Trip to Scotland and Adele's Baptism

It's finally here! The post you've all been waiting for! Well, probably not, but I feel we couldn't just let a trip to Scotland go by without immortalizing it in blog form.

In the beginning of May (so we could get there and back before Fiona turned 2) the four of us traveled to Scotland to visit and have Adele baptised. There's a lot to cover, so I'm planning to use bullet points and pictures to get though it all.

1. Flight out.

*Checking in very stressful. Delta dreadful. Lost booking for girls. Almost missed flight.

*Flight great. No problems. Girls very good. Fiona very tired on arrival.

2. Time adjustment. Scotland 6 hours ahead of Minneapolis.

* Not awesome, but could have been worse. Had a few crabby zombie days. Fiona crabby. Me zombie. Also, crabby. Adele did much better. Good baby :-)

3. Trips to Louise's childhood parks and local beach.

* Fiona: "TRAIN!!!!!!!!"

* Fiona: "A BOAT!!!!!!!!"

* Fiona: "SWING!!!!!!" (swing not pictured).

4. Trip to Macduff Aquarium with Grandpa!

*Fiona: "FISH!! FISH! FISH! FISH! STARFISH! BLUE FISH! TINY FISH!"

*Fiona gathered all her courage and touched a starfish

* Fiona: "BOAT!!!" Yep, we found another boat! (It's out there somewhere!)

5. Going on THE BUS!!!

*Fiona loves all kinds of transportation, and her dreams came true the day Ben and I (and Adele) took her on a real live Aberdeen bus. I wish I'd found these half as exciting as she does...

6. Visiting with Family and friends!

*We spent time with some lovely people in Aberdeen, and a lot of people visited to celebrate Adele's baptism day with us. Fiona and Adele really enjoyed hanging out with you all!!

7. Adele's Baptism.

This was a really nice day. My brother Robert and my lovely friend Anna are Adele's Godparents. I wasn't able to take many pictures on the day, so I "borrowed" most of these from Uncle Michael. Hopefully he won't mind :-)

*Adele was very good and was happy and did not cry!

8. Grannie!

* Fiona loves Grannie so much! And Grannie loves tea! (And Fiona, of course). Fiona loved getting to spend so much time with Grannie, and in addition to that on this trip, she got to have her first "cuppietea" (as Fiona calls it) with her while colouring a picture of a teapot. Perfect!

There was so much more that we did, and you can see many more pictures and videos on our flickr page, but for now I should wrap up this epic holiday post extravaganza. The final part was the trip home, which went well despite having to be at the airport at 4am.

*Adele: "This sucks. I hate you. What kind of crazy time is this? Grrrrrrr"

* Fiona: "PLANE!!!!!!!!!"

The End!

Duthie Park Adventure

When we were little, we'd go to Duthie Park a lot, usually on Sunday. there are lots of paths for walking, swings and chutes and things to play on, and the 'winter gardens' which is a big indoor greenhouse with fish and plants and cacti and a big frog that jumps up out of a pond and scares you. There's also a really big hill to climb, that makes you super tired by the time you are at the top. So today Me, Dad, and Ali took Fiona there for a walk.

The first thing I saw was... spring!! Which gave me hope that one day flowers will once again bloom in my garden in Minneapolis.

Then we walked to the giant hill... but wait... it shrank! What happened to the hill that took 20 minutes to walk up and required a rest on the bench halfway? Yet another sacred childhood memory ruined by adult perspective.

Next we visited the Winter Gardens. It was also smaller than I remembered, but still fun. Fiona really liked looking at the fish. Next to the fish, nestled subtly in with the flowers, was the world's most polite sign... it said "please refrain from feeding or handling the fish. Thank you". I wish more signs used words like "refrain". I think it would create a more genteel world, where people open doors for others and cover their mouths when they cough...

We walked round and found the pond where the big frog lives... here he is, lurking...

After quite a wait, he leaped out of the pond... no... wait... he quietly rose to the surface and bobbed about sadly for a minute before sinking back down... I'm not sure if I remember it was much more exciting when I was 2, or if McPuddock (yes, that is really his name) is just tired from jumping out at children every few minutes for the last 25 years, but it was an exciting moment of nostalgia nonetheless.

