A Scottish Adventure

In 1987, when I was just 14-years-old, our family took a trip to Europe.  It was the oldest five of us kids, two friends, and my parents.  We didn't have a lot of money, but my Dad traveled a lot for work and saved his frequent flier miles for a long time  to make that trip happen.  It was frankly a somewhat miserable trip with long days crowded into a utilitarian van traipsing and tent-camping all over Europe, which was having one of the rainiest summers in European history.   But, it was during that trip that our eyes were open to a wider world than we ever had known before and I think I can say, without any hyperbole whatsoever, that  that trip literally changed all of our lives.   And my Dad knew that it would.   

I married someone who came from a family who pretty much never traveled, except for the occasional roadtrip to the family cabin in Idaho or for a beach trip out East (where both of his parents had grown up and still had a lot of family living out that way), but plane rides were not a thing.  Frankly, they weren't much of a thing in my upbringing either;  except for that one international trip, we always road-tripped wherever we were going.  And when our kids were young, we were the same,  zig-zagging all over the country in the car to visit family and explore new destinations on our annual summer vacation.  We always talked about taking an international trip with our kids, but always had a good excuse as to why it couldn't happen... we were too busy, travel was too expensive, the kids were too young, and on and on.   

Then Spencer got sick.   That sounds unrelated to all this, but it wasn't.   Spencer's leukemia was absolutely earth shattering to us and we came out of that time of our lives as fundamentally different people.   There's nothing like being told that your 16-year-old kid has a less than 50% chance of survival to help you realize that waiting for some elusive future perfect day to do something is a risky proposition.   If we wanted our kids to have certain experiences, we needed to stop putting them off and make them happen.    I consider his illness as the impetus for 1. homeschooling the kids, 2. finally remodeling our 1960's kitchen, 3. starting to travel internationally with our family.   Yes, we still had the same budget and time restraints that we'd had before, but we realized that we didn't want to look back with regrets and it was worth the sacrifice and belt-tightening it took to make these things happen.    

Since then, we've made travel a regular part of our lives.   Once again, this prioritization of travel does not come without sacrifice.  We still have to budget and cut back on other expenses to make this happen, but we have decided that the memories and exposure to other cultures that we gain in the process is worth that expense.  

So, all this introductory information is to bring me to this post about the trip we just returned from.   Glen served his mission in England and we'd always wanted to explore the rest of the British Isles (namely Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland), but had never done it before.  We'd been watching for good ticket prices to pop up for this route for forever and finally several weeks ago, a good deal popped up for the end of February and we jumped on it!   We were a little hesitant about traveling in the wintertime, but it was honestly great to be out of the crowds of the high season and I felt like we got better prices on tours and hotels this time of year as well. 

We flew into Edinburgh, Scotland (my 39th country)...

And then  walked straight out of the airport and hopped on a bus to Glasgow, where we stayed the night.   After checking into our hotel and  dropping off our luggage, we decided to explore Glasgow for a few hours.  Here are some random scenes from around Glasgow.   

We basically walked from our centrally located hotel (Motel One) up to the Glasgow Cathedral and Necropolis by walking along this Street Art Mural Trail that we found online.   We only had a few hours of daylight, so we didn’t hit them all, but saw enough that we got a good flavor of the art and style!

The area around the Glasgow Cathedral had more of the cute European vibe to it than the sections of the city we had walked through, so I was enchanted.   The cathedral was not open for visitors at the time, so we just walked around for a bit.  

But what I was most enchanted by in Glasgow was the cemetery behind the Glasgow Cathedral—called the Necropolis.   It was lovely to see from afar and even lovelier to see while walking around!  WE enjoyed the views from atop the hill and loved looking at the old headstones.   

After exploring, we headed to dinner where I was excited to hear the restaurant offered free tap water to drink.  While commonplace in the USA, in Europe, we usually pay outrageously for bottled water in restaurants, unless we happened to have refilled our water bottles recently.  

