Shawn, Bev, and Family

In the good ol' USA!

2009-10-04T02:12:00.003+01:00

Well we are here in the good ol' USA, Virginia to be exact and are enjoying our new surroundings! We arrived in August and Shawn started teaching at the college on the 25th of August. Alexander and Benjamin are in grade 2 and Hannah and Jacob are home for one more year before starting kindergarten. They spend their days exploring our new surroundings and doing a bit of school work at home.
Here are some photos from the last 2 months (yikes! Has it been that long since I last posted something here?). They are in no particular order since I can't remember how to change their position in the post:

Alexander and Benjamin turned 7 in August and we took them golfing for their birthday. Now that I think of it though, this picture is actually from last week when we took them golfing again! Hannah was at a birthday sleepover so we decided to take the 3 boys golfing for the afternoon. Here they are posing in the cart.

As I wrote above, Shawn started teaching (his title says Christian Studies as he has to teach both Old and New Testaments) in August and Hannah and Jacob and I went over to capture his "first day of school"! This was after all the students had left. :)

My mom and dad got new bikes for the boys for their birthday. Alexander and Benjamin picked them out and decided to get the same one (they must be twins or something!).

And here are Alexander and Benjamin on their first day of school, walking to the bus stop.

On the last day of summer holidays, we went to the local county fair. They loved the rides as well as the animals in the barns. There was also an "Exotic Animal Farm" at the fair. We couldn't believe it when we saw this wonderful reminder of Scotland!

Alexander and Jacob enjoying the bumper cars at the fair

Benjamin and Hannah had fun as well

We had to buy a vehicle shortly after we arrived and here are the children proudly displaying our Toyota Sienna

Hannah and Jacob aren't quite 5 yet but my parents told them to pick out their bikes early so they could get some riding in before it got too cold

This was taken of Alexander just last week and I liked the leaves starting to change as you look down the fairway on this hole

We went to the dollar store the other day and each of the children got to pick out a toy. Here is Hannah "displaying" her purchase. We have great neighbors who have two little girls (5 and 8) and Hannah is turning into quite a princess with their help! :)

The primary school had a fall festival and there were fireworks at the end of the night. I hadn't realized that none of the children had seen fireworks before....we had seen lots from our windows in Edinburgh but not in person. They weren't quite keen on the "close up experience". They were quite funny....they really didn't want to watch as they quite a bit scared yet they couldn't take their eyes off of the fireworks.

That is all for now. I know that many of you have seen these on facebook already but there are a few who still enjoy our blog.....these are for you! Hope you are all doing well and that our paths cross again soon!

Back in Canada!

2009-07-21T00:37:00.004+01:00

Well, we are back in Canada! What a great feeling it was to see friends and family whom we haven't seen in 3 years. And what a treat it has been showing the children around a country they really don't remember. We have had a great month back in Canada, below you will find some photos of some of the things we have been doing here.
Our time in Canada is drawing to a close, however, as we will move to the US at the end of this month. So my next post will likely be from the US!
Here are some photos of our activities over the last month in Canada:

Our first week was spent at my mom's cottage in NB. Here are the children playing Bocce Ball with my mom on her front lawn:

Arriving in Canada!!

Going to the beach at my mom's cottage. We have had some great days here.

Helping Grammy plant her garden while Alexander and Benjamin are golfing with Shawn

Going for a walk on the beach

Cows ice cream in PEI

On the coast of the Bay of Fundy

Lighthouse of Cape Enrage, NB

Some more shots on the coast

The famous flowerpot at the Hopewell Rocks, NB

Weekend Away in Perthshire

2009-05-05T16:37:00.003+01:00

This past weekend was a long holiday weekend so we went off with some friends for a little holiday. We did a little exploring in Perthshire, Scotland and had a great weekend away. Here are some photos from our adventure:

This is a photo of the whole gang in Dunkeld.

This was on a hike outside Dunkeld. It really reminded us of the trails in Fundy National Park. We can't wait to take the children there this summer!

Jacob exploring by the river

Benjamin listening to the flowing river

Shawn and I hadn't had a photo together for awhile...

The children all up on a big log flying away into the forest!

It was great to get away and explore another area of this great country. And we can't wait to get back to Canada for the summer to do some exploring of that great country too!!!

It's been a long time coming.....

2009-04-25T19:09:00.003+01:00

I really haven't updated the blog in ages as I am unsure whether anyone looks at it anymore. I know many people see these photos on facebook, but just in case there is someone out there who isn't on facebook and still wants to see what we have been up to, here are some photos from the last wee while:

To start off, here are some recent close ups of the children. We were waiting at the bus stop to go the Edinburgh zoo on the last day of the Easter holidays. The children had 2 1/2 weeks off over Easter and we went on a few adventures during that time.

Hannah

Benjamin

Alexander

Jacob always likes to do a funny face for his photos

During a Christmas hike at a reservoir on the outskirts of Edinburgh on Dec 27.....we were dreaming of a white Christmas but there was no such thing!

This is at one of the many fountains in the city centre of Sheffield, England during Easter school holidays.

This is a very big piece of drift wood on the beach! This is in Berwick-upon-Tweed, England.

The children posing in Berwick-upon-Tweed, England when we were on Easter holidays

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2008-12-19T14:22:00.002Z

Hello all,
As I sit here to write this and add these photos, it is windy, rainy and about 10 degrees.....We are missing the snow and cold weather (if you can believe it!). All the reports of 20 cm or more of snow are making us very jealous and we are longing for Canada. This is our 3rd winter away and it is taking it's tole a bit. We still love Edinburgh and the UK in general and are extremely thankful for the wonderful experiences we are having here. Our family is richly blessed! We are here in Edinburgh for Christmas and are heading over to the west coast of Scotland to Stranraer for New Year to spend some time with friends at their family's dairy farm. I think the children will really enjoy the time in the country - going for walks, milking cows, etc. And add to that our friends with their 3 children, we will be having a grand time to start off the new year.
We hope you are all doing well in preparation for the time of celebration of our Saviour's birth. Blessings to you all from Edinburgh!

Here is a photo we took after one of our favorite family activities. The Edinburgh Capitals are an ice hockey team (the ONLY ice hockey team) and we are excited to get to as many games as possible. Alexander and Benjamin have enjoyed many activities with the kids' club.

And here is a photo taken in our back garden about a month ago. Benjamin is in the blue stripes and Alexander in the red (just like when they were infants if any of you remember our color-coding system!). I think Hannah, Jacob, Shawn and I are a little easier to identify!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Stirling Castle

2008-12-01T13:35:00.006Z

Yesterday was St. Andrews day here in Scotland so all the castles had special activities and free admission. So we decided (well, really, I decided and dragged Shawn and the children along. Ha ha!) to go up to Stirling on the train and check out the castle and sites. It was absolutely freezing (for here anyhow....I may not get much sympathy from all you folk in Canada who are covered in snow). We had a good time anyhow and enjoyed our day. Here are some photos from Stirling Castle and Argyll’s Lodging, which is "Scotland’s most splendid and complete example of a 17th century townhouse".

An interesting seat in the drawing room

The kitchen with a very big "oven"

Alexander on the cannon at Stirling castle

Jacob the knight

Benjamin the knight

A look at the castle

We found a very interesting old jail on the way up to the castle

Birthdays

2008-10-19T14:58:00.004+01:00

We celebrated Alexander and Benjamin's sixth birthday in August and Hannah and Jacob's fourth birthday just yesterday.....Hard to believe they are getting so old since I am still so young! :)
So here are some photos for those of you who still check out the blog:

Alexander and Benjamin got new wallets from a friend for their birthday so Jacob was very happy (although you can't tell by the picture) to get his own for his birthday too!

These are from Alexander and Benjamin's birthday. Shawn is still working away at his second career of pinata making in case this whole PhD thing doesn't work out!

So the yellow one is the team logos of all the Canadian hockey teams, the black one is a goalie mask (Anaheim ducks who had beaten the Ottawa Senators, so they wanted to hit them with the bat instead of their favorite team! Ha Ha), and the third, green one is of the Celtic football club from here in the UK.

Here is Benjamin with his hockey birthday cake

And Alexander with his football birthday cake

Here is Hannah playing the piano in her birthday, fairy, princess dress

Jacob with his football cake

Hannah with her "pink" cake

Hannah and Jacob with their pinatas from the movie CARS (Sally and Chick Hicks)

Hannah at Pizza Hut on the night of their birthday opening up her princess dress. We went out to eat on their actual birth day and had a party a few days later. They chose Pizza Hut because they have an all you can eat, self-serve ice cream bar!

We are all doing well and enjoying life here in Edinburgh although we are quite home sick at times...it has been over 2 years since we have been on Canadian soil! As you can tell by the pinatas and cakes, however, we are still Canadian at heart and keep a close eye on NHL.com for all the scores and highlights as well as enjoying games from our very own Edinburgh Capitals Ice Hockey team (who have half their players from Canada!). Hope you are all well, drop us a line when you get a chance.

Some August Pictures

2008-08-30T09:56:00.006+01:00

We arrived back in Scotland on July 31 and on Aug 1 Shawn's mom and sister arrived for a visit. It was so good to get back home (Edinburgh) and then to have family arrive from back home (Canada). We have been mourning the loss of the lovely weather we experienced in Germany but we are getting used to being back in the rain :)
So without further ado here are some pictures from this past month in Scotland:

We took Aunt Deborah on a hike up Arthur's Seat and here is a picture of Hannah and Deborah on the way down the mountain...we climb up a load of stairs and take the road back down.

Here is the crew at the bottom after we came back down. Arthurs Seat is the top peak which is right above Shawn's head in the photo. The children all wanted to do a funny pose for this picture.

Grammy reading the children a story. Alexander and Benjamin got little hand held yahtzee games for their birthday and so they are playing the game rather than listening to the story...Deborah is pretending to listen....yes, this is a posed photo!

Our pastor had extra tickets to the Tattoo this year and he passed them along to us so Deborah and I got to go to this amazing show! Here we are in the castle esplanade awaiting the show. Once it started you weren't supposed to take photos so I grabbed one before it started. It was an amazing show with acts from all over the world, including some dancers from Canada.

We went to the Edinburgh Zoo to see the new Budongo chimpanzee exhibit. This was after Jacob had hurt his foot so he is in the stroller with a nice green cast on his leg (he got to pick the color of the cast!).We thought it appropriate to pose with the chimpanzees. Look at all those monkeys and chimpanzees! :)

On Alexander and Benjamin's birthday we went out to eat supper. Here is Jacob eating his pizza...and yes, that is only half of it!

This is a pose at the very top of Arthur's Seat

This is a posed shot on the back side of Arthur's Seat after rolling down the grassy hill

That is all the photos for now but I will try to continue to post some every now and then. We are saddened to hear of the demise of Zoom Airlines as that means we may have fewer visitors....there was a direct flight from Halifax to Glasgow which was very convenient for visitors coming to see us. However, we are hoping for a new airline to get up and running and/or existing airlines to offer some deals. As always, we would love to have visitors so if you fancy a tour of the UK, drop us a line!

Further adventures in Germany

2008-07-21T19:25:00.003+01:00

We continue to enjoy our time in Germany and have been visiting some sights and enjoying the lovely, warm weather. We went to Leipzig in the north-east to visit some friends a few days ago and had a lovely long weekend with them. Here are some photos:

Leipzig is where Back spent many years as Cantor at this church

A beautiful park in the center of the city

the children with their friends on one of the many lovely bridges over the river that runs through Leipzig

Some monkeys at the Leipzig zoo!!

Now for some photos of back "home" in Tubingen. This is a beautiful fountain in front of a beautiful building in the Aldstadt

We went on a stocherkahn which literally means a stick boat....like they have in Venice! Not quite as romantic but great fun!

Our view as we went down (or up...not sure!) the Neckar River which runs right through Tubingen

This one is back in Leipzig eating some authentic, German pretzels

And at an ice cream shop (one of many we have frequented!) in Leipzig

Our time in Germany is running out but we continue to enjoy nice, warm weather and beautiful scenery! We head off to Frankfurt next week to spend a few days before heading back to Edinburgh where we will welcome some family from Canada for the month of August.

Tubingen Germany

2008-07-09T19:04:00.005+01:00

Well, here are some pictures finally! I am saddened to report that these are being posted from an internet cafe as our beloved Mac laptop has died and we will wait until we return to the UK to get another. However, there is a great internet cafe in the town which I am able to get to every now and then. So here are some pics:

The courtyard of Tubingen castle

The boys wanted to dress exactly the same the other day (even down to the same socks). I have always avoided dressing them the same but I have to admit it is pretty cute!

The 4 musketeers walking along the path behind our house on the way to a terrific swimming complex which we have visited almost daily
This is just one of the 3 childrens pools and there are more big ones with water slides and lap lanes.
At the entrance to the Tubingen castle

Shawn and the boys playing football in the backyard

Jacob on the slide in the backyard
The seesaw and sand box in the backyard
Tubingen across the Neckar River
A present from dad when we arrived at our new flat...a full sized chocolate football complete with red and yellow cards and whistle!
That is all for now but hopefully I will have lots more in the near future as we are heading to tour the city of Leipzig this weekend which is in the north east (We are in the southwest). Keep watching for more adventures in Germany!!

