Our Day

I decided to post one more blog entry tonight (see below for my contribution to the scrapbooking challeng).
Today was a VERY windy day here, but no rain!!
Some of you may know that today is St. Andrews Day. Actually, I am guessing that none of you know that today is St. Andrews day!
Anyhow, the Edinburgh Castle was offering free admission today and so we decided to go and check it out. We picked up the boys from school and went to Shawn's college to eat the lunch I had packed for us. We were planning on heading up to the castle (which is practically right next door), however, we met another family who had just come from the castle who told us that they had closed the castle due to the wind! Now I had been very optimistic all day, commenting to people who complained about the wind, "It may be windy, but at least it is mild and it isn't raining!".It was about 12 degrees today, very nice compared to my sister who is under a ton of snow (check out Tracy's blog link).
So as the castle was now out of the question, we decided to go check out the Winter wonderland at Princes Street. We walked around the park and watchd the people skating on the outdoor ice skating puddle...I mean ice skating rink. Shawn commented that they don't have to worry about flooding the rink as it is so mild that there is a layer of water on the ice. We had a great day and we have a great city, even if it was windy!

This is just a cute little picture I took this morning of Hannah and Jacob with their hands in their pockets. I am not sure why but they were both walking around like this all morning.

And here are the 4 of them on the big stairs at Shawn's college.
Hope you all have safe, warm shelter over you! We are so thankful for our city and our home today.

SCRAPBOOKING CHALLENGE

So here are my offerings for this week's challenge. I only did a few pages tonight and then I went through some pictures and got ready for coming weeks and set others aside that I won't use for scrapbooking. I seem to have a few pictures that I would not have intended to use for scrapbooking because I only recently started to print based on page layouts....so now when I go to print pictures, I print only the ones that I know I will use in the scrapbook. I know you probably all do that already but I just realized that I should be doing that a few months ago. Anyhow, now I am putting aside the others and it will make my scrapbooking in the coming weeks much easier as I now have groups of pictures ready to be cropped and put in!
Sorry, but my pictures seem to have turned out worse this week on the camera...either that or I am just a little bleery-eyed tonight...



I really don't like the way the last one turned out but oh well, it is done now. Maybe it will look better to me next time I flip through the book.

SCRAPBOOKING CHALLENGE

So this is actually my first "installment" of the scrapbooking challenge. I have participated before but not by actually scrapbooking on a Thursday night....sad huh? But I may have made up for it by going insane and do 6 pages (although I didn't actually finish the last 2, I still need to journal on them). I had a friend come over who had just started scrapbooking when her baby was born (around 8 months ago) and her sister in law gave her an album and a bunch of things. She has never even been to a class and she does a terrific job!
So I hope to see all the other pages that get done tonight; I don't think I'll wait up, I'll just check in the morning as it is already 1104pm here! :)
Keep up the good work ladies, I enjoy the time we share "together".

I have not yet figured out the best way to make the pages look nice and bright on the camera. What is the secret? Does anyone know? Your pictures all look so good.
These are the pages I need to journal on, it is a spread of Alexander and Benjamin's 4th birthday.

We're Back Online!!

We have had an exciting day here in Scotland. Our local library reopened after some renovations so the children and I all got to go back to story time which we all love. And (the real cause of excitement and a little pride on my part!) was that Shawn had an awards ceremony today to receive the School of Divinity award. He even bought a new pair of shoes for the occasion! Inside joke! Well, I will fill you all in on the inside joke: we had to loose a few pounds in Toronto on our way here (from the luggage that is) so one of the things taken out to await Cindy's visit in the summer was Shawn's dress shoes. So he has been wearing his nice black Nike sneakers everywhere, even to church with his dress pants! He thought he could make do until his shoes arrive with Cindy's visit. Well, for the formal occassion where he got to shake hands with the president of the University, he thought he had best buy a pair of dress shoes. So he did (an early Christmas present from Mom White)! And below is a photo of him when he got back with the certificate.
However, the children always go first right! So here is a photo I took yesterday of our young twins:

They can't just say "cheese" when the camera is focused on them.
They have to scream it in a prolonged way, thus the look captured below!

So this is the reason I had the camera out yesterday. I am sure all women can remember doing this as a young girl. If you can't tell what she is doing, Hannah is pulling her top down over her knees as she sits with her knees bent. Does that make sense? I am sure you all know what I am talking about anyhow. I can remember doing it as a young girl as well. It was just kinda funny, so of course I took a picture.

So here is my great husband after he received his award.
By the way,this is about the fifth picture I took as he doesn't seem to know how to smile "naturally". He only does a small smirk on one end of the spectrum and a huge goofy smile on the other end of the spectrum; no happy medium....so I think this is the best we could do. I think he still looks good all gussied up anyhow!

