Friday teatime

It's been threatening to rain for most of the afternoon but hasn't quite managed it yet which is good because I think Ian said he was going to try and play a round of golf this afternoon.

What have I been up to? Nothing much.

My new dressing gown arrived this morning along with my new swimming tops - I bought two new ones for my holidays :)

And I've put on 3 pounds in the last fornight according to the lady at Weightwatchers :(
Mind you, I'm not surprised. I drank copious amounts of wine last week end - just because - I wasn't out anywhere. And yesterday I didn't go swimming and I ate nothing but scones and cake till Ian came home and I had to make him sensible food.

Kelly said, that she'd read somewhere that having a blow out is good because it increases your metabolic rate which tends to slow if you are on a strict eating regime and I believe her!!

So here I sit at the dining room table typing with my 'toby talls' because the 'peter pointer' on my right hand is sore for some reason. I asked Ian, this morning, to have a look and check if anything had slid in between the finger and the nail - that's what it feels like, but he shook his head and said, "Oh, I can't see anything that small.!"
To be honest, I was asking him because I can't see anything that small!!
Things are bad in this house :(

But here's a cheery photo. I can't remember what year it was taken.
How old does Ross look? That should give us a clue.
We're in Spain on a wee holiday!! :) And we are in the resort where we bought our timeshare. So it was after our 25th wedding anniversary which was in 1997.

And there's my mum, God love her. If she'd lived as long as her own mother, she's still be alive! My granny was a good bit over ninety when she died. I haven't actually got many pictures of her. . . just memories.
This was during my 'wash and go' period. I'm talking about my hair!! Wash, mousse, let it dry and then use an afro comb. . . oh happy days!!

Ross tried roasted suckling pig when we went out for dinner on one of the evenings. You could see all its little teeth!!
Not my favourite memory of the holiday, I must admit, but seered into my brain nevertheless :(

Sunday 12th June

The scent of the azaleas lining the side of the road as you come into our street,  has been gorgeous for a couple of weeks now :)

BLAST from the PAST

I thought, "I wonder what is in my file marked 2001." So I had a wee look. I remember this!!

We've had a lot of showery weather recently and are having sun and showers again today but yesterday was awful. It was pouring at breakfast time, bucketing at lunchtime and torrential by teatime!
Cold, dismally dull and wet :(

Carole appeared at lunchtime to pick up Luca and stayed till teatime which was lovely. Luca had stayed the night before with us to let Gary and Carole go to a fortieth birthday celebration at The Foyer in Crown Street.

The Foyer was, according to Carole, wonderful - well worth a visit but Gary was a bit of a let down. He was 'on call' (he's 'on call' every other week end) and as per usual  'was called', so Carole ended up at the dinner alone :(

Looks like you missed out on a really lovely meal, Gary!

Luca used his bathtime on Friday night to get to grips with volume. Here he is working out which holds more - the old plastic beaker or the empty mouthwash bottle :)

It's the bottle, in case you're interested. Of course that was a large mouthwash bottle. It would have been a different story had it been the medium size or even the small.  
Make note: buy 'other sizes' of mouthwash to complete the experiment.


I had chummed Carole to Luca's 'graduation', the other week. Yes, I know the kids probably didn't know what it was all about but for the adults it was so cute. . . their little morterboards had elastic around the edge to hold them on :)

My hands were obviosly shaking with the excitement of the occasion. Sorry :(

That's better. Now where is he? Brilliant I've snapped just as he's bent down :(

What on earth is he doing with his tassle and why is this photo so blurred? I give up!

 When it was Luca's turn to be presented with his certificate, all went well until he stood to have his photo taken.

He held his certificate right in front of his face. I can see the sense in that - he was thinking the photo was of the certificate, yes? So where else would you hold it?

This line of 'Luca thought' became more apparent when having been told to put it down, he did. . . right down on the ground - but still facing out to the camera.

So now the photographer has a view of the top of his head as he holds the certificate ready for the photo . . .
 People should be more specific, shouldn't they?

Friday morning, 27th May

Happy Birthday, Lucy!
Although, technically, Lucy, you can't start celebrating your birthday till nine o'clock tonight!
Hope you have a lovely day!!

Never dreamed for a moment all those years ago that you would end up living in the land of the cowboys, sob sob :(

I've been looking through the old photos from when Lucy was young and apart from the fact that the composition of so many of them is terrible, many of the photos are starting to fade or disappear into an orange haze :(
New technologies always throw up problems, I suppose. And colour was definitely a new technology back then. Why, Ian's and my wedding photos are in black and white. . . we weren't willing to cough up for expensive colour ones and on reflection I'm really glad.
So here we go. . . the best of a bad lot!!

Ian and Lucy in the back garden of our first home together. We lived in Chryston in Lanarkshire.

