Tuesday morning

I took this photo when we were just about ready to leave for Springfield/Eugene. Can you make out Holly's wee face peaking over the top of the truck? She's heading for her holiday home where she was spending Saturday night with all her little buddies.
No doggies allowed at the hotel :(

Short legs meant I was in the back of the truck for the journey, with the boys, and Ian was in Lucy's seat in the front,with Lucy sitting in the little, make shift seat which I think is usually the arm rest for the front seats.
It was snug! :)

Half way to our destination, we took a comfort break at a bagle shop - ever noticed how my blogs always manage to include food? Why is that? I don't know . . .
Anyway, I had a BLT bagle with cream cheese which was lovely! I'm not usually a bagle fan but maybe I'll give them a second chance :)

AT THE FESTIVAL

My artistic shot. What do you think?

It was fun sitting below the canopy listening to the music and trying the different beers.



Here's Cade showing you a frozen chocolate banana . . . I tried it frozen and then again when it had defrosted and much preferred the latter :)

And here are Ian and Braeden listening to the music .

 

I didn't, but there were food stalls all around to tempt you and Scott and the boys filled up on tacos.
There's only so much you can eat :( and my bagle was more than enough to keep me going till dinner time :(

In the evening after dinner, we split up and while Ian and I went back to the festival, Lucy, Scott and the boys headed for a sports shop called Cabelas and look what Braeden caught!!

Lucy didn't come away empty handed either. . .

Check out the new footwear. She says they are ultra comfortable!

Cade found a big cuddly brown trout to bring home (I'll take a photo of it to show you later) but poor Scott left empty handed :(

Friday night

All about 'it'?
All about what, I hear you ask.
I know, I said I would tell you all about it but I hadn't actually started telling you so you don't know what I'm talking about. . .but I do.
I was going to tell you about our trip to The Family Fun Park in Medford on Cade's birthday. Ian was the one who did all the work. I was the chronicler.
With two cameras - Ian's and mine.

I'm thinking about sending this photo to Persil to see if they would like to use it for their whiter than white adverts

In the park, there were three outdoor activities:
bumper boats
crazy golf
go carts
And inside there were electronic games machines.
Outdoor activities? We can cope.
Indoor activities? Nightmare!!!!!! These places are always dark. Your ears are assaulted by dings and dongs and your brain is fried by flashing lights. . . you can tell how I feel about them?


We decided to spend time out of doors first.
Go carts . . .

Waiting for the flag . . .

C'mon Granda! hands on the steering wheel, foot on the pedal! Let's get going!

And here come the leaders of the pack. . . well actually the only folk on the track!

Bumper boats were fun too!

Ian, you're squirting in the wrong direction. Turn round!

Braeden quickly learned to use the controls after heading into the fray in a circular motion :)

And Cade?

Look out Granda, here he comes!!!

The battle over, the brave trio were soaked to the skin.

Luckily it was time for lunch and there were plenty of picnic tables out of doors to sit at and dry out :)

After lunch, armed with a cup of tokens, we entered the Nightmare.
And the boys loved it!
Here goes. . .

Phew that was exhausting wasn't it?

Thursday evening

Ian and I are home alone.
Lucy is at football practice with Braeden.
Scott is at football practice with Cade.
The little foorballers wear these cute little tops that look like string vests, baggy with with sleeves. I'll get a photo and show you.


Lucy is now on holiday from now till we leave, another week and Scott will be joining us too!
Well actually till two days after we leave . . . Scott says :)

Yesterday was Cade's birthday and Ian and I had agreed to take the boys to the Family Fun Centre. . .

However, I left this entry to take Holly for a walk and she ran me ragged so i'll tell you all about it tomorrow :)

Tuesday afternoon

Two o'clock . . . hot.
Lucy and Scott are at work.
Cade is in his room playing with his xbox.
Braeden is watching some cartoons and eating a lemonade ice lolly in the living room and Ian is sleeping on a lounger outside.
Nothing is stirring. Not even the dog. She's lying beside me out for the count.
So what better time to pop some holiday photos onto the blog. Let's go back and cover Saturday :)

SATURDAY MORNING

This one was taken at the farmer's market. Lucy, Braeden and I took a wee wander round it in the morning. That's homemade lemonade Braeden has in his cup. Gee, it was so sour!

It reminded me of the lemonade Lucy used to make when she was a wee girl from Jif Lemon juice. . . it made you shudder too!
Sorry Lucy :)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

Cade's birthday party

Here comes the cake! 

The candles are fighting a losing battle against the gentle breeze.

 Lucy tries once again to light the candles. She's not doing too well. That gentle breeze keeps blowing them out again. Note for future - have the blowing out of the candles indoors :)

 So here she goes again. Give the girl her due, she's determined to light those candles!

 And still determined . . . 

Quick Cade! Blow out the few that are still burning. We're losing the will to live here!

This little cutie trying to climb onto the table below is the youngest member of the Lesina clan. 

Meet Lincoln! 

Second son of Scott's sister Laramie.

And here's first born - Davies. 

He's about four months younger than Luca.

That's Laramie you can see at the opposite side of the table to Ian. 

You can see Bill Scott's dad, in most of the photos above and if you look closely you can make out Laramie's husband Vic, but I seem to have cut Karen, Scott's mum and Cindy, her sister out of all these photos! 

It's just the angle. So here's one that they just about appear in. . . 

Cindy is closer to the camera on the right of the photo and Karen is sitting on Cindy's right. Note for future re action shots - often difficult to get a good look at folk!

Monday morning

We made it!

Aberdeen to Grants Pass. . . actually, the journey wasn't as bad as I'd prepared myself for!

