Out-takes of our Photo Taking ...

In the previous post, I showed y'all all the lovely photos that made us seem well-behaved and even - dare I say it - normal.

But to get to the publishable-photo stage, we had to go through bits and bobs of, well, drama.

See, this is the kind of thing that happens when you put two sisters next to each other in a photo line up. 

'Hair all sorted for the photo, right?' 

'Well, I'll soon sort that...'

Meanwhile - take note - my folks and all the boys are completely well behaved and beautifully posed.

It's always the girls that cause the problems. Always the girls. 

You just ask any mum with sons .... in particular, ask my own mum. Isn't that right, Marina?!

Mums and their boys. It's simply the way of the world...

Well, finally we pretty much had order restored and we were able to take some pretty decent photos.

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Below is a photo of Mum and Auntie Jessie. 

Here, they are beautifully presented and have their 'for the camera' faces on.

But a short while later, I was able to take a photo that totally and completely and utterly sums the pair of them up ...

This. 

This is them. Everyone who knows Mum and Auntie Jessie can actually hear them as they look at this photo. 

Honestly, it is them, summed up in a few inches of photo!

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And then we had Neil and Donna and the boys. Remember the lovely photo of them all yesterday?

Well, shortly before the 'good' photo was taken, we had this. Now, all looks fairly normal, but take a look at Mark's hand ...

And now take a look at Mark's face ... He's up to something.

And NOW, see Neil's face! 

That 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' nephew of mine had had great fun - very much at his dad's expense.

Dontcha just love kids!

Order almost restored ... but a re-writing of the will may be on the way.

Ross is smiling. And well he might.

Mum's Birthday

Last week, we were able to have an amazing family get-together for Mum's birthday. Over the past few years, my brother, Neil, has missed so many family events because of his work, but this time even he was with us.... 

Marina and I always laugh at Mum with 'her boy', so undoubtedly the day was made doubly and trebly special for Mum with 'her boy' being there. Isn't that right, Marina?!



Although the Builder was missing, all Mum and Dad's children and grandchildren were there - including Catherine who'd come from Northern Ireland - as well as Mum's dearest friend, Auntie Jessie. It was a wonderful providence that had us all together.

In this post I'll show you only the 'good' photos. You know the ones .... the photos that make us all look well behaved and even normal.

It's nice to kid on to folks sometimes.

Mum, her daughters and her granddaughters. Don't we all scrub up well?

And here's Mum and Dad with their three children. Yes, I use the word 'children' advisedly. I am just beginning to learn that no matter how old your family is, they are always your 'children'. This is definitely the case with the wonderful parents God gave us.

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Seeing we had families together, I thought I'd click away and get family groups. 


This is Mum and Dad's baby girl with her husband and family. She doesn't need to 'scrub up well', because she is always scrubbed up. When I grow up I want to be like her ...

As I say, in another post, I'll show some of the out-takes ... but in the photo below, Neil's son, Mark, look absolutely like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, right?

Who says the camera never lies...

Of course, the Builder wasn't there, but I still got some photos with my kiddos.

Family is so precious. What a gift God gave us when He placed us in families! What pictures we have of the love God shows toward His family within our own family units. Right now, we are all giving thanks for the opportunity to have met this way because now that so many of the children are older and living in different places, it's always more difficult to actually get everyone in one place at the one time. God is so kind.

A Friday Mish-mash

1. The other morning, I was speaking to the kids about the usefulness of writing down some of our experiences and blessings. When we are blessed by God in certain ways, we think we will never, ever forget what He has done for us, but ... we do. The next morning at worship, we sang these verses:


1 O thou my soul, bless God the Lord; and all that in me is Be stirred up his holy name to magnify and bless. 2 Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy God, and not forgetful be Of all his gracious benefits he hath bestowed on thee. 3 All thine iniquities who doth most graciously forgive: Who thy diseases all and pains doth heal, and thee relieve. 4 Who doth redeem thy life, that thou to death may'st not go down; Who thee with loving-kindness doth and tender mercies crown:

Although we have many, many temporal blessings, the Psalmist here mentions his greatest blessings:

.... his iniquities were graciously forgiven;

.... his spiritual disease was healed and the pain relieved;

.... his life was redeemed.

