here.  I mean, why not?  Edinburgh is a great place to be.  

Our time with the Tweedys was GREAT.  I miss my friend, Lisa.  We really hit it off.  You know, like someone that you’ve never really spent time with, but you feel like you are old friends.  

Stay tuned for the White Witch…

2 Alanna quotes of the day for you:

This morning we went on a date, just the 2 of us, because I felt like we needed to have some good time together.  We’re in the car, listening to some music.  I turned it up a little (to hear it) and Alanna says,

“Turn the music down.”

Mind you, she’s cooking up a tantrum while she says it.  She says again,

“Turn it VERY SOFT MOMMY.”

To which I say,

“You know, Alanna, it’s not all about you. To which she says,

“Yes it is all about me.  I am the world.”

I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. 

Then later, I put her in her room for nap/ quiet time.  I had to put locks on her wardrobe, because she was scaling the shelves inside trying to get to things that she’s not supposed to have.  Today was day one of the locks, so she decided to unload her dresser full of clothes instead.  She put the contents under her bed, as well as putting on 8 (I counted) shirts. 

She looked like a linebacker.

Though she’s not allowed to do this, I couldn’t punish her for it since I had not told her not to do it.  She did have to help me put the clothes away though.  

So, I’m taking the shirts off explaining to her that no, she can’t wear 8 shirts, and that she has to help put the other clothes away.  She gets this angry look on her face and says, 

“Shhhhh, we have to be quiet, because Nora’s sleeping.  So just shut up.“

Precious, just precious.

(Just so you know, we don’t speak to each other that way in our home, and no, I have no idea where she has picked up the phrase, “shut up.”)

Because I don’t have spam in my comments folder right now. Wow, I’m soooooo lucky.

We went down to Melrose (that’s down South, near the border) last Friday (yes, that’s a week ago from yesterday). The Tweedys have been to nearly every single European city and seen approximately 1286 castles and the like, so really, all they were interested in seeing was the Tweed River, even though there’s a great abbey in Melrose. We’ve already been there. You might say that it was a time of returning to their roots.

We went across like, the scariest bridge ever.  We got about halfway down it and realized that it was moving.  

Lisa wasn’t too thrilled about the intoxicating feeling that the bridge was giving us.

Silas tried to escape intoxication bridge more than once. 

We made it to the other side of the bridge and had lunch on the ground on a blanket.  It was highly enjoyable minus the bees.  

Tweed Man.

Adam pulled a string theory move.  (You have to watch the whole thing to see what I mean).

We went back over intoxication bridge. 

We saw this sign after crossing– it didn’t give us a vote of confidence.  

Really, no more than 8 people at a time? 

We walked through Melrose and came across this petrol station.  

And it reminded me of this really cool guy that used to come to our church named Adam Purvis.  And it made me miss him, because he is a really cool guy.

Alanna was bored with me taking her picture.

And then she wasn’t when her buddy got up there with her.

Melrose is not only known for its abbey.

The next day, I woke up to find that our gourd thing that we got for Alanna to grow was trying to take over our house.

Don’t worry, we later showed it who is boss.

We also had our first Tweedy/ Mabry naked time.  Don’t worry, the adults didn’t participate.  

Who knew being naked could be so much fun.

Nora wanted to look like Ariston.

The Tweedys go back to Budapest tomorrow.  Which makes me really sad.  I have had such a good time with Lisa.  

There is more to come though, from their stay here, so be on the lookout!

I came across this picture last night and it is just too hard to pass up posting.  

We got back from holiday and put the kids down for a nap.  It was nice to be home, but not gonna lie, part of me wanted to stay up in Melford for longer.  A lot longer.  

Alanna woke up and said, “I have a fever, I need to watch a movie.”  And we thought, oh, she’s catching on to the system here.  We told her no, she was okay with that (what a nice surprise for a change!).  A bit later, she felt a bit hot, took her temperature and she actually did have a temperature.  Oops.  She was telling the truth.  

I braced myself for another virus, praying that it wouldn’t be a barfing virus.  I don’t do barf.  At all.  For some people, it’s blood, for me, it’s barf.   I don’t barf, and I don’t handle barf well at all.  I have only barfed once in my entire life, when I was 12.  Even when the barfing virus makes its rounds through our family and it gets to be my turn, I don’t barf.  Even with all day horrible horrible early pregnancy nausea morning sickness during pregnancy, nope, didn’t barf.  

