Parental visits part 2

So, if any of you are trying to get hold of us (me and my lovely husband Mark), we are sightly unavailable as we have started part 2 of ourparental visits.
Mark's mum and stepdad are visiting. After a lovely lunch we are now headed to Doune to look at the castle and birds of prey, amongts bickering,laughing and crying ;-)
Catch up later!
-Andrea

Maternal visit

My Mum and her partner Haakon has just visited Mark and me. We had a nice week with surprisingly nice weather. We revisited the place I went swimming with Sara, shopped in Glasgow and discovered ripe blueberries by Loch Lomond.
AS you can see from the photo, it's not quite as hot as it was when I went with Sara. my mum went for it though, the viking lady! :-)
All in all a rewarding, pleasant experience.
Mark disclosed a big hidden Norwegian vocabulary as he spoke to Haakon a lot, (mostly about car's and stuff, there's a surprise..) in the loveliest language of all.
So I hereby declare the parent-marathon: started!
not this weekend but next Mark's mum and stepdad are coming and two weeks after that my dad and sister are coming. Busy days, but nice.

hot hot heat

For about a week we've had fantastically nice weather! Since Saturday I was frantically trying to get someone to swim in a loch or the sea with me. After having a fun time in the slides in the Rainbow slides with the Williamsons, working out in aquajogging with Nikki, Sara finally came to the rescue!

We went to Crystal Falls, dodging scary bulls and swarms of hungry midges as we walked alongside a burn(trillende liten bekk) up on Sherrifmuir, overlooking Stirling and Bridge of Allan.

The result was a refreshing yet pleasant swim in a little pool at the end of some waterfalls. Bliss! There were a group of teenagers from Alloa camping. They were quite entertaining, swimming with their clothes on and sliding down the waterfalls.
Bonnie Scotland!

Goings on in the centre of the world

Over the recent week Stirling or at least Central Scotland has been the centre of attention.
We've had the G8 summit, which ended today, with the demonstrators in the eco village http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4654077.stm, the concerts at Murrayfield and/musicscotland/thelive8event/ has been huge. There has been demonstrators rioting and wrecking Burger King, Pizza hut in our local shopping village and in an other area, Bannockburn, they were wrecking random cars and blocking roads. This has resulting in thousands of riot police who have been seen around the streets for several days. Some mornings the army helicopters, which is bringing politicians to and from Gleneagles as well as moving the police around, woken us up.

Even confused our lovely cat Tashi, pictured to the right, has been affected. She now wants in and out at stupid times way too early for me and has also killed a baby rabbit. I choose to believe it was all the violent people about who had a negative impact on her!
When London got the Olympics there was a day of exitement, mixed with the stress still felt about the G8, shortly followed by the stress of the bombings in London. That left our phonelines a bit on and off for a while, but I can pretty much ring out when I like now.

It has been thought that part of the aim was to distract from the G8 as well as making the general comment re wanting troops taken out of Iraq and Afghanstan. If they really want to disrupt the G8, though, Stirling wouldn't be a bad place to have a go. Most of the demonstraters are staying here as well as most of the police. A restless feeling for me indeed. The shopping centre even closed. Or so I've heard. Lots of rumors about. Our local petrol station was meant to be wrecked, but that turned out to be completely wrong.

Anyway, people have calmed down about the above now, and are waiting for the two next things to happen. There are queues in Stirling again, and this time not because of clown dressed protester, but people headed for T in the park, a big outdoor music festival for thousands of people. Even if I've not got tickets, I'm fed up with the exitement and am going to the west coast in stead. In addition there is going to be the Orange Parade in Alloa on Saturday. Another few thousands coming from all over the UK. It's got something to do with protestants and catholics.

I bet even after reading this you'll feel like a sit down and a nice cup of tea with a biscuits. Imagine living it..
So, I'll leave the subject and hopefully experiencing some pleasant things to write about soon.
What a very long post this turned out to be. Not only are you now very updated, but I have also successfully worked through this crisis to strengthen me rather than harm me. Erickson would be proud!Barnevernpedagoger/social workers DO go a bit funny in the head.
So that's that.
-Andrea

Additions to the gift shop

This is stuff I've made at my ceramics course recently.
If any of you want any of this or similar pieces of wonderfullness, it would be a good idea to post a comment to my blog. Bear in mind these to a long time to make and if I run out it would take ages for me to get to anywhere to attempt torecreate the moment. In these surprising times anything is possible. Or nearly anything anyway.

I've also added on some photo's of knitted handbags and a cake. The latter is reserved for people who are in the same country as me, for natural reasons. More items will be added on in time.

:-) Andrea