Germany

2008-06-26T12:56:00.002+01:00

Hello all,
We have made it to Germany safe and sound! Our computer is on the fritz however, so Shawn has gone in to a neighboring city to an Apple Store to see about it. So I will hopefully soon be posting some pictures of our new great country on our newly fixed computer OR our newly bought computer! I am hoping for the former.
The weather has been beautiful and we have enjoyed our city thus far. It is wonderful here and I am sure we will enjoy our time here.
So keep checking here and facebook as I have tons of pictures already and hope to be able to put them on soon.
Bye for now!

SUMMER FAIR AND CATERPILLAR BOOGIE

2008-06-20T11:40:00.006+01:00

Alexander and Benjamin were in their school play entitled Caterpillar Boogie yesterday. They had a great time with other children from their school singing and dancing in the show. Alexander was a gardener and Benjamin was a caterpillar.

Benjamin with some of the other caterpillars waiting to start the show

Last Saturday Benjamin and Alexander's school held a summer fun fair. The children got to do many fun activities and here are a few pictures I snapped along the way.

Alexander winding up to throw a wet sponge at a teacher

After the big hit!

Benjamin doing the fishing game

Hannah doing the fishing game

Benjamin after hitting one of the school children with the wet sponge

Everyone on the bouncy castle...this was a favorite!

Weekend Fun

2008-04-27T21:08:00.005+01:00

Our great Royal Museum here in Edinburgh closed this weekend for a major refurbishment. They held a celebration weekend to mark the closure so we went over to see what was happening yesterday. There were tons of events going on including buskers on giant stilts, clowns and jugglers and face painting. The face painters did a fantastic job as you can see!
We also took in a display of Indian dancing which the children all really enjoyed as well as a pretty cool science show. Benjamin got to be a volunteer and hammer a nail and a wooden peg into some clay and they all got to sit on a bench of around 500 nails... pretty cool stuff! Anyhow, incredibly, I forgot my camera but was thankful for a friend who loaned me her camera to take a few pictures (thanks Colleen).
So here are some pictures of our day at the museum:

Benjamin and Hannah getting their faces done....wait until you see the finished product!

And Alexander and Jacob have their faces done:

Alexander....aka Spiderman

Jacob...aka Batman

Hannah....aka Princess Smiley with butterfly and hearts

And Benjamin...aka Tiger (he really was smiling a bit in this but it's hard to see with the paint)

One of our favorite activities at the museum is playing all the games like this one where you have to hit the button that lights up and see how many you can hit in 30 seconds
Here is one of the performers as Jacob and Alexander look on and Benjamin gets his face painted

Goodbye Shawn

2008-04-11T11:06:00.005+01:00

Hello all, thought we might be due for a few more photos.... So here are Alexander and Benjmain with their new prized possessions sent from Grammy and Grampy from Canada. They know all the players and remain quite avid hockey fans....checking NHL.com daily and can shout out all the players and teams and standings.

As most of you know, Shawn has gone off ahead of us to Germany to start his research. Last Sunday we had to say goodbye until we go over to join nearer the end of the school year. We "celebrated" (I put that in quotes since we didn't really feel all that joyful that he was leaving us!) by a dinner out a restaurant on the Royal Mile. So here are some pictures of our night out:

We also walked Shawn out to the bus stop for him to begin his journey. Here are a few pictures just before he left:

And here are a few of Hannah and Jacob performing some original dances in our kitchen:

And as a last note, if anyone is looking for a nice place to go for a little break, why not choose Edinburgh?! I would love the company!
We are all doing very well here but I do get a little lonely in the evening when the children are all in bed. Shawn is doing very well in Germany also but is feeling a little lost as he didn't know German quite as well as he thought he did....his studies have been all reading thus far so to be put in a new country would be quite disheartening! I know he will catch on very quickly....now if I would just start my studies so that I am not equally as lost when I get there!

Finally, another post

2008-03-31T20:13:00.005+01:00

So I blame my lack of blogging on facebook. If any of you reading this have not become my "friend" on facebook yet, then please look me up and you can see lots more pictures and stories of what is happening on our side of the world.

However, I do not want to neglect those of you who are not on facebook so here are a few pictures of what has been happening here in the last wee while.
My sister, Kim, and her girls were over for a lovely 9 day visit, leaving only just this morning. Everyone had a great time, especially all the cousins who have not seen each other for over 1.5 years. It was a great time for them to get reacquainted.
So without further ado, here are some pictures:

The first few are of last Saturday when Shawn, Kim, and I took all 6 children up Arthur's Seat. No easy feat for three 3 year olds and three 5 year olds! Not to mention the three adults (whose ages will not be written here!). Arthur's seat is 251 m (823 feet) high and is climbed via a series of stairs made out of stones. It is a beautiful view and well worth the climb!

Shawn showing off his hill rolling techniques, this is on the back side of the mountain on our way down:

Almost to the top of Arthur's Seat, these are the steps going up the front face:

About to climb to the summit

At the top!!

We also did some sight seeing with our Canadian visitors and here are some pics of that:

At the Palace of Holyrood (where the Queen stays when she is in Scotland)

About to go into the palace
Outside Edinburgh Castle:
Just inside the front gates of the castle, you can see the drawbridge in the back:
The six cousins hanging out in the kitchen:

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

2008-02-16T15:37:00.006Z

So I am a little late with this post but thought I would take advantage of the children all being at friends' houses for a few minutes to put up a new post.
We have been doing well here over the last little while. I just spent a week of induction into the National Health Service (9-4 every day this week) and hopefully will be starting some shifts at the hospital the week after next. Shawn did a fantastic job with the child care end of things here while I was away. Especially so since this was a week's holiday for all 4 children!
They all really enjoyed their week together and I (well, I can't really say I "enjoyed" my week per se) had a good week learning all about how things work in the health care system here in Scotland.
Every day Shawn had a little chart written out on the children's white board outlining the tasks for the day. The children all loved checking off each item once it was accomplished! The weather was fantastic all week and when I came home on Monday I was told, very excitedly by Benjamin, that the chart said to play outside for one hour and they actually were out for 4 hours!!
Unfortunately, Shawn is not the photographer of the family so we have gone a whole week without photos. However, last Saturday, we went to the National Library for a Valentines card making workshop. Here are some pictures of the creativity:

It was an afternoon workshop so Shawn took off early from his studies and met us at the library. Here he is with the card he helped Hannah make:

I'm not sure what this look is for but I thought it was kind of cute

Here is Jacob putting the finishing touches on his card:

Here are the two big boys with their creative masterpieces

Besides making cards, the children also got to make some nice felt heart flowers. So here they are with the other flowers I received for Valentine's day:

Fun Times without "real" snow

2008-01-30T21:30:00.000Z

I imagine all you who have had to shovel copious amounts of snow this winter will have a hard time imagining us longing for a "real" snowfall, but tis true. To prove to you how desperate the children are after watching videos and hearing stories of the great sliding hill at my sister's, here are our attempts at sliding here in our fair city:

We continue to enjoy our time here but are hoping to make it home for the summer (the children and I, that is...Shawn will be doing some research in Germany). Hannah and Jacob are in nursery school now every afternoon and are loving it. Alexander and Benjamin continue to love grade 1. Shawn continues to love his studying. And I am enjoying a couple hours on my own every afternoon and look forward to starting work for one or two days a week here next month....if there aren't any other problems. It has been a long haul to get me to nursing here, you don't want to get me started on that one! Anyhow, we are thankful that soon I may start my job. So without further ado, here are some recent photos for all those who haven't seen us in awhile.

Over Due Update

2008-01-14T15:56:00.001Z

Hello all. Here is an overdue update as I noticed that we hadn't posted anything since Christmas Eve. Things have been going well for us and we continue to enjoy our time overseas. We are trying to make arrangements (time-wise and money-wise) to get the children and I back to Canada for a bit this summer. So keep checking the updated photos so you will recognise us if we do get to come home! The boys started back to school last week and continue to love it. Hannah and Jacob will start nursery school tomorrow and are very excited. I am a little concerned, however, that they may be all talk and no action when it comes to staying there on their own without their mom! Shawn continues to plug away at his studies and continues to love it. I try to keep him focused...with just a little nagging :) On my part, I will be starting work with the nurses bank in February, working one or two days a week. I am looking forward to FINALLY getting back into nursing. It has been a long time coming!
So that is us for now. I will try to take more photos and make sure to get them on here a little more frequently. So here are a few shots from the last few weeks.
To start us off, here is a new purchase we got today from a website. New golf clubs for the boys...they are pretty excited (although you wouldn't know it from the looks on their faces)!

On Boxing Day we went on a beautiful hike with friends and then had a lovely Scottish Christmas dinner with them as well as a family sleepover. We are very blessed to have many great friends here in Scotland. Here are a couple of pictures:

And Hannah and Jacob's prize gifts from Christmas time.

A family game on Christmas Day. Loopin' Louie is highly recommended:

Our Christmas breakfast....yummy cinnamon rolls:

And this one was just too cute. An impromptu pic of goodies from their Christmas socks:

And we finally got some snow the last week of the year. I know it must look kind of pathetic for all of you back in Eastern Canada, but we get pretty excited about our 1-2cm of snow! Here is Benjamin making a snow angel:

And throwing a snowball:

And Alexander getting ready to throw his:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

2007-12-24T21:07:00.000Z

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!
The children are all nestled, all snug in their beds....Shawn and I are putting training wheels on bicycles and setting up train sets in hopes that snow will come to make it seem like a good ol' Canadian Christmas tomorrow. No real hopes of that however, as the forecast says it will be 9 degrees tomorrow.
Anyhow, here is a little Christmas wish for you all which we recorded earlier this evening after church and the opening of some Christmas crackers (thus the paper crowns!):

And now here are some photos...if you can stop laughing long enough to look at them!

It was a tradition in my family that we always got to open one present on Christmas Eve (it was somehow always pajamas! :) ) and we have carried on that tradition. This year, however, everyone has so many pajamas that we went with bath robes instead. (Thanks Mom!) So here are the kiddies after opening their Christmas Eve gifts...not quite sure how Hannah and Jacob got those looks but it was the best one we could get:

First off, here are the children and I (minus Jacob since he was sitting on my lap and my arm doesn't reach that far) riding Santa's train in Princes Street Gardens. We went out last Saturday morning to check out the reindeer and the many other festivities which take place in the city center. We had a great time but I only managed to catch a couple pictures. Nonetheless, here they are:
And here is the train that we were riding, it took us around the gardens so we could see all the sites they have:

And here are a couple from our church Christmas pageant. The children all received rave reviews. Benjamin and Alexander were wise men and had quite a few speaking lines which they memorized and recited without flaw. Can you tell I'm a little proud of my boys who are growing up so fast?!

So we wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Tomorrow we will join with about 10 other families from North America who are also away from family for a Christmas dinner....my turkey is thawing as I type! Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Bumblesnouts and Edinburgh Castle

2007-11-30T22:05:00.000Z

Happy Saint Andrews Day everyone! That may not mean anything to you back in Canada but here it means we get to go to the castle for free!! So this morning Hannah, Jacob and I ventured out in the drizzling rain to see the castle. They even let me take some pictures!!

Here is Hannah being the guard at the castle gate (and proudly displaying her ticket!)

The many cannons were big hits! Notice they are still holding their tickets....

This one is for you Uncle Dave!!

And as we were leaving, Jacob decided he did want to be a guard as well

A close up of the cutest castle guards that ever there were!!

And now it is time to show off one of my many proud moments as a mother. Alexander and Benjamin have been attending a singing club every Thursday since September and last night they put on the production they have been learning. It was called Bumblesnouts Save the Earth. It was very cute! The boys played "thugs" who along with another boy and girl had to kick, hit and basically beat up something that fell from the sky. Here they are with the entire cast getting ready for the show. The lighting wasn't great for taking photos. If you enlarge you may notice them with the hoods up on their CCM Hockey sweaters!! Go Canada!!

A close up

And finally, here is a little snippet of a video I took when they were doing their song....they don't look too dangerous do they??

Fall Fun 2007

2007-11-13T10:06:00.000Z

On Saturday we spent a little time outside with some friends enjoying the MANY leaves that have fallen in our back garden. Some children got a huge pile of leaves together and they all had a great time jumping, throwing, and rolling in them. Here are some pictures....my timing was a little off in some of them but you can see a bit!

First off, here are a bunch of them throwing leaves in the air. They gathered around and counted to 10 and threw their armloads in the air:

Here is the one armed bandit after he threw his one arm full...I was a little late snapping the photo.