We only laughed a little when the water came out to us in tequila bottles!   haha!  We were so thirsty by this point, that we didn’t care about appearances and guzzled three of them!    Other than the free water, the Mexican restaurant we picked was a bust.  Their food was too spicy and not that great, even beyond the spiciness level.   

We woke up early the next morning and took the West Highland train from Glasgow to Fort William.  That particular train route into the Scottish Highlands is supposed to be one of the most scenic train routes in the world and we were a little sad that it was  rainy on the first part of our journey.  We still got a good enough glimpse to realize that it was stunningly gorgeous, but it was hard to capture it in photos.  

We stored our luggage and walked around Fort William...

And we laughed that the towns in the Scottish Highlands lie on a geologic fault called the Great Glen Fault, which meant that there were references to the Great Glen all over the place!  Glen, of course, loved that and  posed for a few goofy photos!  

After a few hours of walking around Fort William, we caught an evening bus to Inverness, where we spent the night.  The next morning we joined a tour and visited  Eilean Donan Castle...

Looked for Nessie along the shores of Loch Ness...

Saw lots of Highland cows and gorgeous scenery...

And went out to the Isle of Skye.   

The Scottish Highlands surpassed our expectations and I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance. 

After our tour, we stayed one more night in Inverness and then took the bus back to Edinburgh where we stayed for a couple days.   Here are some sights from around Edinburgh... Greyfriar's Abbey and Victoria Street were two iconic Scottish places to visit and we loved the bagpipers that set up all over town.  JK Rowling wrote her Harry Potter books while living in Edinburgh and many people think that Diagon Alley is based on Victoria Street (the brightly colored shops below)...

We visited the Scotland National Gallery of Art.  Here are a few of the pics we admired or that made us laugh a bit!  

We visited the Botanic Gardens and just enjoyed the old and stunning architecture around town...The statue of the dog is Greyfriar's Bobby (found at the Greyfriar's Abbey) and has a sweet story to go with it. 

All in all, we loved Scotland.   Glasgow was okay, but we really enjoyed the Highlands and Edinburgh.  

It was a fabulous first leg to our journey.   Stay tuned for more....

Seventy Four

There's a certain member of our family that happens to love the number 74.  

I'm not really sure how it all got started, since, to my knowledge, the number has no significant meaning to anyone.  It's not anyone's birth year; it's not in anyone's phone number; it's not a channel they watch; and it's not a favorite scripture verse.  It's just 74 and that's enough.

Part of the appeal of this number  is the way it sounds when spoken aloud.   It's four syllables that just flow.  And "Seventy-four" cannot be spoken in a normal tone of voice, but must be spoken with a hint of  an accent (don't ask me which one though) and with a nasally tone. Actually that's not entirely true. Most of us just say seventy-four plainly, but just enjoy hearing Person X pronounce it with drama and flair.  As such, it is now a family mission to find  74 "in the wild" just so we can point it out and hear our family member say it in their dramatic fashion!   Over the last few years it's become a quest and a joke in our family...like when a member of our family sings Hymn #74 at church and has to share it.

So....the other Saturday, Glen and I went for a walk along the Murdoch Trail.   It was cold, but lovely until the very end when it started snowing/raining on us.

When we got towards the end of our walk we realized that we were approaching the 7 mile mark, so we decided to go a little longer to get to 7.4....you know just so we could join the family fun!   It's not quite 74, but we didn't feel like walking for 3 days, so close enough! 

Then we took a selfie to send out on the family group chat...

Except that we are old people who forgot that taking selfies with a flipped camera means the image is flipped too, so this is what our original photo looked like before we flipped it manually.   Oops...47 is not what we meant.  Haha! 

So, in an effort to be cool with the kids, we exposed ourselves as the nerds we are.  

Seventy four. 

Have a great week!


PS  Just found this photo in Ellie's missionary google photo drive...