By the time this photo was taken, we were living in Broxbourne. You were such a wee cutie in those days :)

I played around with this one. It was taken in 1979. This is an easy one to date because it was definitely the year that Kelly was born so that would make you six, Lucy!

And this one was taken the day Dawn married Michael. That's us outside Dawns house in - I think it was Coatbridge.

I know the quality of this one is dreadful, but I thought you might like to have it, seeing as your Granny and Granda Stewart are in it. It must be a Christmas - check out the party hats - but when? Sometime in the late eighties? I'm not sure.

That's key lime pie that you're eating and you are sitting in Orlando Airport waiting to catch a flight home. Do you remember?

Carole, Liz and Luca are heading off to Lochinver today for a wee holiday. Liz travelled up on Wednesday and she and Carole were going to get organised yesterday so's it could be anchors away this morning.
When I was in Inverurie on Tuesday night, Gary came in with a wee bucket and spade set for Luca :) . . .  fingers crossed they get good weather and the bucket and spade get lots of use.

Saturday 21st May

Made it at last. It's been a struggle getting back here again!
It feels as though the more the time gap between entries grows, the harder it becomes to actually sit down and begin writing.

But I've had my roll'n'sausage with squirty mustard for lunch and I finally managed to watch the final CSI episode in the vast collection that had built up on the hard drive since that fateful day that I thought, "I think I'll start recording CSI because I'm always missing them."  !!!!

At one point, there were 14 waiting to be watched and the memory was running out of space!

However, here we are. If wee Kelly can finally hit the keys again then so can I! :)
Talking of Kelly, I can't let your birthday go unmentioned, can I? So here's some images of you, bonnie lass :)

Scarborough beach.
This was one of the few dry days we got. Ask Gary about this holiday and he will tell you it was one of the best he was ever on.
I loved that wee dress, by the way - you look so cute in it, Kelly :) And look at those little chubby wrists :)

Kelly's fifth birthday. Can you see the green tupperware cup on the table. Does Tupperware, the business, still exist? you never hear about it these days. Used to be everybody had cupboards full of the stuff. I've still got my Tupperware orange peelers! :)

Do you remember asking for this photo to be taken? Kelly and the flowers! Gary was more interested in getting into the jelly :)

Norway.
I loved this holiday! We travelled a lot in the red Volvo which was Ian's car at the time and since we aren't good travellers, everybody except Ian took pills every morning. Ian reckons he was on his own for the whole of that holiday. He drove through Norway with a car full of folk totally zonked out.We don't look zonked out in this photo, do we?

At home
Two wee cuties and a plant that's long since died off! What age were you then, Kelly? About 16, maybe?

The wedding! :)I can see Aunt Mary in her 'pink fascinat' in the background - is that how you spell it? The cross between a fascinator and a hat?

Picked Luca up on Tuesday from Nursery as usual but this week, he was staying the night because Mummy and Daddy were going to the cinema after work. 'Were' being the operative word. They didn't actually make it because Gary was called into work so poor Carole got a quick stop somewhere for tea and ended up back at home all on her own:(

 Thursday had Luca back again. Vomitting all over the Nursery school carpet gets you a 48 hour suspension so Granny Jo took the Thursday shift and Mummy took the Friday.
And Luca bounced his way through both days.

You do realise, don't you, that this is a family of giraffes. Please note the beautiful flowers on their heads. You should hear Luca saying - beautiful - it's a hoot!

Note the multi-tasking. . . watching Tom and Jerry and playing with lego :) Watching Tom and Jerry and working on the computer :)  Choose your character!! :) Luca or Granda Ian :)

This picture was taken on Wednesday just before lunch time on the day he vomitted all over the nursery.

Sniffs'n'sneezes and dripping tap noses are abounding just now thanks to the very pretty yellow crop in the fields all over the shire . . .

And here's the culprit - rapeseed oil. The only thing I'd say on its behalf is that it is stunningly beautiful when you see a field of it bathed in sunshine. Yes?

Saturday 7th May

Ian at Aviemore a while back!!
He's roller skating. "That's it, Ian!" I cheered - from the side :)

It's nine o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting here in the front room looking out of the window at sunshine!

.. . .  And yes, the cloud is lifting and we can just about say that the sky is blue!

Which in one way is good but in another is a bit disappointing. You see, Ian should be playing golf this morning. He set off earlier in heavy rain only to come back soon after with a newspaper, some rolls and a bag of currant scones.

No golf.

"At least I won't have to go to all the bother of drying out all my gear before tomorrow." (he's off to Boat of Garten - and the forecast is for rain)

Ever the optimist - how I LOVE that man :)

I came across these old photos this morning.
Lucy's facebook entry talking about what she's arranged for Braeden's birthday celebration started me thinking and look what I found! May 2005 :)

 THE BIRTHDAY BOY

Love the hat, Mum. Did you make it, yourself?

