+5 Nerd Points for Eli :)

Last year sometime on my way to work I came upon a Chevy Malibu with all this electronic equip hanging off the top. My Spider(pig) senses started tingling right away and as soon as I got a little closer I knew it was the Google Street View car taking pictures of the middle of nowhere (i.e. home).

Seizing the opportunity I made all kinds of faces out of the windshield and hung out the window/sunroof.

Sadly the wide-angle lens, my desire not to tailgate the dude too badly and the glare from my windshield conspired to leave most of it un-documented.

This single frame is all that remains of my proof, and thus my claim nerd-fame :)

Ireland/UK 2009 - Days 9 & 10 Edinburgh Scotland

We arrived in Edinburgh on Friday night (day 8) and promptly crashed. Earlye the next morning we took the train (within walking distance from the hotel) into the city centre. It was a short walk from there to Holyrood Park where the Gathering 2009 was being held. You can see just behind us in the first picture Arthurs Seat (a local landmark) and the surrounding hills, remember them for later.







One unexpected yet very cool thing was that HRH Prince Charles made an appearance and officially opened the gathering with a short speach. We were actually so close to the stand where he was speaking (<25 feet) that we couldnt see him cause of all those next to us :) Nonetheless it was cool to see royalty. This pic was from about 10ft away as he strolled along post-speach.



Remember those huge hills from earlier? Eden is perched on the edge of one of those in this shot. Thats where she was when she called you Mom/Dad/Leah!



Claire was a little mountain climber too.



Oh yeah, and there were actually some games too :)





The much fabled Caber Toss.







One of the few shots we took of Edinburgh city :(



Not even Wensleydale?





This is Eden and her friend that she met at the swimming pool in the Hotel in Edinburgh (an Irish family on holiday).

Ireland/UK 2009 - Days 7 & 8 Wales and travel to Scotland

Day 6 sees us leaving the Brecon Beacons and heading north to the Snowdonia region of Wales; specifically the Swallow Falls area within the Snowdonia National Park.

We stopped at a town called Blaenau Ffestiniog which is located in the middle of the park (the parks are like that over here). The town is essentially made up of abandoned slate mine(s) however has a really cool railroad that climbs into the mountains around it (which are beautiful in their own right).



On our way to Swallow Falls we stopped at Dolwyddelan Castle in northern Wales. This castle turned out to be one of the most beautiful due to its locatoin as well as the views it provided.





It also turned out to the the windiest and most rugged (read: pretty trick to scale and VERY precarious at the top) lending to its coolness.



Just a view from the side of the road when we stopped randomly to get something out of the back.



On Day 7 we traveled out of Wales *sigh* and back into England to Birmingham to catch our flight into Edinburgh. On the way as we drove up and over the hills we stopped off to climb to a peak (dont know what else to call it on a hill) and get a view/take a family pic. Again, it was very windy up here.





There was an old slate mine here too, see James at the bottom of one of the huge waste piles for reference?



We stopped for lunch: Packaged Samitches (our favourite) and juice at some random little picnic area which suitably zonked the kids out for the rest of the ride...YES!







We then proceeded to drop off the rental car, catch a flight, get another rental find the hotel and then check in...most of it in the rain :) But I dont really feel like typing much about that part!

James & Israel @ MSP

Uncle Ben took James and Israel for a tour of the MSP hangar, where they got to sit in the helicopter and watch it start up and get a ride and then eventually take the stick for a short while and bring it down for a touch-n-go...while blindfolded!









(ok well they got to sit in it at least!)

Eden & James Birthday 09

Man time flies by quickly, seems like it was just a year or two ago I was watching Eden take her first steps, and now its Claire. Or just a couple of months ago that James was destroying everything in sight...ok maybe that was just a couple of months ago...but the point is that time is moving ever faster and seems to accelerate as our family gets older *sigh*



Earlier this year Eden and James had their birthday's; 7 & 5 respectively and this years theme was StarWars (as picked by them) can't you tell!



As you can tell everyone was having a great time especially TheGryph!



Here is the attempt at a DeathStar cake a.k.a "Ol'Poopy"



We also took the kids to Chuck-E-Cheese for a day of games (which they loved)



See the rest in the slideshow:

Wye Island Trip

What do you do on a lazy Saturday afternoon when you don't have anything else to do? Well everyone knows that answer to that question is to go to the local Nature Preserve island and walk the trails for free...well at least that's what we do :)

Here some photos from when we went walking last weekend. Sorry its been a while since we posted, but we've been pretty busy. So here's something to hold you over until we can put some more stuff up.

