Edzell day.

Yesterday we came home from church and got changed, packed up a lunch of turkey and ham sarnies, crisps and a bottle of shloer and headed out for a Sunday drive. We went up to Edzell.

We stopped at the shakkin brig ...
On the way back to the car dad pulled out his flint and knife and showed us how to start a fire with some bark he had in his pocket.
Stuart got to go first and took a long time to get his fire started.
Then it was my turn...
Look how happy I made my mum! Dad even said "oh, she's got a good action going on." I took a fraction of the time Stuart took to get his going :DThen we went off to Edzell castle which is a pile of rubble really. I didn't even take a picture and dad didn't even stop the car. We kept going and ended up at a little graveyard...
Just down the road from there there's a little bridge that goes over the river.
It was closed, probably because of how frightening it was.
See?

Then back to the grape we went and onward...
We went away on to the Brown and White Caterthuns.

And in true Stronach tradition we had a picnic in the car...
We ended the day in Edzell at Martin and Sharon's where we gatecrashed their dinner and chatted til it got very dark.

Drum Castle.

Emma and Niels left this afternoon :( That means we're about half way through our trip now.

Today we went on a trip up to Drum Castle after Emma and Niels left. It's somewhere I've wanted to go for a while now and so it was nice to have Stuart be a part of it as well as my mum and dad. The castle is in amazing condition and is said to have one of the oldest intact towers in Scotland (13th century)...

December 26th: Boddin

Family Christmas pictures.

So there's a stupendous amount of family drama going on that's stopping me from getting a full family photo this year - hopefully it's not my last chance to get one.
Apart from the drama things have been good - although there's always sadness and grrr lulling in the back of my mind over said drama. We're going to leave here with half an experience and it'll be something I'll always regret. I miss spending time with my whole family. I miss my Cambi - I've seen him 3 times since being here and one of those times was as he was being taken out of the house as we were arriving. Oh well. I've learned a lesson though and now I need to move on and control myself from typing my thoughts... blah blah. I hope everyone else had a great Christmas.
I really am glad I got home this year. It's been nice to reconnect with Emma and spend time with my parents.
Although the break has been good I've been quite anxious about this next semester, our last in Rexburg. I'm looking forward to getting home and getting on with the next chapter and settling down that little bit sooner. Seeing the changes here at home has helped me re-evaluate what's important and make some new goals for the next year.

Seasons Greetings:

From Laura and Andew.

Singstarring...

Welcome to my town...

This happened again:

Mischief managed!

Last night Stuart, dad and I went out to tinsel a friends house (hi Martin & Sharon!) before they got home from work. We loaded the car with Christmas baubles, tinsel, ladders and a few other bits and bobs. When we got there we realised the trees my dad intended to decorate were far too tall so we settled for the bushes instead. We went all out and decked the bushes with our chosen decorations.

Then we realised I'd messed up and forgotten an important part of our decor. We sped home and grabbed it and my mum to join in the high-jinxing.

Turns out I messed up when I was making the special decoration and we got in a bit of a fankle.

Dang it.

We got it sorted eventually though.
Then we got mum home on time for her work night out. We ordered Indian food for tea, gobbled it up and settled down and chatted when there came a knock on the back door. I said, "haha, that's probably Martin." and lo and behold it was *pats self on back* Martin and Sharon came in telling us about the long day they'd had and how they drove straight from work for the ward carol singing night that was cancelled and so they thought they'd come visit for a bit. We chatted and worked hard at consealing our mischievious ways. They left and mum phoned for dad to come pick her up from Roo's Leap, the restaurant she was at. He headed out the door and came back shouting "We've been tinseled!" WHAT?!
Mmm, yep. Martin and Sharon went home had a laugh and some dinner. Gathered up all the decorations - keeping the sweeties - and brought them back to us. They went round the front of the house and did their bit then came round the back and tricked us...

It was the fastest return prank I've ever witnessed!

Candies:

I have a funny video of Cameron singing but blogger won't upload it and neither will youtube so I need to work that out.
This morning I forced myself out of bed at 9am because we've been a bit jet lagged and have been sleeping in til about 11am in the morning so it was time to get that in check. Hopefully it worked.
We went round to Beki's for lunch today. She bought us a Candies - a sandwich from a shop in town. That's something Stuart's missed a lot. Nothing compares to Candies.

We hung out, chatted and laughed quite a bit. I also gained a bit of an education - a bit embarrassing actually, I'm not the brightest person as I might have thought I was.

The babies went for a nap and then woke up just so I could play with them. Willow still isn't too sure of us. I need to find a baby picture of me to compare to Daisy but here she is today...Here's the Willow munchkin standing all by herself. She can walk but is choosing not to right now. She's so skinny, she looks like a proper little girl standing there. I love it.

Cambi was at school and we had to leave before he got back, sadly, very sadly but hopefully we'll get to see him soon. I really miss him.