Hockey: The Next Generation

Glen and I came from fairly different family backgrounds, but one thing that was similar in both of our families was our Dads' extreme love of sports.   I grew up with the tv on a good portion of the day, mostly  tuned either to the news or to sports.  You knew how my Dad's teams were doing from across the house, based on the type of utterances being yelled out.   My brothers are also big sports' fans who can quote stats, tell you how all their teams are doing, and tell you all about the collectible baseball/basketball cards that they have or once had and how much they might be worth, etc.   Us sisters in the family can hold our own in conversations about sports, generally knowing the rules and how they work, but none of us are quite as avidly interested as my brothers.  

Glen, however, is one of five boys, with just one sister, so the sports' obsession in their house was next-level.  One of his brothers is a PE teacher and HS football & lacrosse coach, another played college lacrosse and coached lacrosse for his boys, Glen played college lacrosse, another brother is a sportswriter for a local newspaper, and his sister was a collegiate gymnast and is now married to a PE teacher and coach.   All are avid sports' fans.  And if you want to talk to his Dad, be prepared for the conversation to turn to sports within a couple minutes, no matter the starting topic.   It was definitely  an important part of both of our upbringings.  
 
The next generation (our kids at least) have a somewhat low interest in sports compared to the families we both grew up in.  They all played sports as kids/teens, but none of them really took them super seriously.   Cami did play a year of lacrosse at BYU and Adam likely would have tried for the BYU rugby team if his junior and senior high school seasons hadn't been decimated by COVID cancellations, but mostly our kids'  involvement in sports was just a fun way to interact with friends, be part of a team, and push themselves physically.  Neither Glen or I are the type to push and they didn't push it on their own, so it was what it was.   Our boys do have their sports' teams they follow and cheer for, and all of us (including the girls) can appreciate a good BYU game here and there, but it's not a huge part of any of our  lives.  

The one professional sport that is the exception, however, is hockey and Glen was as excited as can be when Utah announced that a professional hockey team was coming to Salt Lake City!      Glen had 1/2 season tickets to the Caps back when we lived in Northern Virginia, so was enthusiastic when his brother, Alex, offered to go in halfsies with him on 1/2 season tickets for the inaugural season of the Utah Hockey Club! For only having tickets for 1/4 of the home games, it's shocking how frequently the games pop up and it's become quite a fun way to have some one-on-one time with each of the kids. 

He took Ellie before she left on her mission:

He took Emma one time...

 

He's taken Adam and Spence separately a few times,

and bought an extra ticket for the game against the Caps, so they could all cheer on their Caps together! 

He's bonded with a family in the ward over their shared love of hockey.  Connor (one of the boys we taught in Sunday School a couple years ago) even brought him a Utah Hockey Club sweatshirt his Mom had made for him! 

 
This picture was taken in Colorado, but I thought it was awesome that Glen took his brother to an Avalanche vs. Caps game for his birthday! 

I smile that they always end up stopping for somewhere fun for dinner on the way to the game and always end up coming home with some new Utah Hockey Club gear....which will be dated as soon as they decide on a real name for the team!  😂

 

 

Next game it's my turn!   

Have a lovely week and may all your teams win big! 

The B Date with My Boy

In this blogpost, I mentioned how Glen and I were starting an alphabet dating challenge.  Starting with the letter 'A' we are making our way through the alphabet, one letter - one month at a time, alternating who plans it.  Why?  Because we've been married 31 years and we were looking to mix things up and add a little direction and fun to our dating life.   

Glen planned January, so it was my turn to plan 'B' for February.   I knew pretty quickly what the anchor of our 'B' date would be (I'll get to that in a minute), so the rest of the activities were planned around that anchor's location and timing. 

We started our date at the BYU Bean Museum, where Emma met us for a few minutes to let me borrow something for our upcoming trip.  

We walked around and took special note and pictures of some of the B exhibits in the Bean Museum!   I was happy to have found a Beaver there and Glen took special delight in the Baboons, because he'd joked on the way to our date (of which I'd told him nothing about) that maybe we were going to see the Baboons!  