Do any of you keep a journal of spiritual experiences and blessings? For years I didn't, but I am so glad to look back now over things I wrote over the past few years. They cause me to give thanks all over again for the many blessings 'He has bestowed on me'.

2. Do y'all remember the fella who gave us the St Kilda posts? What ... You haven't read them? You can read the first of the posts here.

In case you don't think it's worth going to read them, I'll give you a couple of photos as 'tasters'. No hurry here: I'll wait.

The second post is here, and the third St Kilda post can be found here.

Oh, you're back. They're good, aren't they? Anyway, that fella, Calum, sent me this photo yesterday:

This is a Cheviot ewe with a male Texel cross lamb.

I knew that off the top off my head. I'm good at this whole recognizing-sheep-and-their-breeds stuff.

Ahem.


3. Catherine turned eighteen this week. Yes, my second child is now officially an adult, and I still feel like I'm only beginning to learn this being-a-parent business.

Our kids get to choose the menu when it's their birthday, and Catherine's choice this year was lamb shanks.

I was cooking ten shanks, and had three different ways of cooking them. 

Five of them went into the slow cooker with red wine and rosemary, as well as garlic, stock and seasoning. They bubbled happily in there for about eight hours, and made my kitchen smell delicious throughout the day. The recipe for those is here.

Three of the shanks were bundled up in cozy foil parcels with rosemary and thyme, butter, garlic and onion. They went into the oven for about two and a half hours. You can find Jamie Oliver's recipe here.

The final two were plain-Jane roasted. I had to roast some in this way to get that lovely almost-burnt stuff on the bottom of the roasting dish so that Catherine could have ordinary plain lamb gravy.

My order of preference was:

1. The foil wrapped shanks. The flavour of the butter and garlic through the meat, as well as the thyme gives this one winning status.

2. The slow-cooker shanks come a close second. The meat just fell off the bones, as it did with the foil wrapped ones. Oh, they were delicious.

3. I did like the onion-y roasted flavour of these, and if they weren't in competition with the other two, I'd be singing their praises. As it is, they come 3rd in my order.

Big Brother and a Big Birthday

Last night, the Builder's family came together to celebrate a rather significant birthday, for a rather significant Big Brother.

We love this guy, don't we...

... especially when he smiles ;)

So, apparently is was a Big Birthday for Big Brother yesterday.

And here are the seven siblings.

The Builder is looking positively small in this photo. Big Brother is looking a bundle of laughs. Baby Brother is just looking handsome as ever. ;)

After our meal, we came back home where the nieces and nephews were waiting for their favourite uncle.

Here they are surrounding him. They think they're in line to be in his will.

We know they're in line to be looking after him in his old age. 

Big Brother surprised us by indicating he would make a speech. Turned out, however, that he'd taken the wrong speech along. This one began: 'On behalf of my wife and I......'. Aye, it would appear that he can fold that one away carefully for another wee while.

(Unless there's something we don't know...)

(Oh, and you didn't believe the whole BB-was-gonna-make-a-speech thing, did you?  If you did, you really don't know this guy.) 

One of our nieces decorated this cake for him. Don't you love it... sheep, fencing, feeding troughs (even the obligatory sheep poo on the grass!). Yep, this made him feel right at home.

Here's Katie and Catherine's flock of Blackface sheep, again made in honour of the Right Honourable BB.

His siblings' main present to him was this fabulous camera. 

And we got this painting of Bruce and John Wayne made for him.

Forty-five Today

It's my birthday today. I'm heading off to bed, feeling like a stuffed turkey (without the being dead part). I wasn't allowed into the kitchen to make tonight's meal. That made it doubly tasty. We had fillet steak, creamed tatties and roasted veg, followed by White Chocolate Cheesecake and raspberries with ice-cream.

Thanks kids, and hubby.

A wee while ago, Katie and Calum took some photos of the Builder and me. They wanted to have another photo of Mum and Dad that they could add to their vast collection of photos of us....