I need to dash. We've been invited out to dinner tonight so I'll blog more later.

The Chillins:

We were able to spend a bit of time with Beki and her babies last night. It wasn't nearly long enough and I hope we get to spend much more time with them over the next few weeks. Here's some pictures of the cuteness and festivities.

This is Beki putting up her black Christmas tree. It was the only tree she could get her hands on. It started off looking really quite frightening but it turned out to be funny/quirky. It fit.

This is Wendy and Willow. Wendy's my oldest sister. Willow is quite a serious baby. It took her a long time before she warmed up to me. She really looks like a doll.

This is Daisy - my twin. She's a super fast crawler and is possibly the heaviest baby I've ever held. When she crawls it sounds like a stampede. She warmed up to me really quickly. She also eats everything and enjoys sharing. At one point she was trying to eat my watch and as I pulled my hand away from her mouth she might have actually been dangling from my watch with her teeth.

This is Stuart and his wee pal, Ozzers.

This, ofcourse is my Cambi AKA the cleverest child on the planet. He brought me his globe to show me where he's going to go someday. He was also showing me where I live (Idaho), where Emma used to live (South Korea) and where she lives now (Denmark) and his house in Scotland. He was telling me the names of the sea's and showing me where I could find Queen Cobra's (India)... He's amazing.

That's that for now. We had an adventure tonight that I'll have to post about tomorrow. I did change the setting on the video below of Cameron from private so everyone can see it. Take a look and tell me how cute he is and how cool my accent is ;)

I hope you're all enjoying the Christmas season. I'm loving being home. I've missed it :)

Beki's reaction:

Mum texted Beki and told her she had a surprise for her but Beki's phone is broken so Dad decided to text Wendy to pass on the message to Beki. Sadly, Dad didn't know that all mum had said was "Beki, I have a surprise for you." and he told her that Laura was here. So, we didn't get to surprise Beki afterall but she did surprise us by turning up here at 9.30 in the morning on our first day and woke us up...

More to come. I have to sort some pictures and upload a video for you all.

Cambi's reaction.

We went over to Beki's today to see her and to surprise the wee man when he got home from school. His reaction was so funny. Before the door was even open he was saying "hullo" to Stuart, cool as a cucumber. He's still a little darling still and I could just gobble him right up but I won't seeing as he says he tastes like pork, and I'm not such a big pork fan. Love him.

The twinners are both insanely cute too but I'll blog and post pictures of them tomorrow :) Don't be a stranger; do visit again :D

Home sweet drizzly home!

We're in Scotland for Christmas! Surpriiiiise!

We started our journey on Friday evening by taking the shuttle down to Salt Lake. We got in earlier than we were told. Shabang & co. came to collect us and took good care of us for the night and then fed and delivered us to the airport on Saturday morning where we breezed through security and everything and settled in for a short wait where we watched the snow storm blow in - longestsentenceever...

Then off to JFK we went. We had a 6 hour layover so we went to get some dinner. We went to Chili's and I ate too much but we had time enough to get comfy on our wait. The flight from New York to Edinburgh kicked my trash. It was about 6 and a half hours which wasn't quite enough to get snuggled down for sleep with the 2 meals they fed us and then the inflight entertainment... We got in to Ediburgh at about 3am Rexburg time, 10am Scotland time. Customs was easy peasy apart from the maze they had set up for us to get to the customs agent... I won the race though.
Scott turned up about half an hour after we got in - Stuart had enough time to eat an ice lolly, go to the loo and email home.
After a snuggly reunion with my biggest brother we headed off. We stopped to do some bird watching on the way to get Vicki - Scott's wife.

Here are two tits (that should get me a lot of hits on google!), two long tailed tits to be exact. It's quite uncommon to see two together like this...

I gobbled up as much fresh air as I could. Yum yum.

We got a milkshake and picked up Vicki and headed home. Scott and Vicki drove round the front of the house and Stuart and I crept around the back. It turned out that we'd beaten the folks home from church. B0oyah! That hadn't even been concidered seriously. Dang it. We unloaded the car and took our cases upstairs and then hid out in mum and dad's room because we expected dad to come up and get changed.
This is my view from the bed. It's the lamp shade but it looks like a cocktail umbrella I think...
The parental unit came home 45 minutes later and never came up to get changed... we sat for a hour listening to them all chat downstairs... our plan failing miserably. We were starting to fall asleep when I decided to make a huge thump to get some attention. Dad came up to see. He checked the bathroom and backroom and then spotted our feet in their room. He popped his head in and looked a bit surprised then let us know he was getting ready to batter whoever it was that had come into his home and was hiding in his bedroom, waiting for their escape...

Mum followed him...

