Necessity Breeds Invention

Almost everything packed and the boys find a ceiling fan manual and permanent markers to color with for entertainment. Poor kids.

Karaoke & chaos

Stuff is everywhere! but it helps to not get too stressed when I have these cuties serenading me some Veggie Tales tunes.

Snuggle Attack

Final 3 Days

Our last few days in Scotland we did more relaxing, a little hiking, a little picnicking, the fanciest dinner I've ever had,  a lot of driving, and we visited Edinburgh. Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures from this point on unless it was with my Iphone, and even of those I have very few. It was a very beautiful area (of course!), and mostly because of a fear of not being able to capture the beauty, and, if I am being honest, the fear of having to edit/organize all the photos!

June 17th

We went to visit Stirling Castle where William Wallace overtook a much larger English force. We walked around the old city, and toured some old churches, jails, and a very large graveyard. On our way back we saw a sign to pick strawberries, and bought some sandwiches from their bakery and headed back towards our hotel with the hopes of finding a place to picnic...so easy to do in Scotland. After we ate we explored around the Loch. Then we drove back to Balquhidder and stopped by Rob Roy's grave and walked around the church there and found a waterfall not too far off.

I didn't take this, I wish! But this is the castle with the city just below it and that is the William Wallace Monument. 

June 18th

We went on a few hikes on our final day around the area where we were staying. and then drove a little ways to Callander and walked to Bracklinn Falls.  It was a really pretty town that had a very hometown feel to it.

June 19th

We drove to Glasgow and found our hotel. We then walked to the train station to get a ride into Edinburgh. We were so tired by this point that I didn't have the energy to do much, plus we felt the time crunch to get back to Glasgow. We walked along the Royal Mile then up to the castle. It was pretty incredible to see this entire city built out of granite.  There was a man dressed up as William Wallace doing a bit that we watched that was very entertaining, and some rock band that included bag pipes.The thing I mainly remember about being there, was just all the different cultures and languages we heard. I love stuff like that, and I love people watching...I just hope no one is ever watching me! As we were trying to find our way back to the train station, we walked down a large stairway and each step was a different shade of granite, unpolished of course, but really beautiful. We finally found the station hoped on our train and then walked back to our hotel for the night. As we were walking back, we happened to walk right in front of one of our church buildings there! Made me wish we were staying through Sunday!

Loved, loved, LOVED our time there! Of course it would take a lifetime to explore all the beauty there is in Scotland. I was amazed by all the water. Every where you looked there was a loch, or a waterfall, or a stream. And If you didn't happen to see water, if you went around a bend in the road or over a hill you would. So incredibly stunning. This world is an incredibly beautiful place! Thanks to Patrick for the surprise and trip of a lifetime. He knows in order to get me there he'd need to surprise me. XOXOXO

But nothing beats coming home to a house full of boys!

Progress

I have a driveway and a place to put a house. Yay!

Driving to the Trossachs

 Lochshore House 

Our car that I thought I might die in a few times that first day. But Patrick soon got the hang of driving on the opposite side of the road while driving a stick shift completely on the opposite side of what he is used to. Yeah, I was just a tad nervous at first. But he did exceptional!

 ALL the roads are this narrow unless they are a major highway, and most of them are not in this good of shape, or at least the ones we traveled on. And people just zip, zip, zip around. 

Some of their roadway signs cracked us up. Especially this one. 

On our way we detoured so we could drive back through Glencoe. It has such a mystical feel about itself. This day was a much sunnier day than any we experienced while we were there. We had lunch at a little cafe per Karen's recommendation. That woman knows good food and where to find it!

Back feeling a little tight after all the hiking yesterday.

 Such a kid at heart

Scotland-Isle of Skye Day 3

Since this was our final day on Skye we pushed hard. By the end of it we were exhausted! We hiked over 18miles, a good portion of that up. It was our favorite day and the views were so rewarding. The first walk of the day was in Waternish. We hiked up to an old coastguard tower and just sat and watched a HUGE red ship come in and pass by some t-tiny sailboats. We could have spent all day sitting there. It was the most beautiful weather day we had while on Skye. So beautiful and peaceful and we only saw 4 other people during this hike. Karen had tipped us off to it, that it was spectacular but not a lot of people knew about it. So glad we listened to her.

 Patrick wanted to hike down there. I said I'm good. You can see a few more daring people than myself in the pictures.

 More Highland Cows

On to the Quirang. This was so fun. Really hard but incredible. The Quirang is actually a landslip or landslide. Each year they have to repair the road way down below because it's still moving. We hiked through the pass then up to the top of the mountain and back down. Simply incredible. While we were on the top the fog rolled in pretty quick and we got a little nervous about finding our way back down safely. But we made it.

 The Storr and The Old Man of Storr

 The Old Man

I can't see any construction type of equipment without thinking of some sweet boys.

 This guy started about 5 minutes after us, and caught up with us about 20 minutes in. Our legs were shot after all the other hiking we had done. We were stopping to rest our burning quads as he passed by and said in his thick Scottish accent, "30 minutes to the pinnacle!" We tried to keep up, but were not match for his awesomeness that day. It's about 3 miles straight up. We thought this walk would be easy since we had done much more difficult ones that day. We didn't realize, till we arrived, that in order to reach the pinnacle you had to go up, straight up. We stopped along the way and took several pictures and met him at the top. It took us about 40 minutes. He and Patrick had a good chat. He told Patrick he does this walk 3 times a week, that "It's good for me heart and me lungs." He convinced us that we weren't done until we were close enough to touch the "Old Man" so we gathered up what energy we had left and ascended to the top. It was SOOO windy when we got there. The wind was really gusting through there. I was a little nervous for my life. I decided to come back down from that portion on my booty. My legs were shaky from exhaustion and the wind was hitting so hard I didn't want to take any chances. SOOO glad we did it though.

We loaded up in the car and headed straight to Edinbane Inn for some well deserved food.