Benjamin with his pile ready to toss up in the air

I did manage to catch Hannah in the act

As well as Jacob...although I don't think he was having much fun, can you tell?? :)

And finally, here is a video of a bunch of them running and jumping in the pile

INJURY UPDATE

2007-11-09T09:18:00.002Z

So as some of you may already know, we have had some injuries/illnesses of late. Jacob started with a fever and vomiting last Saturday and just stopped yesterday; this morning he awoke with a rash....gotta love these Scottish viruses!
And Alexander, while tackling someone playing American football, fell and broke his collar bone last Sunday morning....the fun never ends.
Fortunately, Jacob is starting to feel better and no one else has come down with it so far and Alexander has been a real trooper with his shoulder. He says it doesn't hurt and the only bad part is that he can't go out and play as he loves to do. He can still go to school and is getting very good at writing with his left hand. He has to sit on a bench outside at recess and lunch and watch all the other children playing, which I am sure is very difficult for him. However, he has an excellent brother, who I am told, has been sitting on the bench with him this whole week.....aaawwwhhhh!
So here are some pictures to go along with these tales:

First Jacob this morning, if you enlarge the photo you may be able to see the rash
And next Alexander in his sling, which he has to wear all the time, under his clothes. We put a new one on last night after his bath cause the old one was getting kinda grimy. Since my nice, white, medical tape didn't stick too well, he was all to happy to use hockey tape instead!
Although they are not injured, the other two had to get their shots done this morning as well, so here is Hannah with one of her many purses....
And Benjamin wanted a picture taken of his belly button...so here he is!

We go back to get another Xray on Wednesday next week to make sure Alexander's bone is healing properly and then we shall see how much long he needs to take it easy. Benjamin will be off to football after school today, which may prove to be the hardest day for Alexander as he will have to sit and watch.
Hope you are all doing well.

Trip to England and Halloween

2007-10-31T15:24:00.001Z

Just thought I would finally post some pictures from our recent trip to Birmingham. We all had a great time and enjoyed the sites as well as meeting some distant relatives who were so welcoming.
So here are some pictures:

The children with the big cadbury train. Cadbury World....YUMMY!!

With their own creations of chocolate goodies. We got to choose from many different sweets and goodies and then we poured chocolate over top from a big spout. It was delicious!

Again at Cadbury World....can you tell we liked it there?

At the Sea Life Center. I was trying to catch one of the big sea turtles going behind them but I missed it!

Outside sea life center

And before we head out to collect some sweeties tonight, here are some pics of the crazy Canadian trick or treaters:

Trying out Halloween Costumes....and being silly!

More silliness

Posing with the newly carved pumpkin before bed last night

Our scary pumpkin!! In Black and White

Hannah and Jacob are 3!!

2007-10-17T09:38:00.000+01:00

My babies are three years old! I really can't believe how quickly time flies.
We celebrated Hannah and Jacob's birthday last week and had a great time smashing some more great pinatas made by Shawn. They got to choose the shape of the pinata and the shape of their birthday cakes. Jacob picked a crocodile pinata and a firetruck cake (you'll see the pics below). Hannah picked an elephant pinata and a princess cake. So Shawn got to work on the pinatas and I made the cakes. Below are some pics of the party.

Jacob's firetruck cake and Hannah's princess cake

Blowing out the candles as big brothers look on

And now the pinatas. Here is Hannah and her elephant. She is trying to keep on a brave face as she had just fallen on the stairs
And here is Jacob's crocodile
And the birthday bashers:
After the festivities, Hannah and Jacob had a sleepover here with a couple of friends (2 girls aged 8 and 10) and the boys went to stay with their brother (12) at their house. They all had a great time! While Jacob and Shawn were playing a computer game, Grammy Weir did the girls' nails!

Look for pics of our trip to England which will be coming very soon....

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

2007-10-09T10:40:00.001+01:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We were able to celebrate with fellow Canadians last night for some great Thanksgiving Day desserts. We had 4 other families here to share in some lovely desserts. We had apple pie, pumpkin pie, peanut butter fudge, ice cream and smarties cupcakes. Sounds yummy, eh? (Did you note that little Canadian expression? We haven't forgoteten where we are from!)

So here is a little photo of the spread. I put up a couple Canadian flags just to remind us!
Here are Shawn and Jacob playing a game on the computer. They were both looking so intently that I had to take a picture.
Then they both saw the flash and looked up so I got another one
And finally, here are a couple pictures of our little girl, who always wants her picture taken. This one was last week when she got herself dressed (which she does daily) to help me take out the recycling. FYI, it was not raining that day and it was quite warm.
And this one is just today when it IS raining and only 10 degrees outside!
Now I know I am very biased, but isn't she just too cute??!!

HOPE YOU ALL HAD A GREAT THANKSGIVING! We are very thankful for all our friends and family who keep us in their thoughts and prayers.

And here are the boys in their new rainsuits. I finally got them into them when I could take a picture to post so they were not left out of the blog. So here are the two big boys in their new suits

Benjamin's suit (sorry they are sideways)
Alexander's suit

NEW RAIN SUITS

2007-09-21T11:04:00.001+01:00

We found some great new rainsuits this morning when Hannah, Jacob, and I went shopping. I will post some photos of Alexander and Benjamin's later as they are still at school. However, here are Hannah and Jacob sporting their new rain gear and also (not really talking) in a little video. Enjoy!

The pants are actually overalls and Jacob keeps saying that they are just like fire fighters. He is pretty excited about that!

First Full Day of School

2007-09-18T15:33:00.000+01:00

To ease the children into grade 1 here they go only 1/2 day for the first month. Well, today was the first day that the boys went for the full day. They were VERY excited to be going the whole day like all the big kids and VERY excited to be able to take their new lunch boxes. So here are a few pictures of them this morning getting ready to go to school. I really don't know what is up with all of them lately with their smiles. I couldn't get one of both of them smiling normally at the same time so I am posting all three I took so that you can take your pick of which ones you want to look at!

I think this is the closest one to "normal" I managed to get....

When I was packing their lunch this morning I told them I was putting a chocolate chip cookie in with their roll and they were to eat their lunch first and then the cookie for dessert. So as I start to put the cookie in the bag, Alexander tells me he doesn't want it. I asked why, incredulously, and he said they weren't allowed to take cookies cause they were to have a healthy lunch. I assured him that the teacher wouldn't mind if he had one cookie after he ate his lunch and he then agreed to take the treat. Perhaps his twin brother is rubbing off on him!

Now that I have discovered video on blog, you will be getting bombarded with them just cause I think it's neat. Therefore, I am also posting a video which we discovered a couple of days ago while going through the pictures on the computer. I may have children's services coming to look for the children, but they were having a good time at the time!

BASKETBALL

2007-09-14T16:44:00.001+01:00

As many of you may know, our family enjoys sports of all kinds. We did get to go see the season opener of the Edinburgh Capitals last Sunday night and we all had a grand time. You should have seen Jacob's face as soon as we sat down and the players came onto the ice with all the cheers and music....it was pricelss. I don't think his eyes nor his smile could have been bigger! Alexander and Benjamin were the professional commentators telling us all what happens as they went to a couple games last season. Hannah sat there enjoying the game but was more interested in what snacks I took with me. It was great to be able to spend an exciting night out with the whole family. Unfortunately, the battery for the camera had died and try as I might to take a picture, it just wouldn't cooperate....I guess we will have to go to another game just so we can take some pictures.
So today we had a great basketball game after school. The children all got dressed up in their muscle shirts....cause that's what real basketball players wear....and, of course, I had to take their pictures first! So without further ado, here are the basketball players:

Here is the team

Benjamin's closeup....they are all having a bit of difficulty lately with smiling "normally" when I want to take a picture. Whenever I say, "smile normally", they say "I am!!"

Hannah the basketball star

Jacob's pose

And Alexander's pose

I just found out how to add video to the blog so you can all now have fun figuring out how to play the video! So here is a little snippet of the big game...actually, this was practice time before the game began. Enjoy!

Fun Times....

2007-09-09T16:23:00.001+01:00

Here are a few pictures we have taken over the last week. The children are all into fire fighting lately so we have been dressing up and playing fire station, just like on the great Mighty Machines video Aunt Deborah brought over for us!

Hannah and Jacob and I have been having fun spending time together while Alexander and Benjamin are in school. Last week we spent part of a morning in the front garden area by the car park taking some pictures and having a fun time! This was a day after we had an evening BBQ and Jacob got a few bug bites as you will see if you zoom in.

We are now all getting ready to head off to the season opener of the Edinburgh Capitals Ice Hockey Team. The children are all very excited! We signed the boys up for the Kids Club and they will get to join the players for various activities including skating, parties, and a golf game later this month!! There are quite a few Canadian players on the team so we go out to support them. Hope you all had a good weekend and we will likely post some pics from tonight's game.

ALEXANDER AND BENJAMIN ARE 5!!

2007-08-26T22:36:00.001+01:00

My how time flies....Alexander and Benjamin are 5 years old!
We had a great time celebrating, spreading the event out over an entire week. The festivities started off with a little family party with Shawn's mom and sister before they went back to Canada. Then the boys wanted to invite all the children in the neighborhood on their actual birthday so we had an outdoor party on that day. Finally, we had a smaller party for 10 friends on Saturday. I figure since I only have to do two birthdays for the four children, I can splurge a little!
So here are a few pictures from the festivities:

Here are the happy birthday boys with their cakes:

Shawn made some terrific pinatas for the birthday party on Saturday....I keep telling him he should make some money on the side with this little hobby....I really want to be able to come home next summer! Anyhow, he made 4 of them so each of the children got to pick which animal they wanted him to make. So to show off his handiwork, they posed with their favorite animal. Here is Jacob with his tiger:

Hannah with the elephant...for Grammy White and Mommy!

Benjamin and the lion

Alexander and the zebra

Shawn made some terrific pinatas and we are a little sad that they got bashed to bits after all that work! But the children all had a great time taking swings and, of course, collecting the sweeties that fell out!

Alexander getting ready to swing at the zebra

This one is a little fuzzy but I wanted to get Benjamin's pinata batting practice on here too.

The birthday boys having the first balloon race...it ended in a tie!

Jacob had a little difficulty with the balloon race but he did finish the course!

Hannah used her skirt to her advantage and won the race! There really is a balloon under there.

I know this a long post but I don't seem to post so often these days. So I have 3 more photos to share from the community birthday party after school on their actual birthday. There were alot of children who they invited so we just let them have a football match in the back garden, then played some water balloon games (thankfully it was about 20 degrees and sunny that day), and finished off with cupcakes and koolaid outside.

Here is a photo of some of the children in the midst of the football match...for all you Canadian folk, we mean soccer....yes, we have become accustomed to the Scottish lingo!

After the football match, we had a few water balloon toss games and then a "free for all" water balloon fight.

And here are the cupcakes, which were supposed to be in the shape of a football as well, but it didn't turn out so great in this photo....it's the smiling children you all want to see anyhow, right?

Alexander and Benjamin Go To School

2007-08-21T09:06:00.001+01:00

Alexander and Benjamin started Primary School last Wednesday. They are loving it!
I have only a couple of pictures here as their uniforms have the school crest and name on them and so I don't want to post them here for the whole world to see and know where my boys go to school, so I will just post a couple with their coats on which is a little less "revealing". Their uniforms consist of a polo shirt (white, green, or blue), navy sweater, and they can choose their own pants....they look so cute!
Shawn's mom and sister were here for the first day so Shawn and I were both able to walk the boys to school and then we took the luxury of going for a cup of tea at a local cafe!

The boys continue to love school. They go from 850-1200 right now until mid-September when they will start 850-250. Should be interesting to see how tired they are when they go the whole day...I think that is why they ease them into it for the first month.

Posing with Dad in our car park

Walking up the path from our doorway.

More Scottish Fun with Canadian Visitor

2007-08-02T21:02:00.000+01:00

Our second week with Cindy is almost over and we continue to have a great time showing her around our lovely city. Tonight she is actually out at the Military Tattoo....I am VERY jealous. The event has been sold out for quite some time but friends of ours were just given tickets. I was going to babysit for them while they attended but at the last minute the wife wasn't feeling well....so Cindy got to go instead! What an experience she will have....did I mention I am a little jealous??
Anyhow, here are a few pictures of what we have been doing here this last week:

Yesterday, Cindy and I got to travel to Dollar, Scotland to visit Campbell Castle. It was a great chance to spend time together as Shawn took care of all the children so we could go alone....very nice! Here is Cindy in front of her castle:

Here we are at the entrance to the castle
Cindy with a gorgeous view from the top of her castle
And another picture which just looks too good to be true. This was also taken from the top of the castle. Do you see why we love this country??
We took the children to a city farm this week as well. It was a great place to spend the day. Here are the children climbing on the tractor that is at the farm.
There are some indoor "exhibits" at the farm as well. So here are Cindy, Hannah, and the boys looking at the tropical fish.
And now....the cutest pictures I ever did see....but I am a little biased. We gave all the boys hair cuts again Tuesday night and Benjamin (quite out of the blue) said he wanted a strip of hair left in the middle of his head. So we gave him a little mohawk (temporarily...we cut it off after pictures) and took some pictures.
What is a mohawk without sunglasses and a guitar??

A close up of our cool dude!!

We also went to the beach this week but didn't take our cameras....what were we thinking???!! However, they probably would have gotten all covered in sand anyhow. The children LOVED the beach and had a great time playing in the waves and building sand castles. It really made me want to try to find a way to go back to Canada for a bit next summer to enjoy my mom's new beach house! Hope you are all enjoying your summers. We'd love to hear from you!