Mum made lasagne for dinner and Andrew came over.
After everyone left dad got festive...

and told mum what he wanted for Christmas:

PS. Mum said that she had been telling everyone she was expecting us on a Sunday or a Tuesday so she had an inclination we'd be there but the longer they had been sitting with Scott and Vicki chatting the more surpised she was to see us then. Scott was wondering "why the hell [we] didn't come down sooner" since we'd sat up there about an hour after mum and dad got home... Mum was surprised and that's what counts. Dad was surprised too but you couldn't really tell by his face.

It's un-natural:

Ew. Is this the coldest place on Earth? I think so.

10p Mix-up:

Well, what's been going on in Rexburg, you might ask. We woke up yesterday morning to find a thick, bright blanket of snow on the ground. The first proper snow of the season. It's taken a while to get here this year but it's here. Although it's not being snowing constantly like it usually does. So weird but that's ok. I hate the snow. We have some travelling to do this month so hopefully the snow'll play nice for a while.

We did another photoshoot yesterday. The theme was Snow Pirates. You can see the pictures here. It's so much fun to do these. Yesterday was stinkin cold though so we didn't get as many pictures and because I'm living in fear of getting sick these days. This semester I've had 2 lingering colds and I've broken my puking record. I've thrown up TWICE this semester. It had been 6 years since I'd physically been sick and then to do it twice this semester. No thank you.

This is also Finals week and so far Stuart's done really well. He got 100% on the first part of his human anatomy exam. That's my boy! Let's hope it continues that way. I don't want to have to disown him.

We're keeping very busy these days. I think this week might be one of the busiest yet.

3 silly girls:

Photographs.

I didn't link to it before because I thought that the blog was private but now it isn't! So if you're in the mood for a treat head over to Megan's photography blog to witness some of the best pictures you've seen in your life :)

I got my pitchur tooked...

changing.

I'm turning my digital scrap blog into a digital scrap and photography blog. I'm not sure why I didn't do that before but there you go. I'm working on my photoshop techniques right now and rediscovering pictures and memories. I love it. I love that I come from a family that has billions of photos and a mother who loves/loved (do you still love it, mum?) taking them.

Anyway, take a look over at the scrapblog.

The baby bunch...

Remember all my pregnant friends? All 20-something of them? Well, things are starting to happen...

1. Rachel F
2. Rachel P
3. Jo'est
4. Susan - Baby boy: Edward
5. Kathryn
6. Maryann - Baby boy: James
7. Lacey - Baby boy: Tristan
8. Bethany
9. Keri
10. Mandy
11. Kara
12. Tami
13. Shannon - Baby boy: Romeo
14. Beki - Baby boy: Ozzy
15. Beth - Baby boy: Jaxon
16. Jen
17. Sandra - Baby boy: Hadley
18. Katrina
19. Angela - Baby girl: Angela Elizabeth
20. Stephanie

Oh Edward...

Yesterday I made this for dinner and it turned out soooo good. I did add a few things to it ie. a splodge of minced garlic, a splishy-splash of worcestershire sauce, an onion cut into wedges... It was really good! I sliced the roast when it was done then put it back into the juices so it could absorb some more. Normally I really don't condone dry meat on a plate but this stuff really did suck up the juices and didn't need gravy. Deeee-lectible!You need to try it.
We've been eating a tremendous amount of salad and other ruffage since Stuart learned more about the colon in his human anatomy class. He won't tell me what exactly but he has me scared silly. So, be a pal and eat your greens! Ok?!

Late last night I heard some rustling at the front door and said to Stuart, "hey you, boy! There's someone out there." and he said, "no, there isn't." and I said, "Yes there is." and shook my fist at him. So he got up and opened the front door to find... - you already know about our experiences with opening the door late at night, right?... anyway, back to last night... Now, I have heart attacked so many people, SO many times and this is the first time it's ever happened back to me! I need to do it more often to people. I felt all kinds of warm and fuzzy. It was pretty funny because one of the hearts say "Oh Edward" which I found very funny but another of them said "Oops I did it again!" which sort of freaked me out because about an hour before this happened I was watching "Britney: For the record" on MTV. If I didn't know who it was before then I certainly knew now. Window peeper! ;) I went out and had a laugh and then said to Stuart, "no cookies. Too bad." AND then I went out later and there were cookies! The heart attackers came back quieter than the first time and left cookies because Stuart must have scared them away before they left me the cookies I was praying for.

That's something I've been missing/will miss about this place. It used to be a rare occurance to open the front door and there not be a treat. One day I was going in and out checking the mail and taking the bins out and stuff - I opened the door three times and each time there was something nice on the door step. Those were the days.

It's the final countdoooown...

Christmas is fast approaching and I have a list as long as my arm of things I need to get done *before* then. We finished our Christmas shopping last night and did our final grocery shop of the year and made a list of the meals we'll be eating...

I have various little projects I need to finish. I think those are the things that will drive me batty - the little finishing touches. I need to get into gear and get them done... I'm going to do that right now!


Things here are getting pretty exciting!

Happy December!

Don't wait too long to snatch up some hair candy from my etsy for Christmas. You know you want to!