Emma was only there with us for about 10-15 minutes, but we had to take her to the exhibit that scarred her as a small child.    I'm not sure she liked it much more as a college student as she had as an elementary aged child.  

After the Museum, we headed to the Bombay House for some delicious Indian food! 

Then we headed to try out the dedicated gluten free doughnut shop...Bismarck!  They made everything hot and fresh and we quite enjoyed it!

After indulging in the doughnuts, we headed to the anchor part of our date....to see  Bella perform in the BYU Ballet!  

 

Bella (a friend of ours from Virginia) is a Brilliant Ballerina and we always enjoy watching her perform.  She is amazingly graceful and makes it all look so effortless.  

All in all, it was a Beautiful night and a fun way to try out all the B things! 

Have a Bodaciously Breathtaking Week! 

Scenes from this Winter

Most of you probably know that I grew up in Minnesota, which you would think would make me a bit more tolerant to the cold than I am.  Instead I would say that my growing up years in Minnesota might have made me a little more jaded against the cold than I otherwise would be and I strongly prefer to be hot over cold (except when I'm sleeping, but that's a story for another day. haha)  It's not that I hate winter, because I don't.   It's just that I happen to like winters with a little more variety to them than just cold and snowy...like Utah's tend to be.  I am grateful that it does not get near as cold here in Utah, as it does in Minnesota, but it's not the ups and the downs in the temps like in Virginia, that gives you  plenty of mild days mixed in with the cold.   

Enough complaining from me!  I'm trying hard  to focus on the positive, so here is a glimpse of some of the lovely scenes from our winter this year:  

This photo was taken on the way home from the dentist a couple weeks ago.  It had nary snowed a drop when I walked in for my cleaning and looked like this when I walked out.   It was long, white-knuckled trip back home and I was grateful that there was little traffic. 

 

I found this cute scene from BYU campus in our camera roll after a recent snowstorm, which means it was taken by Emma or Adam. The beard made me laugh!  😂

Here's an icy sight that caught my eye recently when I was taking my Mom to visit with her sister...

Glen and I came across this sunrise on one of our morning walks recently!  😍

And here's another one from another morning hike...  I love Utah sunrises!

Even the Alabamans got a good snowfall this year and enjoyed getting out and  playing in it!

Adam recently got out into the canyon with his friends and had a snowy adventure of his own...

As I sit here typing up this blogpost (on Feb 13th) with this view out my window...

I am drawn to this postcard I recently received in the mail that reminds me that winter is a great time to slow down and prioritize self-care...

Which I'm pretty sure means staying in my sweats as often as possible, right?!  

Have a lovely week!  Stay warm, my friends!  💗

Valentine's Day and a Bit of Randomness

 The older I've gotten, the less I like social media.   I always have had a bit of a love-hate relationship with it, but the pendulum is swinging far more towards the hate side lately.   As long as I have missionaries who use it as their main communication tool, I will stay on it, but I've been trying to keep it more at arm's length lately.   It's partially because of how easily it can morph into a time-suck, but also mostly because I just don't feel all that fulfilled looking at it.  The politics on there drives me bonkers and I think that both my Instagram and Facebook feeds are filled with the same 30 or so people who post frequently and a whole bunch of stuff they throw into my algorithm to suck me in.  

Blah, blah, blah...I could go on and on. 

But  I can't really remember why I started pontificating on social media in the first place. I guess it's where my brain went when I sat down to write and I just did, but I can't quite think of the direction I was going with it. Perhaps it's to remind myself why I like blogging so much.   And I do.   After nearly 18 years of it, I still find that it's a far more satisfying outlet to me than Facebook or Instagram ever could be.  I really, really enjoy the opportunity to share photos and stories together and it's a record of our very average lives.  And that's the way I like it. 

Yeah, that must be why I started talking about social media...so I could say  Blogs > Facebook...and it's not even close.