Cindy's Visit

2007-07-29T21:18:00.001+01:00

Here are a few pictures of the first week of Cindy's visit. We are very happy to have her here and the children (and Shawn and I too) are having a great time with her. We have gone to the City Art Center to do crafts, a new playground, swimming at the pool, the zoo, Holyrood Park, the zoo, and many other outings. Tomorrow we are off to the city farm.

What a crew we have here!!

And here they are with Aunt Cindy waiting for the penguin parade at the zoo

Asleep on the bus coming home from the zoo

Cindy working her sleeping magic with Hannah (already asleep in the background) and Jacob (enjoying some cuddle time before bed tonight)

Here they are crowded around a great ice cream cone...wouldn't that taste yummy??

Cindy and the boys at the fountain in Princes Street Gardens

Jacob at the new playground

The boys at the bottom of a great tunnel slide at the new playground

And look at this little cutie by the pretty flowers

We are enjoying this city as we show our friend around all the sites and attractions. Hope your summer is also going well!

Our Fun of Late....

2007-07-14T21:09:00.001+01:00

Today we went to the museum for a Picasso exhibit and a special craft time. We arrived just after lunch and had a lovely day out. The museum was great as always, we went to a restaurant for supper, and then stopped by our beloved sweetie shop for dessert on the way home. What more could you ask for?
Anyhow, without further ado, here are some pictures:

Here are Hannah and Alexander standing in front of the wall where they were displaying all the crafts the children did today for the Picasso craft time.

Here are the children working on their works of art.

Alexander showing his mean Roman Soldier face

Benjamin was a happy Roman Soldier!

The Museum has a great Jungle area where the children can explore and dress up. Here is Jacob the scarey crocodile or alligator...I am always confused on the difference.

Hannah the monkey...in more ways than just dressing up!

Benjamin the colorful bird.
Alexander playing the feed the spider game. You have to throw fuzzy bugs at the velcro spider web to feed the big spider.

We have been working on some new puzzles lately. The charity shops here have some great deals for around £1 each so we pick up a new one every now and then and enjoy the challenge. Here are some of the ones we have completed in the last few weeks.

And this photo was just too cute not to share. Sometimes siblings do really show they love each other. Benjamin called me into the kitchen the other day to take this picture.

FIRE STATION FUN!!

2007-07-07T16:44:00.001+01:00

Today we went to a local fire station for an open day. The children had fun although they were a bit scared. There were demonstrations of rescues and the boys were a little worried that someone would get hurt. They still scream when the fire alarm goes off in our building (as it often does since there are 8 flats, all with very sensitive smoke detectors).
Anyhow, once reassured that these were all just drills and that no one's house was really on fire, they enjoyed watching the firefighters climb the big ladder truck, rappel down the side of the building, and break through the front door with hoses.
They even got to hold the fire hose to shoot the water at a pylon! Hannah didn't want to have a go and Benjamin decided against it as well as he didn't want to take his fingers out of his ears long enough to try it (the firefighters were also letting the children sound the sirens). They all said they enjoyed the day even with the noise and initial fear of bodily harm!
So here are some pictures of our little firefighters:

Here are the two boys decked out in their outfits

Hannah and Jacob with a rear view of the suits

Jacob was the first to be dressed up. And he was very proud of it.

Alexander spraying the fire hose

Jacob firing away

Hannah and Jacob in the fire truck with a friend
Hannah and Jacob at the bottom of "a real fire pole"!!

Canada Day in Scotland

2007-07-05T14:07:00.001+01:00

We were fortunate to be able to spend Canada Day with some Canadian friends. We all enjoyed a BBQ (which had to be done under the bridge here as it was pouring rain!), great salads, and a marvelous cake. It was great food and great company to celebrate with. Later in the evening, it even stopped raining so we could do sparklers....I don't think I had done sparklers since I was a kid! It was great although the children were a little scared of them at first. So here are our photos from our little celebration.

Here is the great cake

Here is Jacob playing with a sparkler....unfortunately he was too scared to hold it and by the time I convinced him to try, the sparkler was pretty much done.

Alexander was a little uncertain about his turn as well

Here is Benjamin with his sparkler.

Here are some of the children celebrating. Benjamin is showing off his Canada tatoo; something that all the children got on their arms.

We hope you all had great celebration as well. We look forward to seeing photos of your celebrations.....Hint Hint!!

Last Day of School

2007-06-29T21:03:00.001+01:00

Alexander and Benjamin have loved going to school this past year. Every weekday from 9am-1130, they have a blast at a nursery school just up the street from us. Yesterday was their last day and we got to go watch as they were presented with a big folder of some of their artwork and some photos of them the teachers had taken. It was great. They looked so proud as they got to sit beside the teacher and talk about some of their work. Then the children all sang a goodbye song to each of them in turn.
So here are some pictures:

Benjamin showing off his book to everyone

Is this a proud boy or what??

Alexander showing off his book

Hope you all have a great Canada Day Weekend. We are celebrating with a few fellow Canadians on Sunday with a BBQ.

Fun times in Aberdeen

2007-06-20T08:56:00.001+01:00

We have been in Aberdeen since Saturday for a little vacation. Shawn is presenting a paper at the University here tomorrow and we found a great place to stay so we made a week's vacation out of it! The city is quite nice and has some great attractions which we are still exploring.
We had some friends come up with us from Saturday to Monday and the children all had a great time together. The place we are staying has 6 bedrooms and a kitchen and living room...with a TV!!
So here is the start of a few highlights from our week thus far:

Our week began with a lovely train ride...

Soon after we arrived, the children got organized into boys' and girls' rooms; and here is our little girl with her nails painted for the first time!

No nail painting for the boys...just fort building!

Sunday was father's day so we made a giant chocolate chip cookie for the dads...they generously allowed all of us to share!
Aberdeen has a lovely waterfront/esplanade which we enjoyed visiting on Sunday and which we will probably visit again before we leave. Here is Grammy enjoying the waterfront.

Yesterday we found a great playground in which to spend the morning.

I am plugging away at my assignments for the Overseas Nurses Program which I am completing so I can finally get my registration to practice here in the UK. Benjamin was sick yesterday afternoon and night but seems better this morning so we may make it out to museum and art gallery today. I will keep you posted with more photos later in the week!

The Celtic Christian Tour

2007-06-15T09:42:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday nights here in Edinburgh, there is a great ministry happening called the Celtic Christian Tour. It is the only free city centre tour available and it is terrific! Shawn's mom and I went on Wednesday night and really enjoyed it.
They begin at the castle and work their way down the Royal Mile (the high street) making frequent stops to share stories about the city and country. Two men are dressed as Cuthbert and John Knox and they both portray their roles fabulously. It was very educational and interesting. I was so impressed that they give a clear presentation of the gospel during the tour....John Knox is retelling one of his sermons.
At the end of the tour we arrived at a Christian Cafe where there was free coffee, tea and cakes!
Even though it was quite overcast and cold, we enjoyed our evening. Here are some pics from the evening:

Mom White posing with Cuthbert (in brown monk's attire) and John Knox (in black)

This is when John Knox gave the gospel message and invitation outside of the incredible St. Giles Cathedral
Here is a statue of David Hume (who used to mock Christianity). This was about half way through our tour, which was, fortunately, all downhill!

So if there is anyone reading this who may be in Edinburgh during May, June, September, and October.....please look up the Celtic Christian Tour. It is a great ministry which should be supported!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAWN!

2007-06-09T21:27:00.000+01:00

To celebrate Shawn's birthday today we took a little trip to Crammond Island with some friends. It is on the outskirts of the city and when the tide goes out you can walk out to the island. Quite nice even in the fog! It was a nice day although you can't really tell in some of the photos...as proof, however, you can see the sunburns on our faces when you see the pic of the birthday cake we had after a very late supper.
So to start out, we have all the children lined up on the back seat of the city bus...actually, the two youngest members of our gang were too small to sit on their own (1 year and 4 months):

As you can see, the fog was still rolling in as the tide was rolling out....if you look closely, you can see Crammond Island in the background. This is Shawn, Alexander, and Benjamin walking on the beach
And here are Benjamin, Hannah and Jacob looking out from the road...again, the tide is still going out and you can see the island in the background

So we walked out to the island and had a little picnic lunch there....of course there is also the token picture of Hannah sleeping! I think I will need to make a whole "tribute" to her with all the sleeping pictures I have. She was so cute, she said "I'm tired" and I layed her down on Shawn's coat and out she went!

One of our friends took a lovely family photo for us:
Back on land, we took a little snack break while we watched the swans and ducks at the marina.
And finally, we made it home after 6pm so we had a quick supper of pizza from Papa John's (I had a free coupon!) and then the cake the children and I had made yesterday. I even snuck Grammy into the picture (she decided to stay a little closer to home today, it was quite alot of walking!).

2007-05-29T21:46:00.001+01:00

So I was told that I need to update the blog...
I don't have much to write about as it has been raining for....well, for what seems like forever!
We had been bragging about our great weather and then it all left; we should have told Mom White to bring more sweaters!!
Anyhow, here are a few pics from the last week or so.

We went over to a park on Saturday with our friends and had a great time playing football and just running around:

The children played hide and seek with all the balls in the tall bushes

And here are the crazy gang last week getting ready to listen to a hockey game. They are all shouting Go Senators!! Unfortunately, they didn't yell loud enough last night. Since we don't have TV here, we have been listening through the internet to the weekend NHL games on the radio. When they play on the weekend at 2pm Eastern, it is 7pm here so we all get ready for bed, lay down and listen to the games!

And finally, here is a little picture of the children before an outing awhile ago.

I haven't been taking many pictures it would seem lately...maybe it is a subconcious thing as I am so excited to be all caught up with scrapbooking! By the way, scrappin' girls, I have now changed to Sunday nights for my scrapping night as my friend can come every week now. And last Sunday I got 4 pages done for my mom's album which I will be able to send back with Shawn's mom. I didn't take pics as I don't want her to see them before she gets them in her hands.
So I will be taking more pictures in the next few days, including some of Mom White so all the family can see we haven't lost her with the luggage!

TWINKLE TWINKLE TRAFFIC LIGHTS

2007-05-18T20:19:00.001+01:00

We made a little treat this afternoon as it has been raining on and off all week. The children helped me make some brownies and icing and then we decorated them like traffic lights! It was great fun.
So we took a photo and sang our little song which the boys learned at school. Here it is:
(to the tune of twinkle, twinkle, little star)
Twinkle Twinkle traffic light, down by the station shining bright.
Red means stop, green means slow, amber means, very slow.
Twinkle twinkle traffic light, down by the station shining bright.

Here is the finished product close-up:

And here are the happy kids before getting to eat them....can you imagine how they looked after they got to eat this chocolately treat??!!
I also have to add a few miscellaneous photos from the last few days.

Here is Jacob who has been wearing himself out playing with Grammy. This was at playgroup on Wednesday....I have never seen him fall asleep on the way to playgroup at 10am! Don't you just love the folded hands? So glad I keep my camera in my backpack!

These are some of the things which Grammy brought us from Canada. The hockey sticks were a great gift as, if you recall, we used to play with toy brooms, mops, and little plastic golf clubs! And the little cyclist outfits are just too cute on these little bodies!!

The action shot!

Here is the only pic so far that I have been able to take of Grammy. We are all very happy to have her here!

And here are Hannah and Jacob showing off some visors that the boys made in Sunday School.

Some other pics

2007-05-13T09:02:00.000+01:00

Hello all,
as we await the arrival of Grammy White, I thought I would put some photos on which I have had on the camera but which don't belong to a particular group or activity. So here are a few pics from the last couple of weeks which I thought I would share.
Hope everyone is doing well and that you can now see the pictures from the Miffy post...not sure what happened but I uploaded them again and I can see them now.

Here is a pic from the gang just last night watching our pre-bed video

Here is Hannah with a friend trying on a new scarf

Shawn and I in front of part of Holyrood palace

And finally, our little hockey girl

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIFFY!!

2007-05-09T09:19:00.000+01:00

For those of you who don't know Miffy from her world famous books (translated into over 20 languages or something like that), she is an adorable little rabbit from children's books. Well, we didn't know of her either until the National Library had a great display for her 50th birthday. So we took out a few books from the library, read them over a couple weeks and then went to the great display last Saturday with some friends. What a great display it was, the children all enjoyed it as did the parents, who got to read all the history of this famous rabbit. Anyhow, after we looked through all the display, we made some great crafts. So I thought I would share them with you all so you can share in the birthday celebration: 50 years is quite a milestone...some of you will know that already, even as you are basking in the Tahitian sun!! {That was just a little jab at my parents who are whoopin' it up in Tahiti right now!}
So here are our Miffy celebration pictures:

Here are Hannah and Jacob trying on some of Miffy's outfits, Jacob is not too keen on it:

Sorry this is sideways but is shows Miffy as Jacob is trying on different colors:

And they had some books on tape for them to listen to which Alexander and Benjamin thought we kinda neat:

And here are our 4 and their friends enjoying the birthday cake:

Benjamin and our friend made some Miffy ears in the craft room:

And here are some other intent crafters:

And finally, here are the children enjoying the little puppet theatre they had to play with:

So now you should all go to the local library and check to see if they have any Miffy books...

