Can you tell that I’m passing time here?  To say that I’m done being pregnant would be an understatement. We’re ready to meet our baby!!! 

Anyway, here’s the rest of what happened in July.

Fun times were had by all at church.

Our church meets in a movie theater.  Apparently the oreo is a new item being sold in the UK, and they were marketing it in the theater that day.  Honestly, I didn’t really understand the whole point of it, but whatever.  They weren’t even giving out oreos.

I did like this little thingie that they had up though.  I think Rory looks nice in that one right there.

Next up… me and Mirandi went and had a day out in the city.  Too bad it was so so so rainy, but we still had fun.  We went to this little cafe called, “Loopy Lorna’s.”  It was by far, the girliest cafe I have ever been in.  I don’t think Adam would suffer to go there with me.

And with that, Mirandi and Brandon went home a few days later.

Adam’s birthday rolled around at the end of the month, and I made him a good ‘ol southern meal.  Mark and Miranda came over (she had to jet early though for work- she’s like a super nurse). 

I made him a key lime pie for desert (my mom sent me some key lime juice) and it was the richest key lime pie I have ever tasted. I think I’ll try a different recipe the next time.

I mean, lip puckering sweet.

But we still ate it all, don’t worry.

I got this view making dinner one night.  So pretty.  Before Mirandi left, she put a little note on my kitchen window that says, “You’re going to miss that rainbow when you move from Scotland.”  And I will.  More on that later, but yes, as most of my tens of readers already know, we’re moving back to America in November due to visa issues.  While I’m SO excited to moving back to the mother land, we will most definitely miss Scotland and its beauty.

Hopefully I’ll have to skip the month of August to catch up on, and will have a baby post for you next.  He seems awfully comfy in there though…

We enjoyed one last day of weather warm enough for the kiddie pool.  We had 7 whole days that it was warm enough to be in the kiddie pool (the water was still fa-reezing) this year, whereas last year, we had 1/2 of one day.  Yes, 1/2 of one day.

Why do my kids look so concerned in these pictures?

We played pretty pretty princess as well.  Adam is gonna looooooove me for putting these next pictures in.  Needless to say, he’s happy for the boy version to be arriving soon.

I think this is a good look for me…

Yessssssssssssss.

This next picture is a shout out to my friend, Michelle.  Girlfriend loves her some tea.  She’s Scottish though, so she can get away with it…

Speaking of Michelle, she has been one of my closest friends here in Edinburgh.  Back in July, she moved to the states to do some schooling.  Some other friends of ours threw her a surprise going away party.  She was quite shocked.

I made these most awesome crafty ladybug cupcakes to take to the party.

Before you get too impressed, they really weren’t that hard to make.  I mean, I was up all night making the ladybugs from scratch, but you know…

Not really.  The ladybugs are just red m&ms.  Perfect excuse to eat all of the other colored m&ms in the bag if you ask me.

A few more pics from the party.

Michelle her very beautiful self in the front of the next one:

I’ve learned that you should never take advantage of close friends that live near to you.  Especially when you have little ones to care for, it’s easy to think, “oh, I’ll call her next week… we can hang out next month,” etc.  I wish that would have hung out more with Michelle before she left!

Speaking of close friends…

we had a couple come and visit us from Nashville in July for about 10 days.  To say that I was excited, is an understatement.  We had so.much.fun.

Mirandi and Brandon went and did a lot on their own, but we all went together one day down to the Borders.  First stop was Sweetheart Abbey.

Could the grass be any greener???

Yes, that is my husband wearing a winter hat in July.

Mirandi and Nora + Nora’s “feathah.”

Bump got a wee bit wet as the rain coat didn’t fit around at this point.

The usual shenanigans took place.

Hm, I wonder why my mouth looks smaller than it did a year ago.  Oh yeah, my cheeks are pregnant too, that’s why.

Next stop was Maxwell Castle.  We’ve been there before, but somehow, I deleted allllll of the pictures that I took there the first time we went.  I only got this one, because turns out, they wanted to charge us to be on the grounds.  So, we sat in the car.  It’s a super cool castle though– there’ even a moat!  That you can’t see in this picture, but never mind.

Next, we droveanddroveanddroveanddroveanddroveanddrove to find Hadrian’s Wall.  As you can see, the weather wasn’t awesome.

We were a little less than impressed upon our first sighting of the wall.

That’s it there to the right.  That’s also Brandon with his phone.  His other lover.  You know you know friends that love their phones.   iphone users are notorious…. ahem, Clayton.

(Wishing we’d visited Hadrian’s wall via wikipedia instead).

By this point, I had to pee.  Reallllll bad.  So, we stopped at this tourist shop/ attraction to use their bathroom.  Fortunately for us, there was another part of the wall to view.  It was a lot more impressive to view than the first bit that we saw.