Is my birthday hat going to be ready soon, Mum? I want to look cool just like you!

Do you think cellotape might keep it on?

And so to the most important part of the day. . . THE CAKE!!

Look at all that icing and check out the little chubby fists just at the edge of the picture :)

Spoon? No need! And while I'm about it, maybe if I smeared the cake and icing all over my face and head, it might be an interesting experience. What do you think?

With my last entry being on Easter Monday, a lot has happened I'm sure but what with my goldfish memory I really can't remember much!

I lay in bed the other night thinking.

So. . .  Alex Salmond is the leader of the Scottish Nationalists.

Deputy?

She's also got a fishy surname.

Right. . . what is it?

I spent the next ten minutes going through all the fish in the sea -

haddock, cod, plaice . . .

Eventually it came to me - sturgeon! Yes, yes - that's it Sturgeon!!

Now what's her first name?

Twenty minutes later, having gone through the alphabet without success but knowing it was 'bum bum bum Sturgeon' -  you know, three syllables - it finally popped into my head. Nicola or is it Nichola - it doesn't really matter - they both sound the same and tired but relieved that I'd beaten the memory gobbler, I went to sleep :)

Easter Monday

It's not sunny but neither is it rainy or cold! So nothing to complain about there :)

a hellebores in our garden

Twenty to eleven. I've just spent the last half hour wandering through site after site of folk suggesting ways to make steps on steep slopes. You see I've got plans. Don't tell Ian - he'll only get upset :).

Having spent so much time on the embankment lately, I've had a lot of time to think what to do with it! Here's what I'm thinking just now. . . The top half - draw a line across the garden level with the top of the little retaining wall - is going to be wild. Nature can do what it likes up there.
Below that I'm going to cultivate - hence the need for steps. The slope is so steep that you can't stand on it so planting and weeding is a fairly hazardous exercise. Nothing fancy - I'll probably just use spikes and that specially treated wood - you know the stuff - its had wood preservative injected into it under pressure to make it waterproof.

I might take a wee trip into B&Q and talk to the nice man behind the sawing counter - they'll cut the wood to the lengths you want there - I first came across this service when I was still working and the kids were doing a project on wood - he gave me lots of little samples!

So if you have any experience in this department, please let me know :)

Gee was I tired this morning! Dreamed nonsense all night - my digestive system was working a night shift due to my excesses of yesterday - and was it worth it?
Oh yes!!

Gary serving the Costco apple pie. Mmmh :)

 We had a lovely day. Ross got up and Gary, Carole and Luca arrived after their Easter Egg hunt at Haddo House which Carole told me was so busy, they never saw even one Easter Egg :(

Not such a futile hunt at Granny and Granda's house though! I'd hidden everybody's Easter Eggs around the house (with names on them) - just like we used to do years ago and Luca and his daddy took on the job of finding all the eggs. He would run into the kitchen each time he found one and ask us to read the name. And was it his? I reckon he found everyone else's eggs before he found his own!

little happy face

 Still smiling thinking of his wee happy and excited face :)

Friday afternoon 15th April

Here's Flat Stanley all the way from America with Nessie whom we bought in Aberdeen.

 Braeden's Flat Stanley and I took a trip into Aberdeen and wandered round the shops - how disappointing! When I think back to the year Cade's Flat Stanley came to stay, there is a distinct dearth of merchandise aimed at children in the tourist shops now in comparison to then :(
However, we did our best. Didn't we Stanley? And then we came home and had a well earned rest in the back garden!

Here he is taking his well earned rest on the garden bench!

And here he is having a wee climb on Granny's bush - fun or what?

Dead end? :(
Never say die. . . on being told of our disappointing day Ross stepped up to the mark!
"Why don't we take Flat Stanley out for a wee drive in the car and show him some of the local sights?" he suggested.
"Why yes, what a great idea!" I grabbed at the offer.
 "Only one proviso, though. . . "
"I stay behind the camera. I don't do photos."
He's saving himself for the great unveiling. When he's lost a couple more stones :)
. . . And here are the results -

The River Dee with the Potarch Bridge behind us!

Crathes Castle

 And across the road . . .

Big Man at the Millton - best scones on Deeside :) If you look really closely, you can just make out Flat Stanley sitting on the top edge of Big Man's kilt! Interesting how I've unconsciously leaned back to keep the line with the sculpture!

We had hoped to get a photo of Flat Stanley with some of the baby lambs in the fields but by the time we got to them they were too far away so Ross used the zoom - no Flat Stanley in the photo unfortunately :(

Earlier this afternoon, I put Flat Stanley back in an envelope and sent him off back to Braeden in America.

Keep your eyes open for his return, Braeden. He's in a big brown envelope. Nessie, however is in a white box - he wouldn't fit in the envelope - too fat!