A few answers....

Remember back in November when I said how excited I was about the present we had bought my husband for Christmas? Only I couldn't share what it was as he reads my blog!

Well, I'd been thinking of getting him one for a while but the price always stopped me, so when I saw it come up half price in the Amazon Black Friday deals I swooped at it!

He's a coffee lover and I'm a tea drinker, and so I had often thought that if he had one of these he could make himself a wee cup of coffee when he wanted to rather than a whole pot.

It's a Tassimo machine.

What I didn't know when I bought it though, was that it makes the most perfect hot chocolate! 

It's so simple to use that James will often come through to me and ask, 'Mum, would you like a hot chocolate?' 

In actual fact, the hot chocolate is so much loved by James and David (and I suppose I should include myself here too), that I have almost had to start rationing how many a person can have each day!

Oh, and my husband loves it too! He has quite the assortment of different coffee discs in at the moment until he samples them all and decides on a favourite. Carte Noir is proving to be a tough contender to beat.

Moving on.

Another thing you might remember from November is this drawing by Calum.

He entered it into a Christmas Card competition run by a business near the school. 

Well, he didn't win, but he was a runner up - yay! His prize was a pretty decent amount of money to spend in an independent Art Shop.

That Art Shop just so happens to be right next door to the place of my final answer - Greyfriars Kirk.

Wasn't that rather cleverly done!?

This lovely old church was where the Primary school Carol Service was held and the other day I asked if anyone knew why it was famous.

If you were to ask most people they would probably say because of this little fellow, Greyfriars Bobby.

The story goes that he was so devoted to his owner that when the owner died, the little dog then spent the rest of his own life sitting on his owners grave. Sceptics suggest that the little dog only did so because a butcher from beside the Kirk Graveyard fed him sausages, but I would rather believe the first story.

I'm pretty sure I remember watching a movie about it not all that long ago (so I'm talking maybe 10 years or so here). I also remember being so annoyed watching it as the actors in it had really badly acted Scottish accents! Thankfully the film industry has got a bit better recently and at least uses Scottish actors in Scottish films, ie Brave.

The other reason the Kirk is famous is that during the time of the Covenanters many of them were imprisoned in the graveyard. For those who don't know, the Covenanters were those who stood against the attempts by the King in the 1600s to bring Anglicanism into the Scottish Presbyterian Churches. (I see a whole other history lesson coming from this!)

A tomb in the church graveyard is also said to have given J K Rowling the name of one of her characters, although I can't remember what the name was. It was Lord Voldemort before he became Lord Voldemort, if that means anything to anyone!

Right, I think that is all the cliffhangers completed!

Tweet

Hogmanay traditions (and some fresh air too!)

My husband's sister is a great walker. Most Saturdays she can be found out on a hill somewhere, accompanied by her trusty collie dog, Cuilean (coo-lan).

So on Boxing Day, still rather full from our feast the day before, she suggested a walk around the reservoir in the Pentland hills. I stayed back at her house with Alasdair who still wasn't feeling 100%, and also kept my mother in law, whose arthritis was bothering her a bit, company.

The other boys had a blast!

Auntie Anna had us all out in the fresh air again on New Years Day. This time we were staying through at my in-laws house, where we almost always go to see in the new year.

Traditionally in Scotland, Hogmanay (New Year's Eve) and New Year's Day were a much bigger thing than Christmas was. My father in law's generation wouldn't have made quite the fuss over Christmas that we do now. That's not to say that he doesn't enjoy Christmas!

We Scots are rightfully proud of our old traditions though, and the celebration of Hogmanay and many of it's traditions are still going strong.

A traditional Hogmanay celebration would have had families gathering together for a ceilidh (kay-lee). Not in the sense that people talk about a ceilidh nowadays, an organised ceilidh dance with a dance band, but in a more informal sense. (Ceilidh is the Gaelic for visit.) There would be stories and music, unscripted. 

In keeping with this, Calum brought his accordion to granny & grandad's house to entertain us.

The boys all managed to stay up until 'the bells' and clinked their juice glasses along with everyone else's as we listened to the piper pipe in the new year on the TV.