So, if you thought that the pee sticks were gross.  Brace yourself.

Yes, that it was you think it is in that historic Scotland bag.

And no, it did not belong to me, that was courtesy of Alanna.

Oh, to be a dad.

Fun times.

Our last day on Lewis, we woke up, said goodbye to Andy, and then drove to the ferry.  We were pretty knackered by that time, so we didn’t do much.  However, we did see some windmills and decided that we needed to drive up close to them.  Both Auntie Julia and I have a like for the windmills.  They make a really cool “woosh woosh” sound when you get up close to them.

We drove to Stornoway, which is where the ferry left from.  We got there a bit early, so decided to go and check out this castle.  Honestly, I don’t really remember much of the importance of the castle…  I had to pee SO BAD.  And apparently baby Cole (that’s gonna be his name!) thought it would be a good idea to use my bladder as a trampoline.

But I did get a few pictures of the castle.

And thus ended our trip to the Isle of Lewis.

Oh, except for one more funny story.  While we were on the ferry, we were sitting across from this older gentleman that apparently reminded Auntie Julia of her dad.  So she took a picture of him while he was sleeping.  I thought that was kind of funny.

On a side note, Alanna just named her stuffed kitty, “Hosawosa.”

Here are a few snaps of the kids from July… they are getting SO big.

I got a fun new point and shoot camera for my birthday, which I took this next one with.  The wide angle cracks me up.  And yes, that is my belly…

which, was getting quite large by this point.  Though the size doesn’t hold a candle to the size of my belly these days.  For real, ya’ll… it’s big.

The wide angle doesn’t help on the depiction of its size.  Or maybe that’s just my excuse.

So, I bet you’re thinking, “Hope probably hasn’t updated her blog, because she’s had her baby.”

No, the baby is still taking up residence in my body.  I’m thinking labor day would be a great day for him to be born.

So, I our last day, we decided to go to the sandy beach that we took pictures of on the first day (they’re down there… the ones with the hole in the clouds).  The weather was most definitely more Scottish the day we decided to go.  But we were determined so we did it.

Let’s just say we got a little exfoliation from the sand. It was very windy and quite rainy.

It was still pretty though… I knew that I’d want these to be black and white before I even got them off of my card.

All black and white, except for these.  I got a few more shells to add to my collection at home (I’ve got some from all of the beaches that I’ve visited in Scotland).

The name of the beach is called “Uig.”  Prounced, “Ew-ig.”  Kinda funny.

Apparently there were some viking chessmen that were found here.  Pretty cool if you ask me. Here’s a replica.

A slightly larger replica.

Somewhere around here, I got some peat for Auntie Julia.  She was still talking about it.  Still. Don’t worry, I was starting to make fun of her for it.  While we were at the B&B, she was talking with Andy (the owner), about, you guessed it, peat.  Only to discover that each person on Lewis that buys a house also gets an little bit of land with peat to dig and burn for the winter.  Julia was THRILLED.

So, you can only imagine her delight when Andy offered to take her up to his peat bank and dig some of her own.

Unfortunately, time did not allow for peat digging.  Darn. I haven’t been able to sleep well since we left, knowing that I’ll never have the opportunity to watch Auntie Julia dig peat.

Anyway, we were driving along and she was talking about peat.

(No lie, we talked SO MUCH ABOUT DIRT).

I happened to see a big pile of peat on the side of the road, so I actually got out of the car and got her a clump of it to take home.  So yes, we drove around with a clump of dirt in the car.  And yes, Auntie Julia actually took it back to Florida with her.

I told her that she was probably going to have to smuggle it across the border in her bra.  You know, I think she would have really done it if the need had presented itself.

Anyway

We stopped off at this lovely little spot before our next stop.

Our next stop was the Calanais standing stones.  There were a lot of standing stones.  I’m glad that we went on the day we did, because the day following was the summer solstice.  When all of the crazies come out.

By crazies I mean the celtic worshiping people.  Some of them were already there, camping in tents on the hill with the standing stones.  You’ll never guess what they were burning…

PEAT.  Auntie Julia quite liked the smell.  I said, “Auntie Julia, that smells like burning people.” Yuck.

As well, I heard my first Scottish conversation in Gaelic.  Like, for real, they were just talking in Gaelic.

Our next stop was the Broch of Carloway.

This may have been my favorite place that we saw. To get to walk in something that old (built 1st century BC!!!) and imagine people living there, was so cool.

We were cold up there (yes, cold in June), so we were happy to take shelter in the Broch.  There were a few rooms only accessible by doors about 3 feet high.  Yes, I did squeeze my pregnant bum into said doors.  And yes, Auntie Julia did get a picture of that. And yes, I’m quite afraid of where those pictures may end up after all of the teasing about Auntie Julia’s fascination with peat.