Ross - poor wee lad that he  - and I hope I can use the past tense here - was, had come down with a 'shivery shaky, muscles achy' bug on Wednesday last, and he had volunteered to take us to the airport at five o'clock on the Thursday morning!!

"I'll manage," he'd said when Ian had suggested we should create a plan B, and he did :) Always knew that stubborn streak would come in handy some day :)

The flight to London was uneventful. The cooked breakfast of sausage, bacon and scrambled egg being squeezed in between taking off and landing. 

And the big flight?

We had really good seats. Front row in our compartment meant that we had more leg room than anybody. I could stretch my legs straight out in front of me. 

Overnight in Los Angelos. We set every alarm we could for six to make sure we got up in time for our flights on Friday and in the end we were both wide awake by five having spent the night waking up, telling ourselves it was still too early to get up and lying there willing ourselves to 'go to sleeeep again!'

But, I am so upset. . . I did it again :(

The song says, I left my heart in San Francisco, yes?

Well, guess who left her coat in Los Angelos?

Yep. Unbelievable isn't it?

Numpty now has a coat in Sydney and another in Los Angelos!

I think I left it over the back of the seat I sat on to have breakfast in the airport.

Ian has filled in a lost property form on line for me but the form states they will only be in touch if the coat is handed in and so far we've heard nothing :( 

Anyway, thumbs up for Portland airport. Do not be afraid to land there en route to somewhere else. It's bright and airy and has a really good eating place, Gustav's. Excellent German sausages and tasty beers. Dare I say, we had a nice time there?

Yes, we did!

So here we are! And here is Braeden!

A little aside? I have already put on three pounds since I got here. But don't worry. I factored this in before I came. I still have another two pounds to play with :)

GARY in the SEVENTIES continued . . .

Excuse the fingers at the left side of the photo!! I didn't notice them till just now - oops :) Sorry!

BROXBOURNE, HERTFORDSHIRE

-about 1976/77.

Lucy, Gary, me and Wee Annie who lived across the street. We're totally absorbed in a Ladybird book. The publisher of the day for little children. Anybody who had children at this time possessed a library of these little books.

I think we lost ours at the time of the fire :(

Gary, you were the world's nuttiest reader. You would have had me read to you every waking hour and you got so familiar with all your little books, you would stop me immediately if I tried to leave any thing out!

I got to know them so well that I didn't need the book. I could recite them while my mind was busy elsewhere. Mind you, on reflection, was that why you started getting me to read them from back to front!!

The big bug glasses are still a feature - they're awful, aren't they. I will never buy 'up to the minute fashion statements' in glasses ever again!!

BENODET, BRITTANY

1978

Look at that lovely blue sky! I think we had booked the holiday with Eurocamp. Camping in France was all the rage when we were young and because we were living in the South East of England, France was just a hop skip and a jump away.

Do you remember this holiday at all, Gary? You would have been just turning three then. Lucy talks about remembering the journey across on the overnight ferry. Was that Southhampton to St Malo?

My memory is of croissants for breakfast on the ferry with a view of France bathed in sunshine layed out before us. Lucy's memory is of devastation and tears when she thought we weren't going to get onto the ferry when the queue for the ferry started moving forward . . . but Granda Stewart's car refused to start!!

We were pushed out of the line to let the rest of the cars drive onto the ferry and a mechanic was called.

Relief . . . the car started and we finally joined the other cars on the car deck but despair again when we had to be pushed off at the other side? Am I remembering correctly, Ian.

The car managed to get going again but we had to take it to a little country garage and use your higher french to explain what the problem was.

It was a lovely holiday.




Here we are sitting in a cafe enjoying the traditional fare of the region - crepes! Yum yum :)
I was on a diet as usual and regret refusing to eat more than one crepe at a serving. I'm sure everyone else would have but were put off by my reluctance :(

Eight and a half stone. . . and I still felt fat :(
Pathetic isn't it.

BROXBOURNE 

1979

And here we are at the end of the decade . . .you're almost four, Gary, and there's wee Kelly with the familiar glakit look of the newly born.
Those are pyjamas, by the way, that you're wearing. We certainly got our money's worth from them - they just kept stretching as you grew!!

This photo was taken in the May of 1979 and by the September, we were settled in our house in Edinburgh.

Saturday afternoon

I'm back . . .

9th July! My goodness it's been a long time since I wrote anything.
But here we go. . .
I started to scan some photos of Gary intending to put some on my blog in time for his birthday. But our scanner only gives you 300 pixels by 300 pixels so they were rubbish :(

However, yesterday, it suddenly came to me . . . Mark - Scott's cousin, made copies of some photos for me donkey's year's ago. And he had photographed them and uploaded them onto the computer - so I tried that! And it worked - well maybe not brilliant but definitely much clearer that when they were scanned. So . . .

Happy Birthday Gary!

b.1975 weighing in at 9lbs 9oz!

When Gary was a baby, he had very little hair, so we started affectionately calling him 'wee baldy Gary'. Over time this was changed to wee Garybaldy - note the similarity to Garibaldi! And it stuck :)
Wee cutie, isn't he!

Here he is with his big sister and his Granny Stewart. They're in the park in Broxbourne. Ian's mum and dad were down visiting us with their caravan that year.

I loved Gary in that hat. It had a huge pom pom on it which you can't actually see in this photo . . . wait a minute . . .

This one is a bit better. You can just about make it out. 

This second photo of Gary in 'the hat' was taken in Hoddesdon. The bigger town next door to Broxbourne. It had a Sainsbury's supermarket which I used to walk to once a week to get my big shop. Ah happy days.
I thought I looked really cool in those glasses :) Of their time, yes?

I've got some of you in your middle years too, Gary! Watch this space :)