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.