Tonight's photos will go alongside our wedding photos. I reckon every twenty years is often enough for photos.

Man, I hate having my photo taken. Think visit-to-the-dentist type 'hate'.

 Painful. Really, really painful.

Happy Birthday, Part II

Today is this girl's birthday.

Unlike Katie, who is a pink girl, this girl was born to be blue.


Here's the evidence...

Okay, so it may have been that I was dressing her in DR's cast-offs, but I still reckon she was born to wear blue. 

I mean, c'mon.... does this girl look like she was born to be pink?

See! A dress! She had a dress. Okay, it was for a wedding, and even the dress only suited her in blue. She loved her daddy, and her daddy loved her. Did I say 'loved'? I meant 'loves'.

 And another dress! This is her with Grandpa, my Dad, and it's one of my favourite photos from this stage of her life.

At this stage, DR and Catherine shared a room: DR had his own bed, and Catherine was in the cot. Almost every night when we'd go in to say our Goodnight, this is how we'd find them.

Sweet.

Sigh. If any of you have children at this stage just now, I've gotta say this to you: 'Enjoy it'.

Oh, I know it's busy, and there's loads of work, but take time to savour it, treasure it, photograph it (anyone else out there with loads of photos of the first child and only a handful of the second? Yep, me too!)

 This was in our back garden when we lived in Glasgow. We had trees! Trees and bushes. Ahhh, them was the days... the days of no gales, and of gardens and of no gales, and of flowers.

It was also the days of living in the city and not seeing the sea, and not being near family and not seeing the sea, and not having a vegetable plot and not....well, you know what.

Was that really us, living there?

This was us in Colonial Williamsburg. Aren't you glad I told you this, because I know you'd never have guessed it from the photo.

Anyway, we couldn't believe there was a sign for homeschoolers. 'You mean, they know what we are?!'

So, that was then


And this is now ...

 and this...

 and here with her cousin, Emma, with whom she's going to spend three whole days next week.

Every stage of their lives is precious, and I do s-i-g-h when I look back at the earlier years. But having daughters at the ages our girls are at is so precious too. They quickly become your friends as well as your daughters. I treasure every moment I have with them right now. I pray nothing will ever spoil the relationship we can have as mother and daughters, and for them, as sisters.


As a birthday treat this year, I am taking the two of them to the mainland next week for a few days. We leave on Monday morning and will not be back until Friday night.


(Anyone want to feed some guys while we're gone? No? Oh well, I guess it will be a case of filling the freezer and labeling each day's food.)


Us girls are going to Inverness and then on to Edinburgh. No doubt, I'll post some photos over the week, but don't expect to hear too much from me. We're planning on having a ball!


Oh, I may, though, have a wee surprise for you on Friday night.... That's all I'm saying, but - stay tuned!

Happy Birthday...

to our little girl young lady!

 

This daughter is a pink girl.

 

Last month, she looked like this.

 

And just a couple of weeks ago, she looked like this.

 

I think this was just last week.

 

And these must have been yesterday.

 

And this was taken the night we were at Severance Hall listening to Cleveland orchestra.

And this is the photo that made me realise that yes, I am getting old.

You see, mirrors, into which we look each day, are pliable, but photos Do. Not. Lie.

  

This was her this morning, surrounded by pink balloons, having her hot chocolate and toast taken to her side, and reading...er, hang on! Is that a cookery book Katie's reading?! 

No, surely not, not our Katie.

"Oi, Katie - is that really a book about cooking you're reading?"

"Yep"

"Er, may I ask a couple of questions.... 

Are you well? 

What happened to you overnight? 

Who are you, and where's the real Katie?"

This was her choice of cake. Catherine made it for her, 

dutifully made it into a Birthday Cake, and

...

Katie will huff and will puff, and will...

yep, blow them all out!

Please don't tell anyone this, but Catherine has now made a Chocolate cake to have for when the Builder comes home. I am not kidding, but the first cake Is No More. 

We are all suitably ashamed. But we're licking our lips too.