Grammy Visit

Here are a few pictures of our grammy visit....We had Grammy Weir and Grammy JoJo for 10 days (my mom and grandmom). We had a great time even though the weather was slightly wet...
We visited the zoo, I got to spend a day volunteering at the boys' nursery school, we did some touring of Edinburgh, and we did some (well ALOT) of Christmas shopping.
Shawn and I also had the opportunity to go to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra one evening which was terrific (thanks to K & P S. from Saint John for getting us interested in the symphony!). Plus we got to go out shopping and other things by ourselves quite abit. It is so nice to have family here. We will miss having them here.
So here are some pictures from our week together:

Here is one of Grammy Weir's favorite activities....reading with Hannah and Jacob, I am not sure who likes it more!

And of course Grammy JoJo had to make brown bread (she actually made 2 batches while here!) with some help kneading from many little hands.

We are all doing well here. Still loving the city life and still missing our friends and family in Canada. We are quite serious that we would warmly welcome any visitors!! Just ask Grammy Weir and Grammy JoJo about the city....you may want to come see it for yourself!

NOT AGAIN!!!

Yes...Once again folks, I am writing from a friends computer as we are without internet access AGAIN!!!
We "ordered" a new internet hub last Wednesday as our other one wasn't working anymore (you can ask Shawn for that story); or so we thought...As it still had not arrived today, Shawn phoned and discovered that the wonderful people at our phone and internet company had "forgotten" to put the order in so it will be next Tuesday before we get the new one!
Anyhow, I have a few pictures I am dying to post including quite a few of our great visit with the Grammies; they only have a few days left and we will be celebrating Christmas this weekend with them before they return to Canada.
Hope to have something to post soon....we haven't forgotten you all!

Sleeping Beauty and Mommy's Helpers

So I am pretty sure I have another picture of Hannah sleeping on this blog way back at the beginning. She does seem to have her mother's knack of being able to sleep anytime, anywhere (or at least I could before I intuitively started listening for children's cries all the time).
This was last night during bedtime snack and video time. You can see her snack cup and bowl on the table in front of her and she just climbed off her chair, put her head down and out she went! It was too cute; so of course instead of just taking her to bed, I had to first take a picture.


And now for mommy's helpers. I only caught a photo of two of them but all 4 were helping me at one point cutting up bread crusts for meatloaf and stuffing. They love to help cook/bake in the kitchen and are getting to be quite the little helpers.
And one more little story I just have to share with everyone about our dear Benjamin. As some of you may know, he has a VERY good memory. He still goes on about Grampy's goulash every now and then (inside story). Anyhow, when we were talking about the upcoming visit of Grammy Weir and Grammy JoJo, I asked them what we should show our guests. Alexander quickly suggested the zoo and Benjamin comes in with, "We would have to take the 31 bus there." Yes folks, he has practically memorized the bus system of the Edinburgh bus company. He also told Shawn today we were taking the 33 to the grocery store and as the 2 went by he said "that goes to ASDA". And of course he was correct on all accounts! I hope his memory stays this intact for school.

Couple Pics Too Cute Not To Post

But then again, I am a little biased!
So as most of you know, we live in a 4 bedroom apartment; which means 3 bedrooms, one kitchen, and one bathroom, not 4 bedrooms! Anyhow, you would think it wouldn't be too difficult to keep track of 4 kids in such an apartment. Well, the other day I looked all over for Benjamin and Jacob and finally found them as seen below....

This is the hall closet

And this is where I found the boys looking at some books

And this picture is one I took of a great find. The other night the "North American ladies group" (we meet for tea every Monday night) went out for tea for a change and to say goodbye to one of our great members who was heading back to USA (we really miss you Janette!). When we made it back to our apartment complex, we saw a few things laying by the garbage bins....I know, I know, but people put perfectly good things in the trash when they are moving away and they are BESIDE the bins, not in them!....So this is the great find I came home with for Hannah and Jacob. The door was slightly broken so I have since just taken it right off. Note Hannah's arm around her brother, isn't it cute?

SCRAPBOOKING CHALLENGE

This is the first post of the scrapbooking challenge. As many of you know I like to take pictures and do scrapbooking (as well as blogging). When we lived in Nova Scotia I attended a great scrapbooking night with friends every Monday (and then Tuesday) night. I really miss all the girls and the fun times we shared, and I have yet to scrapbook since leaving my loving gang. So we have decided to start scrapbooking "together" again. We are going to scrapbook every Thursday night and then take a picture of our completed pages to post on our blogs so that we can be "accountable" to one another; sometimes it is difficult to get motivated to do scrapbooking on your own.
So far we have scrapbooking challenge participants in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario....and me in Scotland of course! If anyone else reading the blog would like to join the challenge, please leave a comment so we can get in contact to share and support one another. The more the merrier!!
Now to our first night of the challenge.....I had actually thought we were doing it on Wednesday but have recently changed to Thursdays.....so the first night of the challenge I was away to Asda (Scottish version of Walmart) with a friend and didn't do any scrapbooking at all!!! Ha!
However, last night (since I thought it was going to be Wednesdays) I did a bunch of cropping to get ready for next week. So here is my contribution to the scrapbooking challenge.....


Can't wait to see the other pages ladies.....