Adam always rolls his eyes when I get all uppity about barf.  But really, he doesn’t understand that I need him to be home if one of the kids is barfing.  Unless he’s standing in front of a 50 foot Jesus.  But that’s the only excuse that I will allow. 

You would be proud though, Alanna barfed in her bed several months ago after her nap and Adam wasn’t here (there may have been a 50 foot Jesus involved).  And the smell was…. oh…. my…. lanta….. terrible.  Barf is straight from the pits of hades I tell you.  Anyway, I cleaned it up allllllllll by myself.  I think it helped that I didn’t see it happen.  

That was a really long barfy tangent.  

When Alanna started to get her fever and I didn’t see any snot, I braced myself for barf.  But thank goodness, she never did, though her fever got up to 104 (that’s almost 40 for all of my british readers).  And then it just went away.  Nothing more.  So strange. 

I always dread Alanna getting fevers/ viruses and the like.  Because of post virus grumpiness.  And really, grumpy is not a strong enough word to use here.  It’s more like the child grows horns and a little pitchfork magically appears.  Anyone else know what I am talking about here?   

Alanna lived up to true form post virus, but at least she looked cute. 

She was all better the next day and a TON more chipper, so we went to Tesco.  I got attacked by a vicious bee.  I swear that thing was waiting for me.  I always wipe down the trolley (that’s shopping cart) with a wipe because Nora seems to have a affinity for licking it (I know, I know, I’m OCD.  I’m secure). So this bee comes right for me (I hadn’t gotten the girls out of the car at this point) and is like, trying to crawl into my EAR.  I’m like swatting it and running around the car with my wipe.  I know that some teenage boy was laughing at me somewhere in the parking lot.  I know I looked like an idiot. 

Anyway, that sucker was waiting for us when we came back to the car.  But this time he flew into the car, right next to Alanna.  She screamed like I was sawing her arm off.  And here’s where I felt like a true woman.  I yanked my shoe off and smushed him on the floorboard of the car.  

Yay me. 

After Tesco, Alanna went for a spin on her tricycle. 

She was explaining something to me that was very important here. 

“You see, what had happened was…”

I got attacked by another bee (maybe it’s my honey shampoo and conditioner that I use???), so our ride got cut a little short.  

Last Wednesday, our friends Addison and Lisa came to visit us. They are Americans, but they live in Budapest.  And they have 2 kids about our kids’ ages. It has been so good to have them here. 

Addison is great, but Lisa… I want to keep her.  I have so enjoyed having her around.  

We went to Linlithgow the day after they got here.  The kids enjoyed themselves.  

What a Stud. 

That shot is totally out of focus, but so funny.

A fun time was had by all.

So, I forgot a very important part of Day 5, Alanna got to touch a horse for the first time.  

She was a little unsure of herself

She only touched him that one time.

A horse is a horse of course of course

Day 6 was by far the best day.  We had sooooooo much fun.  We drove up to Mallaig and my friends, it was warm.  Really warm.  We had a bit of a laundry crisis towards the end of the week, so we had run out of clothes.  We didn’t have a change of clothes for the girls, so we ended up just taking their clothes off. 

On the beach.  In Scotland.  North Scotland at that.  

NO CLOTHES!!!!  SCOTLAND PEOPLE SCOTLAND!!!!!  

Alanna fell asleep in the car on the way up there (it took about 2 hours to get there)

We started off with their clothes on (don’t worry, ours stayed on the entire time).

“Yay, beach!!”

Nora was reluctant at first to the sand.  She’s one of those kids that doesn’t like messy hands and the like. So, it took her a bit to muster up the courage and wade into the water. 

“I’m in, I’m in.”

“I’m out, I’m out”

“Really out”

Going in the for the hug. 

Awwwwwwwww

At this point, the beach became a topless one.  

Love that belly that Nora’s got.

Once Nora got in the water and got used to it, she didn’t want to be taken out. 

“Super Strong!!!”

One of my favs from the day…

She had saggy underwear by this point.

Nora would have never done that.

Adam tried to walk like Nora.

So incredibly funny.

Adam wanted to look more manly for this shot.

This was before the big plunge:

And this was after:

That was our cue to leave.

 We saved our last night for going out to eat for dinner.  When we were driving up to Mallaig, we passed by this seafood place.  So that’s where we stopped.  And it was really good.  And we met this guy from Boston and his wife and 2 kids.  He’d lived in Scotland for 11 years and honestly, I thought he was Scottish just listening to him talk with this family.  Once he started talking to us, his accent like, turned off.  And he sounded American.  It was strange.  I think you might say that he’s bilingual. 

