Thankful!

Hello there! It's been far too long since I have blogged. I have many pictures that I need to post, but I thought I would write a short Thanksgiving post.

This Thanksgiving our family of four is in St. Andrews. We are here staying at a friend's home while they are in the States visiting family for the holidays. It's a great opportunity for Joe to have some quality research time at the library here and for us to have bit of a holiday! We won't be having a huge Thanksgiving meal this year, but I must confess that I'm really excited about cooking for the four of us. We'll have the basics...stuffing, sweet potato casserole, veggies, etc. However, this year's dessert will not be pie, but fudge donuts from the local bakery that we love :)

Also, this announcement is a bit overdue but one of the main things our family is thankful for this year is a new baby on the way! Yes, for those who don't know we are expecting baby #3 around May 21st. I am about 15 weeks along and oh so glad to be out of the sickness that comes along with the first trimester. It was rough this time around and I doubted whether or not it would go away, but here we are feeling much better! The boys are very excited and often talk about helping mommy take care of ''her'' (they are convinced it is a girl...Mommy's not so sure).

SO, this year we will be thanking the Lord for the many blessings he provides. As a family of FIVE, we will come before him with Thanksgiving. I hope you all have a very blessed Thanksgiving this year.

Grandmommy cont'd...

Well, it seems as though my mom took more pictures of the boys and myself than me taking them of her, but I promise she was here! :) Here are some more pictures of our outings during her stay. Mom also captured me cooking through my kitchen window. We had a day of looking at donkeys and hiking through the forest. These are both coming outings for the boys. They love the huge tree in the woods. It usually becomes a pirate ship or a dragon to slay. Gotta love the imagination.

Grandmommy was here!!!

I'm a bit late in putting up pictures, but my mom was here at the end of August/early September. We had a great time and her visit was full of picking blackberries, visits around Kiltarlity, a Loch Ness Cruise and much more! I really feel like she got a good look into our everyday life here. She played outside with the boys alot, met our neighbors, read books in the morning and before bed. The boys loved it and so did I! I have a few more pictures after this, but here is enough to give you an idea of what we did.

Rainy days...

Well, it's the inevitable here in Scotland. Even it you get lots of sunny days, a rainy one is on the horizon. One rainy day the boys and I were inspired by our animal book. Dan became a zebra, Caleb was a lion (but sleeping at this point), and of course Mommy had to join in the fun so I became a parrot (despite what else I may look like...parrot was what I was going for :)

Fun...

One of the many tasks of living in Scotland is making sure that you have enough wood (''sticks'' as they say here) for the winter. The boys have had alot of fun helping Daddy ''shift'' the wood to the shed. Here are some pictures of Caleb running around behind our house one fine work day. Also, we've had the please this summer of seeing Gordon almost weekly. He and Joe meet in Dingwall to work at HTC for the day then the two come here for dinner. The boys absolutely love it when Gordon arrives. They also love it when Gordon reads them books....thanks Gordon!

Cookie Bouquets

Some of you may remember that I use to love to make cookie bouquets. Well, it has taken me a while to find all of the supplies needed to make them here, but I've finally done it! Some friends just had a baby and this is the bouquet made for their sweet Amy. It's fun to pick up baking and decorating them again. It's also fun because people here have never seen or heard of them before :)

Sunny days....

We've been blessed with some wonderful weather this summer and a few weeks ago it was too good to pass up the opportunity to do something fun. Soooooo....we took a bus to Clachnaharry (on the edge of Inverness closest to us). We walked down the pier and then had a great picnic along the water. We ended our outing by playing in the local Kiltarlity school yard. All in all, a perfect day.