The view up there was beautiful.

The view of the broch from the bottom of the hill was also quite nice.

That night, as very typical for this fair land, the sun came out right at sunset.  It’s like the sun likes to tease you and come out just before it gets dark, after it has been rainy and windy all day long.

But, it was gorgeous.  These were taken just outside of our B&B at around 11:00 I believe.

Only a little bit more of Lewis to come!!

Have you heard about PEAT???  Auntie Julia LOVES PEAT.  Even before we got to the Isle of Lewis, peat came up in conversation.  Never heard of peat?  Neither had I. Here’s a link for you:  peat.  Funny that the picture on wikipedia is of peat in Lewis.

Anyway, prior to us taking the trip, we were driving along and somehow it came up that someone found a mummified body in some peat.  How this came up?  No idea.

So, we’re driving around Lewis and lo and behold, Auntie Julia says, “Hey, I think that’s peat?!”  She was very excited.  I mean, way more excited than anyone should ever be about dirt.
There will be more about peat later.

On our first full day in Lewis, we saw some really amazing sights.  It was SO pretty.  And we were super thankful for the sunshine.

As typical for our little adventures together, there were plenty of sheep jokes.  I do believe that Auntie Julia said, “she’s a b-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-d girl.”  Oh Auntie Julia…

Next stop… a blackhouse.  It was neat.

I could have been a giant 150 years ago.

Next stop was the most northern point of Lewis.  It was definitely worth the drive.  So pretty!

Julia about. gave. me. a. heart. attack.

We came across another furry friend.  I love highland cows.  They’re so hippie.  I’m pretty sure they’re wearing birkenstocks under all that hair.

The kids are touchingmeeverywherewiththeirstuffedanimals.  And it is driving me insane.  So I’m going to go and do something else now. 

So, while Auntie Julia was here, we just had to go and take a little trip.  Last year, we went to the Isle of Mull.  Which I’ve been meaning to blog that trip.  Yeah…

We headed up to the Isle of Lewis.  In… you guessed it… the pouring rain.  We drove up to Ullapool, and then took a 3 hour ferry ride to Lewis.  I definitely needed to take some pictures of some boatish type things.

Where we drove our car up onto the ferry.

Leaving Ullapool.

Lookie, blue sky!

Lewis.

And then came the rainbows.  We saw like a gazillion of them.  Maybe not a gazillion of them.  More like 5.

Rainbow 1 from the ferry.

Rainbows 2 and 3 on the ride to our B&B on Lewis.

Here’s an interesting factoid for you.  When you see a double rainbow, the one on the outside has its colors reversed.  Consider yourself that much smarter. 

Rainbow 4.

Rainbow 5.

Rainbow 5 with rainbow 6.

Us taking pictures of the rainbows.

Annnnnddddd…. a really bad attempt at a panoramic.  I’m sure you’ll understand that trying to make this look any better is near impossible with the childrenlaundrycleaningfeedinglaundryplayinginstructinglaundry, etcetcetcetcetcetcetc.

We drove up to our B&B, which took us about an hour and a half (!).  It was totally worth it though… we wanted to stay somewhere remote.

We got to the B&B, the owner stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the size of my bump.  Which, I looked further along than I actually was.  He looked at me and said, “I don’t do blood.”  Then, when he was showing us our room and bathroom, he pointed to the tub and said, “It’s nice and big if you want to take a bath.”  To which I replied, “What, are you calling me fat?”  Ah, Andy.  He was a good guy. 

I am going to stick to my word, and actually post what we did in June, because we had a LOT of fun.

Auntie Julia came to visit us for the third year in a row (woo hoo!!!!).  We LOVE having Auntie Julia around.  She definitely adds extra flare to the family.    More about that later.

I wanted to take Auntie Julia to some highland games.  A lot of the little towns have their own highland games and subsequent gala day during the summer.  They all happen on different weekends, so we looked up which games were still to come and ended up going to Glamis Caslte for their games.  Once we got there, I realized that we had been there before.  The kids were really little.  And if I werent so big fat pregnant, I would go upstairs and get the hard drive and show some of those pictures to you.  But I’m not.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day to go and see some highland games.  We were very excited.  We got some great seats and enjoyed the sunshine.

I mean LOOK at that sunshine.  What were our retinas to do with all of that light???

The pipe bands started their rounds.  Which I love love love.

This next one really really cracks me up.  I think that it needs a caption.  If you’ve got one, drop in the comments section.  Maybe you’ll win something fun.  But don’t get your hopes up. 