The scenery was amazing on the drive back down.

The one and only Ben Nevis.  With a fun road sign with gaelic on it.

We finally made it to our restaurant, even though Adam was tempted to stop at places that didn’t look good along the way.  He gets rather impatient and grumpy when he’s hungry.

Our food was really good.

The kids were worn out, but pretty good.

Adam was no longer grumpy once he got some food.

The sunset that

night was

absolutely

gorgeous,

making the perfect end,

to a perfect time away.

If you want to go and see more pictures, you can at my flickr thing.  Though, the topless pictures of the girls are only available to those contacts on flickr that I have deemed friends and family.  

With all of that said, I know you’re out there.  I get like 40-50 hits to my blog a day.  So, I have a question for you to answer in the good ol’ comment section.  What has been your best holiday/ vacation ever?  Where’d you go?

And don’t forget to check that rad video in the post below this one.  Really, it’s the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life.

We came across this video on youtube and I had to share… so very funny. 

We went to a wee town called Kilmartin.  Stopped by a chapel first

Saw this oh-so-British sign

In America, this would read, “Do not cross under penalty of death.”  Or something like that.

Oops.  I just realized that I forgot to add some Oban pictures on Day 3.  I wouldn’t want to spare you those, because that’s where Alanna met her scary Scottish statue man. 

By this point, I was getting a little email antsy.  Being that, I had not checked my email in gasp         almost 2 full days.   Oban is a fairly sizable city, so I figured that someone would have a wifi connection somewhere.  

Turns out that that is not the case.  But, I survived without my email.  You should be proud. 

Oban is nice… we’ve been there I think 3 times now.  Once when we were there, Nora was about 6 months old or so.  We were on our way to the Isle of Skye with Adam’s dad and stepmom.  We stopped in Oban to get out stretch our legs and for me to nurse Nora.  I’m still such a nursing-in-public freak that I decided to just nurse her in the Jackson’s van that we had borrowed (aka, the big blue bus).  It happened to be a warm day that day (utter shock!!).  So, Adam slid the door shut leaving me and Nora in the van for a feed.  And then he locked the door.  I didn’t think much of it because this is Scotland right?  There is no possible way that one could ever be gasp          hot here.  

Okay, about 5 minutes into the feed, Nora is like sliding all over the place because we’re both sweating our butts off.  Okay, I’m melting at 10 minutes.  15 minutes.  I’m desperate to get out of the blue bus.  I’m stripping my clothes off (that whole nursing-in-public freak thing had completely gone out the window).  You may be wondering why I didn’t just open the door and let us out.  But you’ve never heard the horn/ alarm go off on the big blue bus.  

Surely they’re coming back soon.

Nope.  After about 20 minutes or so, it’s time to let ‘er rip and make the alarm go off.  It did when I opened the door.  I ran.  I don’t really like to make a ruckus in public you see.  As I said before, Oban is fairly sizable (but with no wifi) so it took quite a long time to catch up with the others.  I think they were irritated that I hadn’t finished feeding Nora by this point.  Oh well. 

Despite my heat wave connotations that I have with Oban, it is a nice town.

Nora fell asleep in the backpack, so we just put her right on the floor in the cafe that we stopped at.  She slept for like 15 minutes like that, which really surprised me, because she doesn’t usually sleep on her back.

And the thumb became dislodged.  I guess she was really tired.

Nora found some rad new shoes when we made it back to the house. 

Back to day 5. Kilmartin.

After the chapel, we wandered around the graveyard, which not gonna like, is not my favorite thing to do.  Just feels disrespectful for some reason. They had some really old stuff in there though.

Next we came across this really fun Scottish guy who overheard us asking each other if we knew what a cairn was.  Neither Nora nor Alanna knew, so we were really glad that this guy knew.  And this was his exact answer:

“A cairn is about 5000 years old and where they used to bury their rich dudes.  It’s basically a big pile of rocks.” 

Sweet.  We drove around to go and see these cairns and some standing stones up close and personal.  We didn’t actually go up to the cairn that was there, which in hindsight was kind of dumb.  But it was just a pile of rocks.  And there was sheep poop everywhere and Nora insisted on walking.  She falls often and I imagined her little hands in sheep poop, so I wasn’t too interested in spending a bunch of time at this location. 

At any rate, we saw some standing stones

That are like 5000 years old.  