And now onto the main purpose for this blogpost today...

Today, I am sharing about our Valentine's Day.    We are pretty low-key when it comes to holidays around here and this one's no different, but deserves to be remembered anyway, so here I am.  

First off, I was very excited to find these raspberries at the store the week of V-day!  I really, really love raspberries.  Like if I run out of fresh raspberries, I always have some in my freezer that I pull out and enjoy almost as much.  I literally eat them almost every day  (unless I'm traveling and don't have access) and so seeing this heart-shaped container at the store made me unreasonably happy.  How much cuter can you get than my favorite food in a heart shaped container?!  

And what's a  holiday without me sending a few seasonal postcards to my favorite peeps?! These postcards were designed and printed by my postcard friends, Kelly and Alison, and I thought they were stinking adorable! 

OH, and I guess this Valentine's Day wasn't quite as boring as usual.   We actually had a date with friends and went to a dinner/dance at Thanksgiving Point.  

I say "with friends", but I should clarify that they are actually my sister, Kristina's, friends, not mine.  We have become friends with the C family (who invited us), but it was the first time we'd met the other two couples, who had all recently moved to Utah from California.   They both instantly knew I was related to Kristina (since our Crain genes run strong), but it was more of a get-to-know you activity for us. 

 

Luckily, they are delightful and I would say that we are now beginning to be friends with them as well.  I didn't take photos of the food, but the food was all delicious and gluten free (for me).  

It was a bit crowded and the live band was WAY too loud for my taste...

But it was a fun night with some great conversations, yummy food, and dancing with my Hunny!   All in all, a fun way to spend V-day!

And in the spirit of the randomness of this post, I'll finish off with a recent meal I made.  It wasn't ON Valentine's Day, but it was close to Valentine's Day and it took me all afternoon to make, so it was definitely a LABOR OF LOVE.  That counts, right?!

It was Mediterranean Bowls, with roasted cauliflower, marinated chicken, pickled onions, kalamata olives, fresh cucumbers, toasted garbanzo beans, feta cheese, sundried tomatoes, and HOMEMADE hummus.   I was particularly proud of the hummus, which I made from dried beans and some gourmet tahini.  It was all epically delicious and I made sure that Glen knew how much to appreciate it.  😁  

You want some now too, right?   I'm on it!   Just call me when you come to town and make an official request and we will enjoy it together! 

Thanks for reading through my randomness today!  Hope you have a lovely week!  💗

Sweet Home Alabama Love

I've recently returned home from visiting some of my favorite people in the universe!   

Right now they happen to live in Alabama, but they'll be moving to Rhode Island this summer for G's hem-onc fellowship, which will mean my regular easterly treks will take a northward turn later this year.   

This trip was filled with "Princess Lucie" stories which Lucie  requests several times a day and has a whole host of stipulations she wants included--like bad guys, a mean witch who messes up her room, Rapunzel, Flynn Ryder, and a giant cake.   I'll be honest, my stories were getting pretty ridiculous there at the end, but she didn't seem to mind too much.  😂 As mentioned in my previous post, this trip also included little Ollie's first birthday, so that was a fun thing to be a part of!     Both Lucie and Oliver are sweetie pies and I loved the chance I had to love on them while I was there.  

Another fun part of this trip, included visiting a collegiate track meet that UAB was hosting and my nephew, Andrew, was participating in as a shot-put thrower.  He attends the University of Louisiana-Monroe and this was his first time competing collegiately and his first time competing indoors.  He didn't end up performing as well as he'd hoped, but he performed solidly in the middle of the pack, so not bad at all for his first time!   Afterward, we took him out for lunch at T-Bones, a taste of Philadelphia right there in Birmingham!    It was his first time meeting Lucie and Oliver and the first time I'd seen him in about a year. 

I truly enjoy my visits with the B crew and I'm already looking forward to my next visit coming up in May...most likely my last visit to Alabama in quite a while! 

💗 Have a lovely Valentine's Day! 💗