Exploring scotland

Emma and Niels have returned to their home.  It was a lot of fun having them here at Christmas with the family in Scotland.  We've been touring Scotland and it's been a lot of fun.  We visitied Drum castle.  The grounds were open but the castle itself wasn't.  It was really bueatiful.  The castle was small compared to the others I've seen.  But it had a seperate church on the grounds as opposed to being built in the castle.  That was really neat to see.

Yesterday we drove around edzel.  We were going to stop by the castle but it looks as if it is currently under going rennovations as the moment and we weren't even able to get to the grounds. 

We went to shakin' (pronounced "shack-in" for you american readers) brig which was actually one of the most stable suspension bridges I have been on, and I've been on quite a few.  Laura tells me it was a lot more stable than she remebered it to be.  We stopped by another bridge (the name of which I missed) but it was off limits due to the saftey threat it imposed.  

We got some lovely pictures of the gorge though.  We stopped at the catterthuns for a picnik and enjoyed the veiw.  It was a lot of fun.

While we were at the shakin' brig we made fire.  My father-in-law found his flint and showed us how to use it to make fire.  He also happened to have birtch bark on him, which is really good for starting fires, which we used to start our fires.  

It took me a while but I finally got it, ended up scuffing one of my knuckles though which surprisingly is quite bothersome for such a small wound.  I've learned from that experience two things: one, I now can teach any cavemen I run across how to make fire and Two, Laura is better at it then I am :S.  I guess that makes her designated firestarter...

Christmas and Stuff

  Well we are here in Scotland for Christmas and it's been a lot of fun so far.  Aside from the malware attack on the laptop.  So I have PC-cillin installed, it came with the laptop, for anti-virus and supposedly spy-ware.  I thought I was protected so I surfed the wonderful world wide web to my hearts content.  Then I got a pop-up telling me my computer was infected, you know the ones that are fake trying to get you to download more malware.  Well I Ignored it and that that was that, I ran one of the anti-spy ware programs I have that does a more intense scouring and I was totally infected.  My real time protection was no good.  So I have spent about a week trying to repair the Laptop because I don't have my OS disks here with me.  Well I was fighting a losing battle, I couldn't get rid of the stubborn thing.  Fortunately my danish brother-in-law had XP available to him and I had my Key so I was able to reinstall the OS and I'm now really protected so that won't be happening again.

   Christmas is here and we've all opened our gifts.  I got some great stuff.  Niels got a wii from Emma (his wife) and she is totally kicking his trash at boxing.  I hope he enjoys it as much as I enjoy mine.  Wii's are lots of fun.  We hope to see Beki soon, Unfortunately she'll not be bringing her kids, bit sad but what can you do?  Merry Christmas to everyone.

Death by compressed dough!?

So I was making dinner the other day, hard to believe I know but believe it but I'm sure you can use your imagination and if you can't Laura has some images of that final product. I was making chicken half roll-ups, half because of the erroneous dough which nearly lead to my death. I was peeling the paper off the tube and I had barely exposed the blue print that says press here to open when the darn thing exploded, quite literally. The dough was a mess, I yelped because of the loud bang, and Laura ran into the kitchen to rescue me from mortal dough wounds. Laura's really good at patching things up so I'm all good. Laura had a good laugh at me actually, the dough remained in the tube fortunately. I don't know why the tube exploded but I thought it was a rare thing, in fact a one time deal only. So I wasn't expecting the second tube to actually explode on me but I was being careful while opening the second tube anyways. I was wrong. The second exploded and again I yelped. What's the deal with these killer dough tubes? This tainted dough kept the dough from adhering to its self which is why the roll ups only half rolled them up. They still tasted good so all's well that ends well...

Finals Week

It's here, finally. I have a bad feeling about this week. In Rexburg we normally get snow the last week in October and it doesn't melt all away until sometime after April. This year has been different. We had a few flurries but the roads stayed clear and it didn't stick around. We have been pretty much snow free, until today. This morning I awoke to a strange scraping noise. I couldn't think of what it was. To my horror my mind flashed back to last year and all the snow removal and sure enough about a 1/4 inch of snow blanketed the ground. You can't tell me that's not a bad omen of some sort, I mean no snow for ages and the one the start of finals week snow covering the ground, definitely a bad omen. Oh well.
With finals week here we are that much closer to Christmas break. Laura and I will be off to Scotland for Christmas. That will come and go way too fast. But we'll enjoy it without a doubt. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. I may be the only person who doesn't dream of a white Christmas...