We broke into a mini Alanna photo session.

I know that the other people looking at the standing stones must of thought that I was a moron, because here we are next to something that’s 5000 years old and I’m taking pictures of my daughter.  But, she’s just so pretty…

We went and saw some  more standing stones.  There was even more sheep poop.  Apparently there is no sheep loo for them.

Circle of life?

It’s so cool to be driving around in the countryside and just see one of this things in a field (usually with sheep pooping right next to it, but you know), knowing that they are like 5000 years old.  Our conversations passing them usually go something like this:

“Hey, there’s another standing stone.”

“You wanna stop and see it.”

“Nope.  Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.”

They are cool to drive by though.

After our standing-stone-sheep-poop adventure, we went to a little cafe in Kilmartin.  And I will tell you that I was very pleasantly surprised that the food was really good.  I mean really good.  That just doesn’t happen everyday here.  

Nora got really excited about the brownie.

It didn’t make it for very long.

After our time there, we went on another mountainous vertical climb mild hike near Kilmartin.  It really was more taxing than the last one, but it was so so much fun.  Adam thought it really clever to take pictures of me peeing in the woods.  Don’t worry, those got deleted right there.  But, I was proud of myself for being outdoorsy (which, I don’t really do all that well).

(And no, this is not me actually peeing, that would be just gross).

The scenery was great here.

We hiked up for a bit.  Nora got heavy.  Quick. 

Alanna talked on the phone (her hand) to the Doodlebops. (Make sure and hover over the characters to get the full affect). If you have young children.  Don’t ever ever ever let them even see the teeniest tiniest glimpse of the doodlebops on TV.  I swear, that show is straight from the pit of Hades.  

All of that climbing left me HOT.  That’s like, the 2nd time that has ever happened in the past 3 years.

We took some layers off and kept going.

I’d like to say that Adam grabbed this shot as he told me some clever joke that made me toss my head back and laugh.  I was frantically trying to pull up my jeans after he took about 50+ pictures of me peeing in the woods again.  Awwww, so sweet, huh??

We finally made it to the top.

Nora fell asleep again.  Her head felt like a bowling ball hanging off the side of the backpack. 

We headed back down.

Saw a boat.

Decided that we wouldn’t take it for a spin as there was water in it.  But there was a bucket in there too, I guess for when the going gets rough.

Nora was very tired.

Alanna wasn’t.

Got stuck behind Kentucky, still amazed that it was warm enough to have the windows open in the car. 

Thought that it was funny that Hell’s Glen was right next to Rest and Be Thankful.

Back to rock throwing and midges.  

We stopped on the way back to the car from our death defying hike walk to do some rock throwing.  Nora had just fallen asleep

But as soon as she heard the word, “rock”  (that’s a bock in her world), she was ready to get out of her ride. 

No one wanted to stand next to Alanna while she threw rocks.  Um, let’s just say she let go too soon a few times.  Less worried about me, more worried about the camera. 

I was relieved to see that Alanna no longer was running into the water to find Ariel, so I sneaked off all of 2 feet away to grab some pictures of the water.  

Alanna’s arms and legs got a bit wet in that freezing cold water

But she didn’t seem to mind.

Nora threw a big hissy, because she didn’t want to leave.

Seriously, Nora, did you think you could really escape that thing?

Who knew rocks and water could be sooooo much fun.

Alanna took a “nap.”

Day 4:

On the recommendation of our friends here in the B’Gate (that’s Bathgate, where we live), we went to Seil Island and Easdale Island.  We were shocked to see a bridge going to Seil Island.  I think they are against bridges here, because to get these little islands, you usually have to drive your car on a ferry.  Which I get.  Really I do.  But, when the distance between land and island is literally swimming distance (like a 3 minute ferry ride), wouldn’t you think that it would be just as easy to build a bridge? 

Seil Island was fun. We didn’t stay for long, but apparently they are world famous over there.

Really?

Garden Gnomes are all the rage amongst the Brits.

We caught the ferry motorboat over to Easdale Island.  Adam had to press these buttons to get the guy to come over and fetch us.

It was very high tech.

Adam looking very nostalgic.

My kids will someday laugh at how big my sunglasses are.

We stopped by the lamest museum e-v-e-r.  We were appalled that they were actually taking people’s money to see this thing.  We didn’t stay.  

We took a walk and saw some beautiful scenery.

Though I am enjoying the view from my computer screen much more than I did in person because the midges descended.  And let me tell you, those things are vicious.  They went to town on Adam’s head.  Maybe they thought it was a buffet or something.