SCRAPBOOKING

2007-05-06T21:48:00.001+01:00

I can hardly believe it but I am all caught up on my scrapbooking! I have no more pictures to scrapbook and I have only about 30 or so on my camera. Yeah me!! Hee Hee. However, this means I need to take more pictures, I have been a little slack.
So here are my last few pages which I did last week and tonight. Can you tell I am rather excited about this? And my mother and mother-in-law should also be excited as now I will be working on their albums for the next few weeks.

Christmas 2006

You may remember these pics from the blog

And in other news, I have finally "jumped on the bandwagon" and joined facebook. I have no idea why as I have yet to really explore the site. So hurry up and get here Cindy so you can show me what to do with it! FYI, the term quoted above stems from:
Old time political campaigns would attempt to gain supporters with what amounted to a small parade including a band for a candidate with sufficient support. Jumping on the bandwagon was akin to providing your support for this popular candidate (from Idioms and Axioms currently used in America: Meanings and Origins).
Hope you all have a good week!

How we entertain ourselves here...

2007-04-28T10:25:00.000+01:00

As I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes this morning....pancakes with Aunt Jemima....the children found some great ways to entertain themselves.
First off, we have found a great little thing in the hockey highlights on NHL.com which the boys watch faithfully every morning. So here they are glued to the screen.
And Hannah and Jacob were busy getting themselves dressed and ready to go out for a scooter ride! You may be interested to know that it hasn't rained here for a few weeks now so they must be anxious to wear their wellies even though they have no need to. Jacob did quite well with getting shorts on but left on his pj top. Hannah managed to get the shirt on but no bottoms at all; fortunately her shirt is a little long.
Hope you all have a great weekend...Go Ottawa Senators!!

Finally for Hannah

2007-04-26T13:59:00.000+01:00

I know you won't really be able to tell in these photos, but for Hannah it was a fantastic and life-altering thing....the other night, I finally decided to cut her hair. It still isn't that full on top but the back was getting a little stragley (what a great word...even if I have no idea how to spell it!) She is sooo proud that she got her hair cut, she is telling everyone! And she says "I got my hair cut just like Benjamin, Alexander, Jacob and Mom!"
Anyhow, as I said, it is hard to see in the pictures because she turned her head for the "before" shot so you can't really see how long it was in the back. However, SHE knows and I guess that is what counts.

BEFORE
AFTER

I had to come back and edit this post because as I was writing it, the children were all playing outside and it made a great picture....another beautiful day here and they are digging up on the hill and right outside our window:

Here they are up on the hill....recognize any construction toys Mom?

Oh and one other thing.....We love Aunt Tracy...AND Aunt Jemima!! Thanks Tracy for the great parcel and the great french toast we enjoyed this morning.

Royal Botanic Gardens and our own backyard

2007-04-19T22:54:00.000+01:00

First off, congrats to Scott and Dee on a beautiful baby girl!! We wish we were closer so we could see all these cuties in person. However, we fully expect many pictures and updates in the next year (at least) of these two great girls, Emily and Sarah. What a blessing they will be to the families God has placed them in.
Now on to the pics of our little blessings....
Last week there was a great Science Festival in Edinburgh. We went to the Royal Botanic Garden one day to take in some of the activities of the festival. It was our first time there but we will be going back for sure! Already there were tons of flowers and trees in bloom, it was very beautiful and I can only imagine what it will look like come summer.
So after taking in some of the science activities, we had a nice picnic lunch and then walked through the gardens. It was a great, warm, sunny day and the children had fun running and watching the ducks in the pond. Here are a few pics from our day:

Here are the children enjoying a race in the gardens. Shawn and I were sitting on a bench and watching the race which went around the big tree you see in the center.

And here they are coming around the tree...a little hard to see H and J in the background but they are there!
Here is everyone (except me of course) walking down one of the paths in the gardens...
And then stopping for a pose under this great tree

We really are enjoying this city!!

And here are some pictures from our own backyard which I took last week. We have some great trees and flowers which I look forward to seeing in full bloom very soon.

This one is so neat...it is actually growing out of the trunk of a tree. There are dozens of these clusters all over the tree trunk and it's branches.

And all along the back walkway are these shrubs/bushes which I thought were just going to be greeen. However, they have these great red flowers all over them now.

Here's a close up for all your horticulturalists!

Rejoicing with Friends!!

2007-04-14T12:32:00.000+01:00

We are rejoicing today with our friends Matt and Christine on the arrival of their baby girl, Sarah!
Yet another house of boys has been invaded by a little girl.....oh the fun!! I can't wait to share stories of how girls are simply different than boys.
Blessings on your whole household....
Now we await the next little one which will arrive any time to our friends in NB...Go Dee and Scott!!

New additions and Scrapbooking

2007-04-13T19:29:00.000+01:00

This is a dual-purpose blog-post as we have some new additions to our family to announce:
Meet Goldie and Seashell!! A friend here was looking to get rid of a couple of goldfish so we said we would take them. The children are quite excited about it as Franklin the turtle picked goldfish as his favorite pet in a story book we have. Plus, they remember that Elmo had a fish when we used to have a TV to watch Sesame Street...there are times I do miss our TV.
So here are our new additions:

Here are the happy children displaying our new pets; and yes it is shorts weather here!!

I also completed a whopping 6 pages when my friend came over last night...she says she is getting quicker because of me and completed 2 pages and some cropping last night!
So here are my pages:

Our church Ceilidh from back in the fall

Our snow day which I blogged about earlier

Hockey
Halloween

Miscellaneous shots from the fall and winter

Easter Weekend Fun!!

2007-04-10T14:02:00.000+01:00

Here is a rundown of our Easter weekend fun:
We started off the weekend with a great cake for my bday on Saturday. It was from the sweetie shop which we love! We were a little late with supper that night and so cake was our bedtime snack after baths; thus the pic of all the pj's.

Then on Sunday afternoon, we had our friends come over for an Easter egg hunt. Here are the children hard at work searching in the toy room for their eggs:

And then here they are showing off their goodies in their Easter baskets:
We had some other friends over for a great Easter dinner yesterday of turkey and all the fixin's; which we are still enjoying today!
And this afternoon, we got a ring from the postman that we had a package arrive with some great goodies from Grammie Weir....thank you! Sorry we missed you on the webcam, I held them off as long as I could!

In other news, we are on day 5 of our "nappy free days"!!! Hannah and Jacob love wearing their "undies" as they call them. They are doing very well with only a couple accidents thus far. They still wear diapers at night but in the day, we are attempting to do underwear. I had forgotten how cute little ones look in nothin' but their undies!

Monkey Music

2007-04-06T09:16:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, we took a lovely trip to the zoo again. As we are on holiday here there were some special events taking place there. We were able to take in a Monkey Music session and then look around the zoo for the rest of the day. It was another beautiful, sunny day here (around 16 degrees)...very nice!!
So here are some pics from our trip:

Playing the drums during Monkey Music

A little too warm for the polar bear

This eagle was up on a branch and flew right down to the glass in front of us...pretty spectacular

There are 3 or 4 great playgrounds within the zoo grounds. As it was so nice yesterday, we checked them all out. By one of them, there is a little hill which turned out to be great for rolling! Take a look:

Getting ready to roll....

In the act....

Hannah and Jacob also joined in

A short note for all the pregos.....

2007-04-04T10:37:00.000+01:00

Just thought I would post a little note to all my pregnant friends to let them know what they may have to look forward to:
I have a friend here who last week gave birth to a beautiful baby girl! She was 10 days overdue and her little girl weighed...are you ready for this???? 11lbs 1 oz!!!!
Wishing you all a happy delivery! Looking forward to hearing and seeing pics of your "little" ones! We miss you!

NEW PLAYGROUND

2007-04-03T20:38:00.000+01:00

They finally completed a great new playground very close to here a couple of weeks ago. I was quite distraught back in October when they put up a sign saying they were closing down the playground which is on the way home from the boys' school; it was such a great find that we were disappointed to lose a playground so close to our home . However, after many months of waiting, we have a terrific new playground. It has so many great play areas. There is a sand area, many different climbing frames, some great swings and a zip line (or a flying fox as they call it here). The children all love it, as do I! We started a 2 week spring break here on Friday and we have been to the new playground every day except Sunday since! We have been having terrific weather lately: sunny and 10-14 degrees.

Here is one of the many great twirly things...I'm not up on my playground lingo to know the real name! You stand on a little platform, lean back and swing around and around.

And the great tire (I guess I should be saying "tyre" so that I can teach the boys properly as they are going to school in August!) swing which they will all fit on but here is shown Hannah and Jacob only.

And the great "sand box" is a whole section of the playground with shovels, pulleys, slides, etc. for digging and playing....and burying people!
This is one of my favorite (and the children's favorite) ride at the playground. It is like a roundabout but to make it go around, the children all peddle the bicycles. It looks like great fun!

Hannah and Jacob on the 2 baby swings they have. They also have 6 regular swings and 2 special swings which are like car seats for small children and/or handicapped children; really neat.

I seem to have taken more photos of Hannah and Jacob than of Alexander and Benjamin...probably because the boys didn't stop long enough for me to take a picture! This was our first trip to the new playground, so they had alot of exploring to do. So here is one of the seesaws in the sand area.

And finally (for now), here is Jacob getting ready to come down the slide. I can't wait to do a scrapbook page or two with playground stickers and all these photos! And it isn't even summer yet!

SCRAPBOOKING CHALLENGE

2007-03-29T22:32:00.000+01:00

I had a bit of a time rearranging some pages tonight as I didn't have quite the right order for a page I wanted. This was the first time I had ever removed pictures from a page and restarted! However, it all worked out and I like the way the album now flows...it is not all completely chronological, but it is pretty close!
So after all the rearranging, I was still able to do a few pages. So here are the pages I was able to complete tonight. Most of the pictures are probably familiar because most have been on the blog already.
I also have some pictures from a great new playground which has finally opened very close to here. We have already been 2 times and will probably stop daily as it is on the way home from the boys' school. I am so happy for spring (not that the weather has changed, it has been spring here all winter!) and look forward to all our summer visitors. We are anxiously awaiting your visits. We miss all our friends and family in Canada (and our family in Australia!!).

This is a page in between my Christmas pages which inserts a few pictures which I realized I had overlooked. Thus the title: Catch-Up Page

The right hand page was added to go along with my "2004 Christmas Spread". Those boys are sooo cute in their little suits!!

And this is the rearranging I had to do. I had these great stickers for moving which I wanted to use but the trip to Scotland had been on the back of another page. So I took it all off and put it beside the moving page so I can have an old house and a new house (sort of)...

And here are a few pictures of our first week of touring around this great city when we first arrived here in Scotland.

Scrapbooking Challenge

2007-03-18T22:30:00.000Z

So after last Thursday's crazy cropping, I was able to do 5 pages tonight when my friend came over. It was so easy to do the pages with the pictures already cut.
So here are my pages:

I have covered up our address on this page if you are wondering why I put the little heart cutter on the page! I didn't want to advertise our address on the web.

If anyone knows the name of the lake outside of Kentville, please let me know. I know Maria doesn't have internet at home, but if you are reading this, where did we go with you guys last summer? I plan to write the name of the lake in the blue water strip in the center.

I love these photos...doesn't it look like they are having fun!