Some more pipers:

It’s at this point that the skies opened up and the rains.  They came.  And they came hard.  And I mean unusually hard for Scotland.  We rarely ever get just all out downpours, but this.  This was a downpour.  And for extra fun, there was a HUGE thunder storm that accompanied said downpour. Literally, I think that I’ve heard maybe, MAYBE 3 thunderstorms in the past 4 years that we’ve lived here.

So, we ran for shelter under this vendor’s tent.  They were very kind to let us stand under there, as long as we pushed the water off the top of the tent.  Which, I will say, we were really good at.

We waited

and waited

and waited

and waited

for the rain to pass over, like everyone else was.

After about an hour or so, we realized that it just wasn’t going to stop.

So we decided to call it quits along with everyone else.

Nora made herself comfortable.

I left Auntie Julia with the girls and went to find the car. It was quite the hike away.  And I will say that my belly was not covered as my rain coat wouldn’t zip around at that point.  I got absolutely soaked.  I pulled the car closer to the tent, got out to show everyone where I was.  In the process, stepped in a puddle about 4 inches deep full of water and saw dust. Water and saw dust and my rocket dogs…. they don’t mix let me tell you.

Anyway, we made it back to the car, stripped the girls down since they were soaked too.  And went home.  Dumb rain.

Dear Blog,

I’m sorry that I’ve neglected you the past few months.  Don’t take it personally. There’s a lot that I’ve wanted to get done before the new baby gets here.

I’ve caught up on a year and half of scrapbooking, de-girled the baby room, which included sewing all of the bedding ( don’t worry, blog, I’ll show you some pictures), made a Blurb book for all of our family photos of 2008, started the nesting process around the house, potty trained Nora, oh, and yeah, I’ve grown a human.  Who is getting rather large.

Blog, I do hope that we can hang out more often now that I’m getting too massive to move around and do things.

Love,

Hope

Here’s a brief recap of the March through May.

We spent March and April in the states.  It was glorious!  The sunshine!  The food!

I got to see this lovely lady.  I miss her… 

We stayed at Adam’s grandparents’ condo (SUCH a blessing!) while we were back.  I got this shot one evening as a storm was rolling in.

We came back to Scotland at the beginning of May.  The girls woke up on mother’s day morning BOTH barfing simultaneously in their beds. Lovely.  They passed out on the floor of the room (I’m so mean, I wouldn’t even let them stay on their beds, but hey, I put padding on the floor) for 4 hours.  I’m not gonna lie, it was kind of nice… I got half the day to myself!

We’ve had an AMAZING summer so far.  It started out on this day when we went outside for a walk and realized that we didn’t need coats.  Look at these cute sisters!

Nora started potty training in May.  The idea was that we’d get it done before the baby arrives, and I thought that she’d do well given that she’s so verbal and that she doesn’t like messes at all.  Well, she’s done well with pee, but poop, that’s another story.  We’re working on it though.

Speaking of verbal, this shirt fits Nora’s personality to perfection.

We went over to this park one day and fed the ducks.  There were some vicious geese there though, so we ended doing more walking than feeding the ducks.

After we got home, I slept for about 2 hours.  You’d think that I had just run a marathon!  This pregnancy has been the most tiring of all of them.  But, I’m not going to go into details, because I don’t want to complain!

Since we’ve lived in Scotland, I measure summer by the number of days that we can sit outside and the girls can be in the wading pool in bathing suits.  Last year, that was 1/2 of a day.  Really.  It only got warm enough for 1/2 of a day to whip out the wading pool.  This summer?  More than SEVEN days!  Bring on the global warming I say!

This is Nora’s surprised face.  She’s quite fond of it.

I even made sweet tea on one of those sweltering days (haha, it only got up to about 78-80 degrees).

So, there ya have it!  I’ll be back with June later!  June was an exciting month. 

I got to take pictures of Caroline while we were back in the states and just now finally got to finish editing them!  She’s is SUCH A CUTIE.  I just want to EAT her cheeks.  Is that okay???

This one’s still my favorite though:

Oh, I just love her. 

Thanks, Kelly and Clayton, for giving me the opportunity to photograph her!

We’re sitting outside and I don’t have a coat on.  Which is amazing, because we’ve had our heat on since we got back from the states.  The kids are playing. Alanna gets mad that Nora is not obeying her will, so she runs to the side of the house crying.  We don’t get up.  Nora is jumping on the little trampoline that we have.  Did I mention that I don’t have a coat on???  She’s being so cute saying, “Look at me, I’m jumping high mommy!!”  I turn to Adam and say, “I wish we had a little camera video camera combo, we’ve not gotten videos of Nora hardly at all since she was born.” Alanna is still crying at the side of the house. Nora turns around, looks at us, and pees in her boots.  The end.