What was a special treat was that one of the trumpet players that stayed at our house recently received his mission call. He is headed to…El Salvador San Salvador East Mission. Yep, my mission. It was wonderful to remember my time as a missionary in El Salvador and to try to prepare him as best I could for the next 2 years of his life. Oh El Salvador! Maybe I’ll go back there one day…like when they have the open house for the temple that will be constructed.
I saw this worker edging Duthie Park…and it isn’t a small park either. No gas or electric devices, just manual labor on 44 acres. I’m sure they use some big lawn mower for the fields, but I thought this was interesting that they edge by hand. Just their muscles and a long pair of scissors.
In Texas I was somewhat of a self-induced hermit. Waking up at 5:30am, returning at 6:30pm, and back to bed by 9:30pm made time at home feel ever so scarce. My three hour window each night was just enough for dinner and a shower. The result was that I never, ever, ever, wanted to leave the house. The weekends were spent on pet projects, shopping, basketball, Discovery/History Channel, and avoiding anything that might otherwise remove me from my family and lovely home.
Having lived in Europe during my mission, I knew what it had to offer in terms of tourism. So when this assignment to Scotland came up, I made a commitment to myself and Tia (to her delight) that we would get out of the house as often as possible to take advantage of what this beautiful country has to offer. We’ve only been here as a family for five weeks, but I feel like we’ve done more “outings” in this short time than we did during our entire year in Texas.
In Texas this would have been a repetition of sports/gym, shopping, TV and pet (tech) projects. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with our Texas schedule (the weekends are quite relaxing), I am thoroughly enjoying our family time and weekly adventures in Scotland. While we do have plans to visit other countries, I feel like Scotland could easily keep us occupied through December.
PS – I know Kalani dancing to electronic bagpipes has nothing to do with the content of this post, but she’s just so cute.
My wonderful sisters-in-law came to visit us in Scotland. Well, Felicia was doing “study abroad” in London for a term and Angela planned on picking her up and touring the country with her. After they had their plans in place Matt got the offer to come to Scotland…but we will just say that they came to see us! Kalani and I hadn’t seen them for almost a year, so it was fantastic to see them again. We met up with them at Inverness, Scotland. We arranged to have a boat trip on the Loch Ness and then toured Urquhart Castle. This castle is where the most siting of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster has been recorded. We were also able to tour the Culloden Battlefield. This is the location of one of the bloodiest battles fought. Near 2,000 Jacobites and English men died in about 40 minutes in close hand to hand combat. Our next stop was at Cawdor Castle. This castle is still lived in during the winter months.We were also able to take the girls back to our house and show them Glenburnie Park…our home. Kalani loved to show her aunts her own room, her back yard and stream. Matt also made his mission “famous” creme fresh pizza. He has been telling his family about this pizza he would make weekly while he was a missionary. Finally they were able to sample his pizza…and they liked it.
Thanks for making room in your schedule to come see us!