And speaking of nostalgia, here I am at the winter Gardens with my Mum and Granny (Mum's Mum) back in the day...

Fiona seemed disinterested in McPuddock, but did have a good time hanging out with Aunty Ali.

We then had some fun playing on the swings and see-saw. Fiona loves the swings!

And after that it was getting cold, so we headed home. Here is one last picture. She had fun at the park!

We made it... barely!

Fiona and I are in Aberdeen! This post may be a little long and nonsensical, because I'm very tired! I also did not manage to take any pictures, so I'll be illustrating this with random pictures.

We left on Monday. The flight was at 3.15pm. Fiona was meant to take a nap around 2. No such luck. She was laughing and smiling and playing, but not napping.

3.15... flight leaves. The captain tells us the flight time is 7 hours and 20 minutes... crazy tailwind! I think... "that's not too long, we can do this!". I'm a fool.

Fiona plays, and smiles at the other passengers. The seatbelt sign is on because they keep having turbulence. I feed Fiona her dinner. she seems to enjoy it. The crew start serving dinner. Stewardess gives me my tray, and peels off the lid and opens my cutlery for me. Nice. Fiona then projectile vomits her entire dinner back up, over herself, me, the chair, her booties, and half of her toys. Awesome.



Stewardess takes my dinner away (luckily unvomit covered) and puts it in the back for later, and I clean up as much as I can in the three foot by three foot aeroplane bathroom. Change Fiona into her emergency outfit. Resign self to smelling like barf for the next 10 hours.

I manage to inhale some nasty chicken standing in the back before they tell me to go and sit down. I take my roll, crackers, cheese and oreos, and finish my 'dinner' at my seat.

Seatbelt sign goes off! Yay! I stand up and start rocking my cranky baby. She is just nodding off when they tell me I have to sit down because they are serving the coffee. Ok... They promise I can stand up again soon when they are finished. Fiona is awake.



They finish with the coffee, and immediately the turbulence really gets going. Even the crew are asked by the captain to sit down. For an hour. Fiona is very tired, but will. not. nap. The seatbelt sign stays on for the rest of the flight, and every attempt at standing up to rock Fiona to sleep is thwarted by stewardess. We manage to survive the next few hours, and then they serve 'breakfast'. It's nasty rubber egg on dried up english muffin. It's revolting. I'm not feeling that good, so I pass. Just the smell is making my stomach turn. Unfortunately the combination of the stomach bug Ben and I have, and not really eating anything all day, catches up with me, and I start to feel really lightheaded. When I think I might actually pass out, I call the stewardess who brings me juce and crackers and takes Fiona. When I am feeling better, I got to get her, and she asks me "if it's ok for Fiona to have some orange juice because I gave her some..." Ok... well, I hope so. She's never had it before, but hopefully she'll be fine.


Nope. Not fine. We sit down, and she immediately has volcano vomit episode number two. And it stinks. Like orange juice. Wonderful.

We finally land in Amsterdam. We both stink. I think "thank goodness it's a short connection". Idiot. We get on the plane, and she finally goes to sleep. But... wait. We're not going anywhere. The captain tells us there will be a 20 minute delay because there are protesters on the runway at Aberdeen airport and it will take 20 minutes to remove them. Ok... I can wait. Fiona's asleep, they passed out cups of tea and cookies...

We wait. And wait. Captain tells us the flight is cancelled.

We all get off the plane. Fiona wakes up. She's not happy. We're all re-booked on the next flight, leaving in 50 minutes, boarding now. We're told to hurry. We HURRY. We have to all go through security again and are crammed into the pre-boarding room like sardines.



We're told there will be a short delay because they can't locate the pilot.

Half an hour later, we're boarding. We're flying. We're landing... we're here!! And I'm told when we arrive that the reason for the protest was because Donald Trump is building a hotel/golf course here, and they're against that, and the planned expansion of the airport to allow larger planes to land. So they thought that they'd protest on the runway. Personally, I think the most effective way to have removed them would have been to have landed the plane anyway. I bet they'd have moved themselves pretty quickly then!

So all in all, it was not the best day. But we're both here. And now I'm going to bed. Goodnight!