BUSY WEEK

2007-03-15T21:35:00.000Z

We had a busy week here and I am now just getting a few pics on for your viewing pleasure.
I must say first off that I have had to reschedule my scrapping until Sunday night. So look for my pages on Monday morning or maybe even Sunday night depending on how quick my friend and I are!!
So now for our busy week:
In our first big news, I finally gave in to become the next victim of the notorious clippers!! Not really, but I did get quite the chop. You should have seen the hair on the floor at the hairdressers! I wish I had had my camera; alas, I did not so here is my new "do" which I am not really liking yet but am warming up to it daily. My little girl, who remains quite distraught that she is left out every time we get out the clippers, joined me for the photo.
In other news, we took Alexander and Benjamin to the Scottish Opera Orchestra on Sunday afternoon. Benjamin is quite into classical music and says often he wants to learn to play the violin (his teacher plays when they have music time). Alexander also enjoys classical music but is a little more into Bare Naked Ladies....fortunately, they don't ask the name of the bands who play, they just like the music!!
So the Scottish Opera Orchestra has a line of children's events and we were able to partake this past Sunday in their "Puppets A-Go" event. They had the orchestra playing different pieces and then they had a couple of puppeteers who joined in for a few of the pieces. The boys loved it! When asked which was their favorite instrument, they both said the tuba! I think it is because they know I used to play. We have found a couple of great websites which show and play the sound of each instrument so they can see and hear them all. If you would like them, just drop us a note and I can find them for you. We also made some sock puppets to take with us as was advertised when we bought our tickets. So below are the two young musicians with their puppets and the program from the afternoon.
A special thanks to our friends who looked after Hannah and Jacob so Shawn and I could both go!
And finally, here is another picture of our sleeping girl. It comes with quite the story!
The boys had a friend over a couple of days ago and they were playing in their room (that is A, B, J, and their friend T....4 boys...4 loud boys!!). I was actually doing some email in my room, and Hannah was reading a book in the entry way. For those of you who don't know the layout of our flat, there is a fairly large entry way and then 4 rooms off of it at the 4 corners (plus the bathroom in the middle). So Hannah was in this entryway and I noticed after a few minutes that I couldn't hear her "reading" anymore. I assumed she had gone in to play with the boys; however, when I went to investigate, I found her fast asleep in the middle of the entryway floor!!! Wouldn't you love to be able to fall asleep anywhere, with any noise? I can't believe she can sleep like that....those boys were pretty loud!!
Anyhow, I, of course, had to take a picture...so here it is:

Scrapping Challenge

2007-03-09T08:55:00.000Z

I don't have any pictures to post today from last night's scrapbooking session because I didn't actually do any pages. However, I did sort and crop 151 pictures!! I had just gone to Costco to get pictures developped (it is cheaper if you get 150 or more at once) so I had a whole pile to sort through and crop. So last night I was looking after a friend's little girl (she was asleep the whole time) and I took along all my cutting tools as well as my new 151 pictures. While they were out, I managed to crop them all. Then I sorted them into my great accordian file folder...some were for my mom's album, some for my mother-in-law's album, and some for mine. Now I am excited to get them all in the albums. My mother-in-law comes in May (we think) so I will be able to send them home with her.
On another scapping note, I found a Creative Memories consultant here who lives about 2 streets over. I am going there this morning to get a few things from her on my way to pick up the boys from school.
All is well here, we continue to enjoy the lovely weather...it has been like an eastern Canadian spring here all winter long! And in other news, we found out last week that we have been accepted to go on a 3 month exchange to Germany next spring. So if Scotland isn't a good enough reason to come visit, make plans to come to Germany for a visit in the spring of 2008!!

WORLD BOOK DAY

2007-03-01T08:57:00.000Z

Today is world book day and to celebrate, Alexander and Benjamin's school asks that they bring in their favorite book to read to the class. Also, they get to dress up like a character from their favorite book. So this morning I snapped a few pictures before they went off to school.
Here they are for you to enjoy! Oh, and after you see them, go read a book!!!

Alexander as Arthur (the aardvark for those of you who don't know Arthur)

Benjamin as Franklin (everyone's favorite Canadian turtle)

And although Hannah and Jacob don't go to school as yet, they too wanted to have their photos taken with their favorite books.
So here is Jacob with a Spot book
And Hannah, who also likes Arthur like her big brother
One last thing, the chicken pox have officially left the building!! Well, at least they have left our flat, there may still be a few people in the building who come down with it; there are 8 flats in our building. But Horray for us!!!!

Beware....the pox!!

2007-02-20T20:38:00.000Z

I thought I would let you see the state of our son over the last few days. He is actually perking up a little today, which is SOOO good! I even have hopes that he may sleep tonight. It has been a rough few days of chicken pox for Alexander (and for me). Benjamin seemed to have breezed right through this virus with little more than a mild fever for about 24 hrs. However, Alexander has not been so lucky. He has been quite miserable since Saturday. He has MANY more spots than did Benjamin and is really struggling with itchiness and pain even though he is maxing out on both medications. Anyhow, we are sure that he is on the mend...he HAS to be on the mend; we both need a little sleep! Shawn has been sleeping in the children's room and Alexander has been sleeping with me as he has not slept much the last 3 nights. He wakes up crying and scratching, I dose him with drugs, coat him with calamine lotion and try to get us both back to sleep every few hours......NOT fun!!
So here are some pics of our poor boys and their pox:

The first victim, Benjamin...not too many spots

Victim #2, Alexander looking pretty chipper this afternoon. He is yelling "the pox, the pox"

And because I wanted a close up of Alexander's face and because Benjamin wanted a picture as well, here are the two victims together. One happy to be done with the virus, one not so happy....I am guessing you can tell who is who!!

FINALLY!!

2007-02-17T11:09:00.000Z

Just wanted to share that our other big boy has finally gotten the chicken pox!! He had a slight fever last night, we saw a couple spots on his chest, and this morning he feels fine (he's outside playing now) but has quite a few more spots. So this will make 2 1/2 weeks that he has been out of school since we kept him home when Benjamin had them 2 weeks ago and they had a holiday this past week. I think/hope by Wednesday or so he will be okay to go back to school. He is not one to be kept down!!
On another note, I thought I would let you all know that we had a lovely barbecue with a bunch of other families last night and it was sooo nice! It was around 9 degrees at that time (around 6pm) so it was a little chilly for us but it was a great precurser to summer! I can't wait.... So this story is just a little jab to all you back in NB and NS who are covered in snow and can't even get into the garage to take a bbq out let alone stand outside for a couple hours for a cookout!! Hee hee!!
One last thing....Happy Birthday to my mommy!!!!

Scrapbooking and Valentine's Day

2007-02-15T22:38:00.000Z

I actually did 5 pages tonight but I can only post one as the other 4 are for my mom's scrapbook since her birthday is in 2 days!! I don't want to show them....she has to come visit and get them herself! It was good to have my friend back from her visit back to USA to do scrapbooking with.
I may not be doing too many pages in the next little while unless I can find a Creative Memories consultant here as I seem to have run out of pages; I am not sure how that happened. Anyhow, without further ado, here is one of the pages I did tonight:

And now here is a little picture from yesterday, Valentine's Day. Shawn's mom and sister "sent" a huge card and some money to go to the sweetie shop....I am not sure who was more excited about picking out a treat, me or them! I forgot to take a picture of the great sweetie cake we picked out for dessert last night, but boy was it good. The children got the card from the mailslot in the doorway shortly after they woke up so that is why they are still in their pjs.
Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day!

By the way, this is my 100th post...Yeah, me!!

Fun Times and Scrapping

2007-02-09T08:10:00.000Z

I only did one page of scrapbooking last night but it is one that is well overdue. My sister had a wonderful baby boy back in August and I finally did a page of him in my scrapbook. He is a great little guy and I can't wait to meet him. You can check out more of him on Tracy and Dave's link on the side!

I also added a couple pictures of our activities here yesterday. We have had kinda a long week here as the boys have been off school for the chicken pox. It has been fun to lounge around in the mornings and find new activities to do here all day. We set up a little bowling alley in the kitchen and also made a puppet stage for the children's little finger puppets.

Here is our bowling alley. Alexander has just knocked down all the pins

You have to look pretty close down on the floor to see the puppets. There is a pig and a squirrel.

SNOW TIME!!

2007-02-08T08:51:00.000Z

So we were all ready for bed last night, it was 730pm, we are all in our pjs (Mom and Dad included!) and we heard some children outside. I pulled back the curtain and what to my wondering eyes did appear?? Snow! Real snow, not just little flakes mixed with rain, but real snow!! So the children and I pulled on some clothes on top of our pjs, put on our coats and boots and went outside to join the excitement of the other children. It was great!!
We stayed out until almost 830 making snow balls and just enjoying the connection to our Canadian friends and family. It made for a very late night but it was very fun!

Jacob having a blast in the snow with his friends

Hannah celbrating the snow fall as well

Benjamin getting ready to belt me with a snowball

Alexander making a snow angel

So this morning, it was around 8am when Alexander woke up and we notice some more children outside before school playing in what little snow is left. So out go Alexander and Benjamin again to play with their friends before they all go off to school. Alexander and Benjamin are still staying home from school due to the chicken pox which Alexander is still showing no signs of, much to my chagrin!
I don't think the snow will last long, but it was nice to see still there this morning.

The boys up on the hill this morning:

Still Experimenting....

2007-02-06T07:56:00.000Z

You may recall that we started "New Fruit and Vegetable Day" a few weeks ago. Well on Sunday the boys wanted to try eggplant, or Aubergine as they say here.
It was less than successful as you will see when you see the great photo I captured of Alexander trying it out....Warning! The following photo is not for the weak....

Alexander was trying one of the grilled eggplant pieces which had a "sauce" on it of oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, pepper, etc. I also fried some plain eggplant in the frying pan. None of it was particularly appetizing. So I have decided to try it next time in a casserole or something instead of on it's own. I just like the children to taste "the real thing" first. We have all enjoyed exploring the new fruits and veggies, we dissect them and take a close look at the middle, the seed, or whatever they have. It is quite educational and fun!
And one more photo...
We received a nice treat in the mail yesterday and were able to call it's sender on the webcam so she could watch us open it! So here are the children sporting their new duds just before a hockey game. We still push back all the kitchen furniture and play on the floor. We are in need of some good ol' dollar store hockey sticks though as we have had to make some on our own from toys as you can see.

Marker Pox!

2007-02-04T09:50:00.000Z

We have an Arthur book that shows his little sister, DW, putting marker all over herself so that she can get the attention that Arthur gets when he has the chicken pox. There was a child off from the boys' school for the last week because she had chicken pox. So...Benjamin has marker pox...NOT chicken pox! He seems to think that having chicken pox is very bad and thus is too scared to think that he has chicken pox, so instead he insists it is just marker spots all over his chest and back.
The photo below is from yesterday when he wanted to lay around all afternoon instead of playing outside as is his norm. So we set him up on our bed to watch a video and when his brothers saw his set up they too came along to watch the construction video. We thought Benjamin was just tired but when he started to get undressed for bed last night, we saw the reason for his fatigue and, by then, fever. So Alexander is still "marker" free this morning but we are just waiting. Shawn is staying home with both boys this morning so we don't get everyone at church infected; I teach Sunday School, so Shawn is the one to stay home. Hannah and Jacob have both had the vaccine so we hope they will be exempt from these lovely marker spots so I will take them along to church this morning.
If Benjamin lets me take some photos later, I will post them in the next few days. I remember a picture of my sister and I when we were maybe 4 and 6 laying on our parents bed, both covered in chicken pox. So, of course, I need to get a good photo so he can have the same memory to share with his children.

Catching Up

2007-02-01T23:00:00.000Z

I AM MAD AT BLOGGER!!! I had to try 6 times to get these photos on here (and they are horrible pictures). I finally had to try uploading them one at a time. It is now 2351 and I should have been in bed long ago because Hannah has a bit of a cold and has already been awake a couple times...it could be a long night. However, I had done 4 pages tonight and I am too stubborn to let blogger win...So here is my post:

I recently realized that I had not done any Christmas pictures for the last few years so I thought I would play catch up tonight. I did 4 pages representing Christmas 2004 and 2005. I have to get to Costco to print off some pictures of 2006 and then I will be able to have a whole run of Christmas pics in our family album. I wish I had thought more about scrapbooking when I first started because I don't have things completely in chronological order. When I started, I just did whatever pages I wanted at the time and didn't think ahead. Anyhow, I try now to do things in a semi-chronological order. Oh well, just one more thing I will be able to excuse by saying, "Yeah, well, I had 2 sets of twins in 2 years!". I am really counting on that getting me out of alot of flack from my children's therapists when they are older. Hee Hee!

So here are my pages for tonight:

Sorry for the poor quality. I don't know what was going on with my camera.

Recognize any photos Christine?

Just another night of dancing...

2007-01-28T20:27:00.000Z

Last night we had another great night of dancing here in Scotland. We went to visit with some friends who are here from Germany to study and then took them with us to our church's Scottish night. Not a Burns' night....because they are often frowned upon in churches due to the whole Whiskey drinking, womanizing thing....Robbie apparently liked the lassies!!
Anyhow, we had a great time at the Ceilidh as did our German friends who had yet to attend such a Scottish night. We all tried Haggis, Tatties, and Nips (that is the traditional Scottish haggis, potatoes, and turnips) and had a great time of fellowship and, of course, the traditional Scottish dances. Benjamin and Alexander both danced to all of the songs except one waltz near the end which was mostly danced to by adults. Benjamin was quite upset that he had to miss that one! As was Hannah who sat on Shawn's knee and cried as I danced with a man from church who knew how to do this particular waltz. They both got over it quickly to do the traditional "dance" to Auld Lang Syne for the "finale".
So here are some pics from last night:

Here is Alexander with a friend doing the Gay Gordon

And Benjamin and Company doing the same dance

Hannah was not impressed with me leaving her to do any dances until her little friend came to take her dancing as well...they just held hands and walked around the outside circle as everyone was dancing. Too cute! Too bad he only speaks German!!

And what you have all been waiting for....Haggis, tatties, and nips!!!

Confessions of a Scrapper Slacker...

2007-01-25T19:40:00.000Z

I am writing an early apology for my lack of scrapbooking Yet Again!
Last week we got to talking to Shawn's brother and his wife on the webcam all the way from Australia. We were revelling in the technology and talked a little to late for me to scrapbook.
And this week, I am going on a girls' night out with a friend who needs a night out...her husband has been sick with cold after cold since a couple weeks prior to Christmas. So we are going to go out and celebrater Robbie Burns' night! Hopefully it won't be too crazy in the city! Alexander and Benjamin enjoyed a bagpiper, some haggis, spinach, and potatoes at their school today in honor of the great Scottish poet. They were beyond excited and told everyone (including the piper) that their cousins play in a pipe and drum band in Canada.
So please accept my apologies and look for my work next week...unless something else comes up by then! Just teasing, I WILL do scrapbooking next week for sure! I need to.
Looking forward to seeing everyone else's posts.