Alasdair is actually awake here, he just has his eyes closed in this photo!

I don't know if it is a tradition anywhere else but 'first footing' is a Scottish New Year tradition. I'm sure plenty people still do it. We certainly did until we had the practicalities of young children to factor in!

First footing is the visiting of friends and neighbours immediately after the New Year has been rung in. Right after midnight. In the past it was considered good fortune to bring a piece of coal for the fire, signifying the hope that the fires would never go out. On the mainland it was also considered good fortune if the first person across your door step in the New Year was male, dark and handsome!

However, in the islands the tradition was that it was good fortune for the youngest members of the family to enter the house first.

And so onto the New Year's Day walk, which has become something of a tradition in our family. The walk takes place before the big celebratory dinner. 

That's another Scottish tradition. New Year's Day dinner should be steak pie followed by trifle.

Cuilean had a great time chasing balls thrown by various boys.

Despite the mud!

Our walk ended at the beautiful big duck pond, where we stopped to watch a man sailing a model boat he had built himself.

 But before anyone could have dinner, poor Cuilean was in need of a bath and Calum was only to happy to help.

 

Then he was nice and fresh, ready to join everyone else for dinner and cuddles.

Did I mention how much Calum loves Cuilean? 

Tweet

Christmas

Hellooo and welcome back! 

If you have popped over during the holidays you will have noticed that I took a wee break over the last couple of weeks but it's good to be back now!

So, how about a look at our Christmas?

Like I said in my last post, the week or two before Christmas were a bit crazy with special things on. There were parties, pantos and Carol Concerts. 

The primary school had their rather lovely Carol service in the famous Greyfriars Kirk.

Now, a spot of trivia for you, does anyone (not Scottish!) know why the kirk is famous? Actually there are two reasons, but here is a clue to one of them.

The high school concert took place in Edinburgh's Usher Hall, a quite grand setting for a fabulous concert. 

The day before the big concert, James (who was singing in it with both the Gaelic and the English choirs) tripped on his way up to school and landed face first on the pavement, almost breaking his nose and cutting all of his mouth on his braces! He had a lovely swollen, bruised nose and black eye for the concert!

My mum had come down for a week and she was able to come along and see all the boys in their various concerts. We just had to go for afternoon tea on one of the days she was down :0)

I do love all the run up to Christmas as much as the actual day itself. Although it can be quite exhausting.

 In a way, my favourite day of all is Christmas Eve. It's so full of anticipation!

On Christmas Eve we get most of our food prep done so that I don't need to spend all of Christmas Day in the kitchen.

Every year we have chocolate log as one of our Christmas Day desserts. (Recipe here.) Calum made a little robin out of sugarpaste to decorate it.

James once again took on the task of decorating the Christmas Cake. His little family of penguins seem to be the penguin version of ours. Even complete with a little rascal splatting one of his brothers with a snowball!

For a couple of days before Christmas little Alasdair hadn't been so well, with a temperature, cough and runny nose. He was excited to open up all the presents but he didn't really play with them properly until a couple of days later. Since he wasn't feeling great, he spent most of the day clinging to me so I don't have as many photos of the present opening as I would usually have.

This was my main present from my beloved. Doesn't he have great taste? The boys all claim to have had a hand in choosing it too.

One of my favourite parts of Christmas Day is, of course, the food!

I made a smoked salmon pate for starter, which we ate with various oatcakes and crackers.

It wouldn't have been Christmas without the turkey, now would it?

Accompanied by (gluten free) sausagemeat & apple stuffing balls, (gluten free) chipolata sausages...

.....potatoes roasted in goose fat (a la Nigella)...

...as well as various winter veggies, gravy, cranberry sauce and bread sauce.

We ate well, and we were thankful for much.

Post-Christmas Dinner we tend to play games like charades and have some silly fun.

This is our group photo, my parents in law, sister in law and all of us.

So there we have it. A rather lengthy post, but then I have been offline for over two weeks, and I still haven't started on how we celebrated Hogmanay!

Tweet