Queen Annes County Faire

In keeping with the current theme of making our kids relive our childhoods "When I was a kid I used to..." posts; we went to the 4H Faire recently (which also serves as the County Faire). Full of farm animals, farm equipment, and some of the most rickety rides you will likely ever risk your families life on, a good time is guaranteed for all!

Actually we had a really good time, and Lauren brought the kids out earlier on in the day to see all the animals separately, so when we went back in the evening it was #2 for most of the fam.

Just Like a Day at The Beach

One of our favorite things growing up was going to stay at the beach house (God rest its soul :) in Rehoboth DE. Sadly that awesome old beach house is now gone (to make room for...well I'm still not sure why), but the beach and boardwalk still remain, so we try and make it a point to go at least once a year with the kids.

Here's some pictures from that fun day including beach chillin, riding the rides, and of course Grottos!

Kids Combine Ride

I remember getting off the bus as a kid and waiting in the yard with Mom for a chance to ride on the combine with Mr. Danny. So when he came out this year to harvest the corn, it was a perfect chance for Eden and James to help daddy live old memories vicariously to do something that I loved as a kid (as presumably all Eastern Shore kids do...right?)











One of the cooler things about homeschooling, is that a trip to the local farm (which also happens to be family) to see the miniature cows and help harvest the hay; serves double duty as a field trip.





As always you can see the whole set by following this link over to our Flickr Page.

Grandfather Mountain Highland Games 2008: Debriefing Part 1

Well we had an awesome time at this years GMHG's and unanimously decided that it needs to become an annual family tradition. Of course next year at this point we should will be enjoying the real thing in Scotland itself, however when we are in the states its already penciled in on the schedule.

We took tons of pictures and have even more stories, so we've split it all up into two posts. In this one we will cover the Traveling, Camping, and Food, and the Games, Music, and Final Thoughts in part 2. And as always theres more photos than we could fit here over at Flickr.


Traveling

The travel time was listed on Google as almost 9 hours which would have turned out to be pretty accurate...had we not spend almost an hour turning circles in the pouring rain about 20 minutes from our destination : )

The Mercedes performed superbly (as I hoped), the turbocharged Diesel thrusted us up any incline that the BlueRidge Parkway could throw at it, and we found ourselves cruising by numerous other vehicles struggling to make it to the top...all this while resting firmly at 3K RPM!

James had the privilege of getting the best view in the house (which also cost him his lunch through the mountains : ). He also got to share in the pain that is filling up a whole tank with $70 worth of Diesel.



Claire did reeeeealy well for being 3 weeks old, heck she slept most of the ride, but even she has her limits after 6+ hours!



It worked out really well that Leah was nice enough to let James and Eden sleep with her in the big bed when we stayed in the hotel on the way down.



The Diesel in the south was definitely cheaper, we got it for $4.64 at this one little place.



And of course we passed by Max Meadows...why does that sound so familiar?



Camping

Its impossible to describe the atmosphere present in the camping areas at the games, so I wont even try. Suffice it to say, family friendly does not even come close to describing how great an environment it was.

We got there late (in the scheme of things) by arriving on Thursday as many people camp out the entire week before the games, so we were wondering what kind of spot we would get. Turns out God had hand-picked our spot for us beforehand :) We had room for both of our tents (stuff tent and living tent) and had a great tree for shade and hanging the flag. Plus we were near the parking lot where our car was for an easy exit if need be.



We set up our smaller 4Man tent as the StuffTent where we kept all our unused junk, food storage, and wet clothes instead of keeping them in the tent we were sleeping in. Heres Laurens great job of organizing :)



I mentioned that the spot we wound up with was perfect because of placement and whatnot, however a large part of the reason it was so great was because of the family next door. As soon as we started unloading the stuff, they came over and asked if they could help set up the tent (which was great in the rain!). We then found out that they had 6 year old girl, and a 4 year old boy would be great playmates for Eden and James all weekend. We hung out together as families (not as much as we would have liked in retrospect), and our time with them remains one of the highlights of the trip!



Here are the kids just before saying goodbye.




The Food

I'm not really sure why I have a separate section on the food, as most of what we ate was typical camping food; burgers, hot dogs, and sundry canned food. Maybe I'm just hungry and like looking at the pictures again :)

We did however have one day of eating some Scottish/English food. Eden and James got the Fish and Chips (old standby), Lauren had a Bridie (basically meat in pastry), and of course I had to have some Haggis. The cool thing was that the vendor was called "Cameron Foods", and was run by members of the Cameron Clan...our clan! (sadly no discount)



We also enjoyed some other not-so-scottish food while listening to the Celtic Jam, namely Sweet Potato Fries (with brown sugar) and a Bloomin Onion (mmmm).