New Fruit and Veggies

2007-01-21T21:25:00.000Z

We are very much a "meat and potato" type family and some of the children are starting to complain that I make them eat vegetables "EVERY DAY!!". So Shawn and I decided to institute "New Fruit and Vegetable Day". Every Saturday, we go over to a local produce store and pick out a new fruit or vegetable to try on Sunday. So last week, we tried avacado. The pictures below do not make it look appetizing, but they all tried it and said the liked it! Although none of them went back for seconds! I just sliced up some up with oil, salt and pepper and then mashed some to put on biscuits we had made with melted cheese. Not too bad.

So here they are showing off their new taste...

And here is the horrible looking stuff....the camera makes it look much worse because I don't remember it looking that bad when we ate it.

So today we tried mango and they really did all like that, we ate the whole thing and then dissected the pit/seed. Interesting and nutritious!
The following are just a couple of pictures I took over the last few days which I thought I would post. We were just playing around, no real stories to go with them, but I know there are a few of you who like to see pictures!

God knows my little boy...

2007-01-18T09:19:00.000Z

Just a quick story before we go off to playgroup this morning. As some of you may know, Benjamin sometimes has a hard time with change. He is still getting used to the new bunkbeds and sometimes says he likes his old room better...anyhow, yesterday on the way home from school he says that he likes Canada better than Scotland. I asked him why and he says because there is snow in Canada and it doesn't snow here. I told him that maybe we would have snow here sometime to which he replies, "but it is winter now!".
But God knows every desire of our hearts and this morning He chose to supply Benjamin with this one "desire of his heart". I was able to go into their room this morning and say, "Wake up! It's snowing!" He jumped right up and got down from his bed and went to the window with a big smile. It was wonderful!
The snow is mixed with rain but it is snow none the less. I am sure there won't be any on the ground, but we are thankful for the little bit we have. I bet some of you are having a hard time believing our delight in "the white stuff" as you sit bundled inside with tons of it whirling around! Hope you all have a good day....don't be afraid to voice your desires to God; He may choose to give you yours tomorrow!

Hockey Day In Canada

2007-01-14T16:26:00.000Z

Yesterday we celebrated Hockey Day In Canada....or In Scotland rather!
We were finally able to find a hockey team here in Edinburgh and Shawn took Alexander and Benjamin to see a game last night. They had a blast! They got home just before 10pm and we SOOO excited. They couldn't talk fast enough to tell me all about the game. Their highlights:
1. "Our team won!" That is, the Edinburgh Capitals
2. There was another person with a Team Canada shirt and with a Toronto Maple Leaf's shirt.
3. The game was tied and after OT, they had a shoot out! Edinburgh got 2, the other team got 0
4. They got to eat snacks.
5. They got to cheer "Go Canada Go!" Until Shawn reminded them that it was "Go Edinburgh Go!"
So the game was a hit! Now they are asking when they can go again. We'll have to see about that as it is quite expensive. And today Benjamin is telling everyone that when he is 9 or 10 he is going to play hockey....we'll have to see about that one too!

Here are the great spectators engrossed in the game.

Shawn said the ice rink wasn't too bad. It was pretty old...like a small town ice rink back home. Certainly no Harbour Station, but the boys didn't notice.

SCRAPBOOKING CHALLENGE

2007-01-11T22:16:00.000Z

I did not do a great many pages tonight, but I did make sure I did SOMETHING for this challenge that so many of you have taken up. Thanks for participating everyone! It really is good to know that there are others out there who are "preserving their memories"...should I be a Creative Memories rep or what?? Check out Janique's blog via the link on the side for yet another scrapper. And thanks Christine for getting your family involved as well!
So for my work tonight, I finally journalled on Alexander and Benjamin's 4th bday page and I put in a few "odds-and-ends" pictures of when Hannah and Jacob were very little.

I don't know why this one is so yellow but I took 4 pictures and they were all horrible, so I just picked one because I was too tired to play around with the camera, so sorry!
Looking forward to seeing all your pages!

UPDATE

2007-01-10T20:05:00.000Z

Just a little update on the last post...
First off, everyone slept very well last night in the new beds. Hannah did wake up about 10pm and I tried to get her to lay back down and go to sleep, I even crawled in with her but she just kept crying. So I picked her up and showed her where Benjamin, Alexander, and Jacob were, put her back in bed and she went back to sleep! I guess she was a little scared. And no one fell out of their bed. When Hannah and Jacob woke up, they just came right in to our room...no crying or anything. So, so far, so good!
Secondly, Benjamin was climbing up the ladder of one of the bunkbeds this afternoon as he was playing on the top bunk. As he climbed up the ladder, he saw himself in the mirror and yelled, "OOO, I look terrible" I said, " what, why would you say that Benjamin?" And he said, " My face, (pointed to under his nose) right there, that's terrible!". It was pretty cute. I told him it would only last a few more days and he was okay with that.
Thirdly, for those of you who have been looking for a picture of Shawn...well, here are 2! We had to cut the boys' hair again last night and tonight, I did Shawn's again. This time he decided to go for the very short cut like the boys. Last time, I used the clippers in the back and scissors for the front but tonight, we buzzed the whole thing. I told him he looks like he did the first time I met him at Camp Tulakadik (well almost!). He has promised to wear his winter touque when he goes outside now; although it is great weather here, normally between 6-10 in daytime and 4-9 at night....not bad since I was just talking to my sister in BC who is sitting through a snowstorm now that the hail has stopped!
Hope you all have a good rest-of-week and weekend.

This is the "BEFORE" picture. He was really due for a cut,
his hair grows even faster than the boys'.

And the "AFTER"...looking good!

New Arrival and The Accident Report

2007-01-09T20:47:00.000Z

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our latest piece of furnishing....
A new set of bunk beds for Hannah and Jacob!
We had Hannah and Jacob sharing a single bed, sleeping end to end, since we moved here but they were starting to kick each other in their sleep so we made a request to our accomodation manager for another set of bunkbeds since you never know....and they brought them today and set them all up for us! I had just emailed on Sunday night, not bad service eh?
So now we have the two sets of bunkbeds together so the children are still all in the same room and we have a single bed in the toy room for all those guests we are still waiting for! Hee! Hee!
We are very pleased and Hannah and Jacob had no trouble falling asleep tonight in their new beds....now we are just waiting to see if they STAY asleep in them.
So here are Hannah and Jacob showing off the new bunkbeds (metallic ones are new, the wooden ones were here already):

And here is a picture I just had to capture from a couple of nights ago. Hannah is still not really keen on watching the videos which we play before bedtime each night. So on this night, she was sitting reading with her dad instead of watching the video with her brothers...it was just too cute not to capture on camera:

And now for the accident report:
We had gone for a little trip to a nearby park yesterday with Hannah and Jacob in the stroller and Alexander and Benjamin on their scooters. The park is quite hilly (is that actually a word??) and so the boys had fun riding down the hills on their scooters. We were at the exit to the park and there is a slight incline there. The boys asked if they could have one more run down the hill and so I turned the stroller around and we watched them come down the hill again. Now the boys have always been very cautious and use the little brake on the back of the scooter when going downhill....until yesterday; they decided at the top of the little incline (I am using the word incline so the grandmothers don't get too freaked out!) I hear the dreaded words "On your mark, get set, go!". I think to myself, "Oh, no, they are going to try to race down the hill" I mean incline! So I start waving my arms and yelling NO but of course they have already taken off and can't hear me because the pathway is roughly paved and the scooters make quite a noise on it. So as I stand watching in horror, they collide and both go down. As I start running (and praying) they both jump up and start screaming. Which to me is a very good thing...no broken limbs, no concussion, etc.
So Benjamin ended up with the worst of it as you will see below. He got quite the "road rash" on his face and on his back and thigh. Alexander got a bit on his elbow and leg. After I finally got them both calmed down, Benjamin's first words were "Why did we have to race?"
WooHoo!! They DO listen to what I say and I didn't even have to say "I told you so"!
Anyhow, they are both no worse for their little adventure, thanks to their helmets, which I still see so many children riding scooters and bicycles without.
So here is what happened to Benjamin's helmet (which I did not point out to him as he would have started screaming all over again)....as I said, I thank God I make them wear the helmets! Imagine what his head would have looked like without this on...scarey huh??

And here is Benjamin's face with his injuries:
I think maybe he was trying to look more hurt than he really was for the photo. This was just before bed last night:
Final message....Make your children wear helmets!!

Not a good start

2007-01-05T21:19:00.000Z

I am not starting off on a good foot for the year of 2007. Well, for scrapbooking that is. Instead of doing scrapbooking as I should have last night (the first Thursday of the new year), I went out on a date. So I guess it is okay that I put my marriage above my scrapbooking... :)
We have made friends with a great family here in Scotland who are from USA and who share our last name. They have three children who are older (7-12) than our children but who all love to come and play with our children. So they offered to babysit for us so Shawn and I could go out. We took them up on it and we went to dinner and a movie. Or at least that was the plan...by the time we got the bus to the theatre, we only had about 1/2 hour before the show and the shopping complex which houses the movie theatre did not have any fast food type restaurants. Only real, sit down type ones and one pub. So we thought we had better not chance not making the film and instead bought not only popcorn and soda for the movie, but nachos and a hot dog as well. What a great meal huh? We didn't complain one bit since we were out to a movie (our first in Scotland) and our children were with people they know well and were well taken care of. We saw A Night At the Museum (or something to that effect, I don't know the exact title) with Ben Stiller. We both really enjoyed the movie and found it very entertaining.
I was going to share a cute story about Benjamin here but it is about the movie and would ruin it for anyone who wants to see the film. So if you are just too curious and "need to know" the story and don't plan to see the movie anyhow, why not call or email us and we'll tell you!! There really is a story here, this isn't just a ploy to get people to talk to us because we are lonely....
Happy New Year Everyone!

ANOTHER sleeping girl And MUDDY FUN

2006-12-31T09:06:00.000Z

So I have yet another Hannah sleeping photo to post! She does enjoy her sleeps. While the boys have been off school, Hannah and Jacob have not been having their regular naps on the way to pick up the boys each day. Jacob is absolutely fine with that but Hannah still needs her "beauty sleep" in the day time. So here is the set up of this picture: The children and I had just come in from playing outside and we were having a little snack. They were all sitting at the table and I had my back to them cutting some apple for snack time.When I turned around, I found Hannah sitting with her eyes closed and head bobbing in her seat. So I called Shawn to come in and take a look and he decided we should lay her down on the couch before she cracked her head on the table (what a good Dad!). Shawn picked her up and, as you can see, she was none the wiser. He layed her down and she had a great little siesta on the couch.

And now on the Muddy Fun part of the post. It had been raining a bit yesterday (shock, shock) and the boys were outside with friends last night. They all decided it might be fun to slide down the hill where it was muddy. So Benjamin came to the window (it is SO nice to be on the ground floor), and said, "It's okay if I get dirty right Mom, I am wearing play clothes". I said sure and off he goes up the hill with the others. As I watch, I see the older boys sliding down the little hill on their feet, they did quite well on the slippery mud. Then I see my boys trying and, as you might guess, they can't stay quite as upright as the 11 and 12 year olds can. Benjamin came to the window again a little later crying because he had fallen face first down the hill. He had mud all over his face, in his mouth, his nose, everywhere! So I gave him a glass of water and told him to swish and spit outside. The other kids got a great kick out of this and soon he was laughing instead of crying. So I wiped his face a little with paper towel and he was back on his way up the hill! As you can see, they were a complete mess when they came in, but boy did they have fun!

Here is Alexander when he came in. He is yelling MUD!

A close up of his pants

Here is Benjamin when he came in. Not sure how his hand got so muddy becuase he was wearing two gloves!

So before we put the clothes in the washer last night, we decided to "rinse" them in the tub. It was just too gross not to take a photo!

Boxing Day Fun

2006-12-27T20:45:00.000Z

We had a lovely day yesterday visiting with friends from all over the world. When I tried to count everyone from memory, I counted 33 people who came through our door for our "open house". We had some good sweeties which the children helped me bake over the last few days, some hot tea, cold drinks, but most of all, some great visiting with many of our new friends. The adults were able to visit in the kitchen while the children played in the toy room and helped us decorate our mural which our children helped create over the last couple of days. You can see below the finished product at the end of the evening yesterday which shows all the sheep the children who visited created as well as the shepherds and angels they colored. So to the far right is the nativity scene and the many sheep and shepherds are "keeping watch" when the angels come and give them the Good News. Everyone enjoyed the craft and now we are enjoying their handiwork!

The finished Masterpiece!

