Rudders at Home

Here’s this week’s picture! Just thought I’d share mom’s gnomes with you all, and of course there’s a bit of a story to go along with it all!

Paul and I were driving mom and dad back the road to the place where we got married. It’s quite a rural route, lots of green stuff, woods, fields, sheep, etc. We’re driving back to the hotel, quite carefully, as it’s a one lane road, and at this time mom and dad are gawking around, acting like the tourists they are. You know the stuff, asking weird questions, taking pictures of sheep, exclaiming over how gorgeous Scotland is and how much they want to come and visit again – the usual tourist basics. When, all of a sudden, Mom yells out “there’s gnomes up there!” (okay, those may not have been her exact words, but you get the gist!)

On go the brakes, but it’s too late. We’re past and no one else spotted the illusive Scottish gnome. Of course this doesn’t go without comment. We all have a laugh, and Paul, being the nice guy he is, says, “We’ll keep an eye out on the way back, and have a better look.” Meanwhile I’m sure he’s rolling his eyes and thinking, How in the world did I get myself into this?!?!

And so, off we go on our merry little way. Enjoying the trip down through the Scottish countryside. We stop at Ardanaiseig Hotel, which being at the end of the road we were driving down, I’m not sure where else we’d go!

Ardanaiseig Hotel just happens to be the gorgeous place where Paul and I tied the knot a while back. We had a good wander around the grounds there. It was pretty muddy, but Dad and Paul wandered down to the waterside – Ardanaiseig is right on Loch Awe. That’s where Dad took this awesome picture. I’ve added the picture here because it is just simply something else. The place just looks so lovely. We even went inside and had a good nose around in there.

Having had all the fun we could, we hopped back in the car – ok, we didn’t exactly hop – but we got ourselves back in the car and headed down the road. Extra slowly. Just so we can see these gnomes! By now we’re all pretty interested.

Slowly, slowly we went. And low and behold, as you can see by the picture featured in this post, the woman was correct. There were indeed gnomes up there, hiding amongst the trees on the bank. So, like good tourists, we stopped and had a good old look. Dad climbed up onto the bank to have an even better look, and got that picture – just to prove mom’s NOT the crazy woman we were all thinking she was turning into.

It will have to be another day when that happens. And now we all know that gnomes DO exist. They live in the forests of Scotland, apparently.

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I’ve got more pictures from mom and dad’s holiday up on the site now. These are all pictures taken by dad. He’s got some pretty nice ones. I haven’t put all of them up, just the better ones and the ones I particularly liked.

Here’s where you can get to the good stuff.

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I spoke too soon. I did. Where was my sunshine when I woke up this morning? I don’t know – there was none to be had. Just rain. Downpours, not light mist, or anything at all like that. Downpours off and on all day. It’s hit the country pretty hard. In true British style though, nothing ever happens here without the trains going downhill. Oh yeah, didn’t I mention that my train was late this morning? Due to the rain, of course. What else?

And that’s the beginning of my Friday summary. Tonight I went with a friend to see the new Harry Potter movie. (I know, I’m shocked too – two movies in the same week!!) The movie was pretty good. I feel a bit left out though, I couldn’t remember much from this book. The movie however, didn’t seem to provide as much information this time around, though. Normally I think the movies are pretty true to the story, so I’m a tad disappointed. However, this wasn’t my favorite book of the series so I guess I’m not really that gutted.

As far as the new book goes, I’ll have mine on Monday evening. I was silly and used Paul’s work address as the mailing address. Anyway, by that time, Paul will have found all the spoilers online and told them to me. So I’m not sure there’ll be any point in reading the book at all!

Paul’s back tomorrow so you probably won’t hear much on the blog after that. You can tell that I have much more time in the evenings for this sort of thing when Paul’s not around. When he’s here we’re doing really important stuff like going to the gym or watching tv.

And now, I’m off to bed. When I next wake up, there’ll be an extra body back in the house, just cluttering it up with more laundry. All right, so I’ll be quite pleased to see him. I just hope he doesn’t sleep too much when he gets back. It’s boring here without him.

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Here’s something new this week. I realized earlier that I have a lot of pictures in my gallery. I don’t want to force things on folks, but it occurred to me that some of you may not have the time or possibly the inclination (I’m not sure why not!) to sift through everything, so I thought I’d try my hand at featuring more photos on the site. Especially since I’ve just got a cool new way to implement them on the blog using my gallery.

Anyway, the photo here is one of my lovely mother, on her way to the airport. She’s on her way home, after 2 fabulous weeks with me and her lovely son-in-law. Doesn’t she look like she’s ready to make her way back to the good ol’ US of A? Nah, of course not. There’s too much left here to do!! Ah, she’ll be back, and she knows it!

Anyway, the reason I decided to feature this picture tonight, is that she told me on the phone that many people have been looking at the London pictures of her and dad and commenting on the fact that there’s pictures of her sleeping in the car. I just wanted to prove to my siblings that she did indeed ride in my car at least once without falling asleep. I wonder what was keeping her up??

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about Dad. He in fact did take a nap every single time he entered our car.

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…last week? Yes, I know I complain about the state of the weather here quite a bit. But, come on, we’re in England! As a friend of mine once said, “they call it London Fog for a reason, you know.” We’ve had some miserable weather this summer so far – usually it’s not so bad, it just seems a bit extreme this year.

So, the weather here has finally warmed up a bit. Not a lot, just a bit. It has warmed up just enough for me to optimistically ditch my usual black work trousers this week for much easier going skirts and sandals. I mean, it is nearing the end of July. I would expect we should get some warm weather this summer. I’m just trying to send out the right vibes…

What I would like to know though, is where was this semi-warm weather last week? Requiring a fleece on holiday in July is just a bit extreme. I would at least expect a person could wear short sleeves and maybe sandals. Oh well, at least I can do it this week. Who knows what we’ll get the next at the rate this is all going.

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