Apparently they roof the world from Easdale Island with all of this slate.  I found that  a little hard to believe though.  Maybe if we’d gone to the museum we would have been better informed.

We walked back to catch our ferry motorboat and spent a little time in the ferry waiting room. 

There was an extensive library there.

They are definitely going to need to upgrade soon. With at least one more bookcase. 

Alanna thought that was pretty funny. 

Silly Scotland.

We went back to the house and chilled for a bit.  Then went out to the playground there.  Nora saw a plane.

And then she fell down and got her hands dirty.  Which she didn’t like at all. 

 ”Hands, HANDS!!!”

Are you going to take care of this lady and put the camera down?  This is serious stuff.

Next up:  scary Scottish man statue, and Nora’s new shoes.  Thanks for all of the fun comments.  :)

I took a whole freaking lot of pictures, so this post may be broken up into several posts.  

Our holiday was a-m-a-z-i-n-g.  By far the best one that we have ever taken.  Some friends of ours parents have a holiday timeshare thing up near Oban that they were unable to use last minute, so they gave it to us to use for the entire week.  There is no WAY we could have ever afforded to do something like that, so it was a huge blessing!  All we paid for was the electricity that we used which was like £17. Not bad for a week. 

Here we go with pictures and whatnot, because really that’s the most interesting part. 

We got there on Sunday afternoon (that’s the Sunday before last) and unloaded, got groceries, all of that.  Put the girls to bed in the same room (for the first time), which was… interesting. Let’s say that they just had a party until 10:30.  

I went and checked out the sunset.  I never tire of Scottish sunsets (really, they are so rare too).  There are always always clouds in the sky.  And it just finished raining, which made it even cooler. 

And before you think that I edited the cheese out of these sunset pictures, let me just say that I didn’t.  Just a little levels adjustment, but that’s all. 

Came across a cool road

and a dog loo.

(are you really supposed to catch the poo coming out like the picture??)

Attempted a self portrait

that’s pretty lame.  It may not make it to the publish stage of this post.

Day 2:

We attempted a hike around the house.  Adam wore shorts and the brush was high, so that didn’t last long.

“Shoe please.”

Our kids looked sassy in their hats.

We are such a sporty family let me tell you.

The rain didn’t stop, even though the sun was out, so we went back in.  Which was fun, because we just sat around like blobs.  It was wonderful.

Alanna sang rain rain go away, but it didn’t work.

Until…

Day 3:

We did some driving

to find a good place to take a nice woodsy death defying hike walk.

Turns out we were really glad that we kept the ipod touch that came free with my computer a few months ago.  It fits perfectly in the center console and both kids can see it.  We’ve memorized both Toy Story one and two, but it kept things peaceable. 

We stopped for directions

at a halfway??? filling station???  

Got stuck behind yet another  slow moving incredibly frustrating british caravan why are all roads only 2 lanes in this country  RV.  Which is called a caravan here.  Which reminds me of a story when we first moved here.

I was going to a new mom’s (I just can’t say mum.  I just can’t do it.  My mom’s a mom, not a mum. Has been for 26 years, so I just can’t say mum) group in the little village that we lived in.  Let me just say that the accent was thick there.  I swear it wasn’t English that they were speaking.  Not only could I not understand what they were saying, but the words were totally different.  So one lady’s talking about how here son fell off the chute and hurt himself.  It was like 3 months later that I discovered that a chute is a slide.  Oh.  A slide.  So, then at the next meeting, same lady is talking about going on the caravan for her holiday (holiday???) that summer.  I’m thinking, so, you and bunch of other people followed each other somewhere?  Caravn= RV.  Ohhhhhh…..  Then there was the lady who told me her daughter’s name was Amy.  I thought she said Emmy, so I called the kid Emmy for weeks.  She probably thought I was a total moron.  

We loaded the kids up for our death defying hike walk through the woods.  

You can blame Adam on the over exposure.  And my lack of makeup mirror- because our house is too small and we don’t want to buy another one since mine has an American plug- for my bushy eyebrows.  The bronzer compact and window just don’t cut it when it comes to tweezing like the makeup mirror did.  

After a vertical mountainous climb slightly inclined walk on a road left me very winded (I did have Nora on my back), we made it to the loch for lunch.  

Flickr is acting up, so I’ll have to come back to this later.  Next up… throwing rocks, midges, and other fun things. I know you are on the edge of your seat.