A close up of some of the sheep:

We are so blessed to have made so many good friends in such a short time here. We had friends visit who originally come from Canada, USA, Poland, Russia, Botswana, Pakistan, and Scotland. We are all in the same boat and it was nice to be able to share this special holiday time with them.
Hope your holidays have been just as nice!

CHRISTMAS DAY

2006-12-25T21:48:00.000Z

Merry Christmas to everyone! We had a great day with only one moment of feeling like I was going to lose it because we are so far away from family and friends...We do have so many good friends here and were able to share today with alot of them and we look forward to having a good time with many more tomorrow as we host a sort of open house here. So here is a glimpse of our day:
Hannah and Jacob woke up at about 750am, Alexander at 815am, and we finally woke Benjamin up at 830am! Aren't we fortunate parents?? How many of you were up before 5am this morning?
Anyhow, we opened our socks, which were a big hit with all the children, they were quite content with their contents even if they didn't get other gifts....we did give them other gifts anyway!
We had a lovely breakfast at about 945am, had birthday cake, read the Christmas story,and sang happy birthday to Jesus at about 1015am, and then we had some friends come over around 11am to watch all the children open their gifts. It did make it seem more like Christmas at home with other people here for the children to "show off" their gifts to. They all loved their gifts and received many new toys to play for many days to come.
We had some outdoor play time, weather was a little overcast and about 4 degrees, played with the many new toys (Bingo and air hockey seem to be favorites so far), had a little supper/lunch and then the boys and I had a little sleepover (we watched a movie on our bed) after I put Hannah and Jacob to bed. All in all, a great day.

THE STOCKINGS

One of the biggest "hits" of the day were the new toothbrushes everyone got in their stockings. A and B got battery operated spinning Veggie Tales ones and H and J got ones with flashing lights on them. They must have brushed their teeth at least a dozen times in a couple hours.

THE GRUB

The gifts....
The "mural" behind the gifts was done by the children (with help from Dad of course). We are going to have the children who stop by for the open house make sheep tomorrow with cotton balls and glue to paste on the countryside. I'm not sure if you can see the little stars they have already pasted on and the big star which is over the nativity scene in the corner. Just wanted them to remember that the nativity scene and the angels, shepherds, etc were all important as they saw all the great gifts they received. Oh, and Benjamin is holding up the beater which he was licking from the whipped cream which was on Jesus' birthday cake! It was Yummy!!

Some good ol' American football on Christmas day. As close as we get to the NFL with no TV here. Actually, I am watching the scores on NFL.com now as I type this!!

And as I forgot to take our chicken out of the freezer until this morning, we did not have our Christmas dinner today, we will save that for tomorrow, so no pictures of a nice dinner for this post. So here is how we ended our day, Shawn was out doing dishes (what a guy!) and I was in laying on the bed with the boys watching Bob the Builder. Merry Christmas to me!

So we would love to hear how your Christmas day has gone. We miss our friends and family back home and we are very thankful for the many blessings God has given us here in Scotland.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

2006-12-24T22:27:00.000Z

We hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas and that you remember that Jesus is the reason for the season. We have all the children snuggled in bed, presents all wrapped, have talked to many of our family in Canada and Australia and so I am now sitting down to post just a couple of pictures of our Christmas Eve. We attended a wonderful Christmas Eve children's service here in Edinburgh with some friends, came home for supper, the boys played outside as usual, they all had baths, got dressed in their "new" Christmas pajamas, and went to bed. I say "new" Christmas pajamas because they actually got them when we had our pre-Christmas Grammy Day back in November. So here is a photo for my Mom (and everyone else) of all the children watching their Christmas Eve video...nothing about Christmas; it was actually just a mighty machine video about trains, but that is what they picked to watch.

And some people have been asking about our decorations....they are small but mighty! Here is the bookcase when you walk in our flat, the bathroom is to the left and the linen closet to the right. The top shelf has our nativity scene and the middle has our little snowmen from Costco. Stay tuned for more of our decorations after Boxing Day as we are having a little open house for our friends and the children are all going to do a special craft as part of our Christmas decorating.
And here is our "Great Wall". It is the wall between our room and the toy room. The children have been hard at work coloring many pictures to put on the wall and we hung up some of the Christmas cards we have received. Thank you all for remembering us with the many cards.
Here is hoping you all have a safe and Happy Christmas in your part of the world.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Christmas Parties

2006-12-23T21:39:00.000Z

We just returned from Christmas Carolling and then a lovely time of hot chocolate, mulled wine, and Christmas sweeties at a friends' house. The children are all sleeping, Hannah is snoring away; I actually tried to get a video of it since it is very loud but it didn't turn out. We have been getting into the "Christmas Spirit" by attending lots of Christmas parties, doing Christmas baking, and finally, tonight, by carolling with friends. We even went to see the reindeer in Princes Street Gardens on Thursday but alas they had already left for the North Pole. Fortunately there was a great playground there to curb the disappointment.
So here are a few pictures of some of the Christmas parties we have attended.

We were able to go to the boys' school to watch some of their Christmas party and see Santa hand them a gift. Benjamin was sitting right in front of Santa and so he was too quick to get his picture taken. You can see him off to the right of Santa in the picture of Alexander getting his present. They both love going to school but are now loving being home all day and getting to play outside with their friends ALL day. I told them yesterday that they were outside longer than the sun was! We went to run errands and left at 10am, came home, they played outside with their friends, came inside for maybe 20 minutes for lunch, then went back outside ALL afternoon until 6pm when I finally dragged them in (almost kicking and screaming) for supper. So 8 hours outside. Sunrise was at about 845 am and sun set around 345pm. So 7 hours of sun. Strange huh?! Anyhow, all that to say they are enjoying themselves. Hannah and Jacob also spend a good deal of time outside but have to come in whenever I do so they can't stay out as long. They too enjoy themselves and we have some great friends here who love to come and play with Hannah and Jacob.

Hannah and Jacob and I attend a couple of different play groups in the mornings when Alexander and Benjamin are at school. So last week we had our final meetings of the playgroups and one had a great Christmas party with Santa. Santa was handing out gifts to all the children and many of them were crying and/or clinging to their moms when they went forward to get their gifts....Not Jacob! When his name was called, he jumped right up (literally jumped!) and went forward to get his gift. He was pretty excited. He was actually so fast I didn't even get a picture because I wasn't ready fast enough. Hannah went up as well but had to hold my hand while she went. And as you see in the picture, Jacob followed behind as well! They were pretty cute.

Here are Hannah and Jacob (to the right by the slide) amongst all the children at playgroup.

Christmas Pageant

2006-12-20T10:00:00.000Z

Here are some photos of the church Christmas pageant which took place last Sunday morning. As you can see, the boys were portraying sheep in the play. They were VERY excited to be in the play with "the big kids". They had 2 lines in the play at different times....their first line was "BAA" and their second....you guessed it....."BAA". They did a terrific job!

A planning night

2006-12-15T08:06:00.000Z

I don't have any scrapbooking pages to post today. However, I did get ALOT of pictures sorted and cropped! It was a late night last night as Benjamin is a little under the weather and Hannah and Jacob had a late nap yesterday so they weren't really tired at bedtime. Anyhow, I thought I would just do some cropping as it was getting late but I ended up doing ALOT and stayed up pretty late anyhow.
The other reason it was a late night is that I realized yesterday there were only 11 days left until Christmas (now only 10!). So I got out the little gifts I have gotten thus far for the children and had a look so that I can finish up the Christmas shopping soon. We are starting to decorate a little more with the Christmas pictures the children have been coloring. We have one wall in the hall/entryway that is getting quite covered with a collage of coloring book pages; it is quite nice if I do say so myself!
Anyhow, I hope your Christmas preparations are coming along nicely. And please let us know how your plans and your day is going.

Cookie Exchange

2006-12-11T09:21:00.000Z

I thought I would share my favorite Christmas recipe with everyone who cares to read. It is a really easy recipe for Christmas chocolates; however, they have also been made as Valentine's day chocolates, Easter chocolates, "I really want some sweets" chocolates, etc.
The only ingredients are 1 cup of chocolate chipits, 1 cup of butterscotch chipits, 1 cup of peanut butter chipits, and 1 cup of crushed potato chips.
You just slowly melt all the chipits together in the microwave, stirring frequently. Then add finely crushed potato chips and stir! Drop them into the little mini-muffin cups and refrigerate to harden. They are very yummy!! If you are in Scotland, you can't make them unless you have someone from North America bring over the butterscotch and peanut butter chipits since I haven't been able to find them here. Chocolate chipits are hard enough to find and quite expensive to buy just a little bag.
Anyhow, hope you get to try them out and let me know what your favorite Christmas recipe is!
I am doing a cookie exchange tonight with some friends here and these are what I have made for the exchange. Mom and Grammy brought over the chipits from Canada when they were here in November. Don't they look yummy???
On another note, I am waiting for all those scrapbook pages from last week everyone!! Hee Hee. Shawn reminded me that it was quite some time before I posted my first page when we started this whole thing. This is a very busy time of year for everyone; just make sure you are taking lots of pictures to use after New Year! And by the way, Deidra and Janique, you guys can join the challenge and just email the pages to us if you want OR you could start a blog! It is very easy to do.

SCRAPBOOKING CHALLENGE

2006-12-07T22:25:00.000Z

I haven't been feeling the greatest the last few days so I hadn't really wanted to scrapbook tonight. However, when I called my friend who was coming over, she was out so I didn't cancel. We talked a little later after the children were all in bed and we decided to scrapbook for a bit. I am VERY glad we did. It always feels so good to get caught up on things (both scrapbooking and what is happening in each others' lives). I am so thankful for this scrapbooking crew who encourage me and give me some great ideas from their pages...thanks ladies!!
I hope you all have a good night scrapbooking.
I managed to do 2 2-page layouts as you will see below plus I did a page of Alexander and Benjamin's first day of nursery school which I will not post here at this time. It is hard to get a good picture of the two page layouts but you can get the general idea and see that, yes, I did do some work tonight!

THE LATEST VICTIM...

2006-12-06T07:34:00.000Z

The family hair clippers have attacked their latest victim....
No, I did not decide to shave my head. Nor did Hannah.....
Jacob's hair was getting a bit long even though he still had very little of it. So we decided to go for it and give him a buzz like his brothers. Shawn did the honors this time and I think it looks great; even if a bit different. It will take some getting used to. But boy does he look like his brothers now! Here are some pictures of our adventure last night:

Here is the BEFORE photo. His hair was pretty long in the back and on the sides. He was starting to get the 70s "feathering" effect!
So then this happened and you will have to scroll down to get the results!

And here is our little guy looking much like his brothers.
First with his proud clipper-weilding papa:

And then the side view.

So stay tuned for exciting news from the hair world with Hannah and I! Just teasing...no plans for big changes for us! The clippers are away until the boys' hair gets a little longer.

YEP, WE'RE IN SCOTLAND!

2006-12-03T09:03:00.000Z

Last night was one of those moments when it suddenly hits me...yep, we're in Scotland.
See the post below for pictures from our church Christmas party. The games in that post were played before we all shared a meal together, although they were a little different from the games we played in Canada, the evening was seeming like a normal Canadian Church Christmas party. So we played the games, we had a lovely meal, then they cleared the tables away, and....
Get ready for this all you Canadian Baptists....
We had dancing!! Yes, right after the meal, they started playing music and we had a good-ol' Ceilidh dance in the church hall! It was terrific.
Since we had already attended a Ceilidh (and now I can't remember how to spell that word) at our weekend away in October, we were familiar with some of the dances. It is kind of like squaredancing. We all had a great time and I even got a few pictures snapped when Shawn was partnering with Alexander and Benjamin. Hannah and Jacob also did some of the dances in our arms and they seemed to love it as well. They had been asleep in our room when we attended the last Ceilidh at the hotel.
So here are some of the pictures:

Here are Benjamin and Shawn doing one of the dances together. We were glad that Benjamin jumped right in to dance since he was too shy to do it last time.

And here is Alexander smiling away as he dances next to his Dad (whose head I managed to cut off again!)
And one of the dances required a three person grouping, just right for a dad of twins! A little more of Shawn's head made it into the picture!

Church Christmas Party

2006-12-03T08:49:00.000Z

Last night we had our church Christmas party. They had some great games, great food, and great singing. As well we got to know a few more people from our congregation. I thought the timing was going to be a little long for the children (the party was from 330-730) but the time flew by and we all had a great time. So here are a few pictures of the children playing the games.

This one was called Chinese ladder, I think. It was alot of fun for the children and alot of fun for the parents to watch.

And this one was a little strange....but when in Scotland.....
The little red thing is a fish and they had to take newspaper and slap at the fish until it flipped to the end of the room (kind of fanning the fish to make it go)

And here is Alexander having a shot at the fish.

And finally, here is the pass the parcel game (like hot potato except when the music stops you unwrap one layer of paper on the present)

Our Day

2006-11-30T21:58:00.000Z

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

2006-11-30T21:49:00.000Z

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

2006-11-23T23:03:00.000Z

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!!

2006-11-22T18:02:00.000Z

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

2006-11-18T11:24:00.000Z

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!!!

2006-11-16T13:49:00.000Z

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!