Danny's Wedding

This last weekend we were up in Scotland for a good friends wedding. Danny was here in our area while serving a mission for our church. We all loved meeting Danny and it was a great privilege to be invited to his big day. Of course, we can't get enough of Scotland either, so it was a win-win situation. The wedding was wonderful and we had such a lovely time.

Mike chatted with Danny before we headed up there and Danny somehow convinced Mike he should wear a kilt. Like a good guy, Mike did it :)

The whole family with Danny. Don't ask me why we didn't get one with him and his new wife, Martha. She is a gorgeous woman and I think she made an excellent decision in marrying Danny, who is a brilliant guy. The kids all love him to bits and pieces. They had been counting down the days to go to see him and be at his wedding.

In the car travelling the next day day to what was suppose to become a day at Loch Lomond. What I didn't know is that Mike hit on the sat-nav to avoid major roads. This was an interesting drive, taking the back roads of Scotland got very hairy at times. However, it was gorgeous!! Even in February we found Scotland enchanting and fell in love some more. We really are hopeful that they would build a base there and we could live there, but sadly we will just have to go on a few more trips there.

Back to our trip to Loch Lomond, we didn't get to Loch Lomond until after a very long detour to Loch Katrine, about 20 miles away from Loch Lomond. Everything was closed by the time we got there and we had to let the kids run around at a mall near there to let them run off some energy, but we still felt like we had a successful day of exploration.

SCARED!!!! These roads were very little....and we know little roads

The following are some of our favorite pictures that we captured.

Caerlaverock Castle

This was our last day in Scotland ( I learned from the last time that I should do these in reverse order). Our children are obsessed with castles, if we go on a trip, we have to go to a castle. There is no way around if we want to avoid tantrums. We don't mind, because we end up finding some pretty awesome ones.
First off, we were impressed that this had quite the moat around it. You could tell straight away that it was nothing to be messed with, as it appeared very deep in certain areas. This made me a little nervous, because there were no protective bars or anything of the sort preventing my monkey like children from falling in. Luckily, we survived the trip and it was great fun.
This castle was originally built around 1280 and was a important strategic place of interest for Edward I. After the besiege by Edward I in 1300 the castle remained in English possession until the keeper switched alliances to Robert the Bruce. The triangular shape of the castle structure was a different from any we have seen, which made it all the more fasinating.
Carter is our child who is fascinated with Scotland and likes to learn all these facts about the castles. I don't know which things stick, but at least his interest in history is peeked.
The castle eventually evolved to be a mansion and that is when the intricate stone work was done. That was a surprise to find, and I thought it was beautiful!

That wall that my children are sitting on, about 6 inches from there knees was the edge of the castle and the moat waiting for a swimmer. I was pretty sure that one of my children were going to fall in, and I did not want to follow them. So I had a few mild heart attacks watching them get dangerously close to the edge, but felt good that they felt confident enough in themselves to get that close.

Because we visited the castle on a cold Monday afternoon when school was still in session we had the luck to have the place pretty much all to ourselves. The people that were there left shortly after we got there, and the kids had the run of the place. This made for a perfect afternoon, we had left Glasgow with snow falling and had sun by the time we got to the castle.

Mike and I love this picture of Taylor and Brennan and if only our little fireball Taylor could stay that somber all the time. :) Brennan was sad because we were going in for lunch and he wanted to stay out in the cold, windy weather. So we started to walk away making our point that we needed to go in, Taylor ran over and put her arm around him and started walking to us. We took a couple pictures to remember this moment, and while I was taking the picture Mike leaned over and whispered, "she is going to yell at you when she gets here."

I replied, "yes, I know."

Taylor walked up about 5 feet from me you could visibly see the fire in her eyes light and out came, "What is your problem?!"

Mike and I started laughing, which got us in greater trouble.

Taylor went on and on about how we left Brennan and he was sad and we should have been with him etc... It was a classic moment of Taylorism.