Childhood Snack and a very brief catch-up.

I have not posted anything for so long that Blogger has gone and changed it's "make a post" format again. What would normally take a reasonable amount of time has, at the time of posting this, involved a new browser, a computer re-boot and a stiff drink. Good thing I'm not working on this on Monday morning...

 So much has been happening in the last few months and I'm not really sure where to begin!

The majority of Ben's family on his Mum's side were in town for a week or so for the big Erekson reunion - 67 people were in attendance and we had a great time meeting new people and reuniting with the rest...

The whole gang!

We met Laurie and Nate's beautiful little Virginia and Fiona and Adele are both completely in love with her...

Adele and "baby Ginna"

Laurie and Carol and their families were here for a few weeks after the reunion and it was lovely to spend some time with them before they went home to Utah and Switzerland.

Since then work has been getting busy in preparation for the Fall semester and we moved the girls to a different preschool. Both girls are very happy in the new place and their teachers seem really wonderful. The school has 1/3 special needs and 2/3 typically developing kids in each classroom so Adele has a lot of resources available to her.

We've been having fun and going places but since I have failed to take photos of any of these exciting excursions I'm going to skip straight to today's excitement - childhood snack!

I found these digestive biscuits at the grocery store and you don't normally find these here so it was quite exciting and I immediately thought that I should make the girls one of my favourite childhood snacks... I think my Mum had some kind of snappy name for it... something like "digestive biscuits with apple rings and jam on top"...

It's exactly what it sounds like.

 Fiona liked hers a lot...

Adele was not so sure and took hers apart and ate the biscuit and apple separately...

Even Ben enjoyed his and he fully subscribes to the theory that most Scottish food was based on a dare...




No offense, Scottish people... WE all know Haggis is delicious.

I promise to try and post more often now that the busy summer is starting to wind down. Mum and Dad are visiting at the end of the month so I'm sure we'll do something exciting then :-)

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 13

Breakfast: A single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat.

Not really. Latte and cinnamon sugar butter toast.

Today's mug is from New York. In 2004 (when we still lived in MI) Ben and I were flying to Aberdeen for Christmas. Our flight was scheduled to leave on December 23rd in the late afternoon, and (being the cheapest possible flight) had two connections, one somewhere in the US and another one in London, arriving in Aberdeen in the morning of the 24th (Christmas Eve). We made it to our first connection but the flight to London was cancelled for some weather related reason. They had to book us on a whole bunch of different flights and we ended up having to fly to Newark then from there to Glasgow, but the flight to Newark didn't leave until the next morning. So we had to sleep in the airport.

We arrived at Newark early in the morning on the 24th and had to wait about 12 hours for our next flight to leave. So we decided it would be a good time to take the bus into New York City for a few hours. We figured out which bus we needed and set off. Once we got there we walked around a bit and ate some really fantastic New York pizza from a (presumably authentic) pizza place.

We also stopped at a gift shop to get a mug to commemorate our adventure. Of course I was so paranoid about missing our next flight that we headed back pretty quickly and spent many, many more hours sitting in the airport.

Our flight left that night and arrived in Scotland the next morning. Unfortunately since it was now Christmas Day Aberdeen airport was CLOSED and we had to fly into Glasgow which is about a 3 hour drive away. My Dad kindly drove down well before the crack of dawn and picked us up. Here's a picture of dawn cracking as we drove home.

At the time it was a huge pain, but after traveling with little kids it puts the whole thing in a much less awful light. I think if the same thing had happened with the girls in tow we might have just not gone!

Back to today!

This morning we got together with our friends and ate some treats. I forgot to take a picture so I drew this in paint.

I know you can tell immediately what those items are, but just in case, I had a slice of banana nut bread (left) and a piece of blondie (right). Yum.

Lunch: Fiona requested mac and cheese so that's what we had.

Snack: A single plum, for real this time.

Dinner: Pesto tortellini with peas and broccoli in basil pesto cream sauce. Spinach salad. Half a little roll.

Ben sent me a picture of his dinner last night since we ate different things. He ate at his parents house because they were watching the girls while I went to my meeting and his Mum made a delicious vegetarian stir fry...

I'm sad that I missed it! His Mum is a great cook and has been making a lot of different vegetarian foods recently. I'm looking forward to swapping some recipes with her. Well, really I'm looking forward to having her cook more stuff when I visit!

Scottish Fair Adventure

Yesterday we got together with Ben's family and went to the Minnesota Scottish fair. We were there two years ago and it was really hot, but this time it was mostly cold and windy with some scary looking rain clouds... very Scottish! Occasionally the sun would peek out and people would emerge from the tents and soak up the warmth.  Fiona wore her wooly hat, and she seemed happy enough.

We ran out of camera space and only managed to take a few pictures, so for a more detailed account of the day, go to Cathy's Blog. 

At the fair there are places selling "Scottish" food, and lots of different tents with kilts and tea towels and artworks and pottery to buy. There are also sheep herding demonstrations, highland dancing competitions, pipe bands, and Highland Games. I've never been to the Highland Games in Scotland, so it was fun to see the caber toss in person. 

Sheep herding

I think my favourite part was the Highland Cows. When I was little and we went on holiday, seeing Highland Cows would be very exciting, and each year I'd hope that we'd see some. 

Fiona liked the cows too. She likes anything with fur that she can hang onto, so it didn't seem like a good idea to get close enough for her to touch one. 

It was a fun day! Ben and I even overheard some real Scottish people talking! Ben said it was exciting because he hadn't heard a real Scottish accent since he last visited Aberdeen. I need to watch some Billy Connolly and start working on that!