Recycled Gang Hut

The last few weeks there have been some renovation works going on at my dad's church.

Yesterday, when the boys and daddy saw the bits of wood ready for the skip, they came up with a plan to re-use some of them.

So, after breakfast this morning, they headed over to the church to pick up a few bits and pieces.

They knew exactly what they wanted to build - a gang hut/den/fort.

Shen (my dad) was only to keen to help them out too, as he took delivery of a brand new circular saw at the end of last week, so it was a good excuse to give it a good test!

(there was more wood than in this picture!)

The boys had a great time hammering in the nails.

Although, of course they had to stop for ice-lollies and leave daddy to do some of the hard work!

David was given the responsibility of drawing the flag.

He drew a Scotland flag, with the blue and white bits mixed up, but that just added to the charm.

Some of the recycled wood came from old pews......

........an old door from the house (dad just put new ones in the house last week)....

......and the roof was made from an old carpet they found in the barn!

The finished den has a little slot for keeping away the baddies......

.........and even a comfy chair for the gang leader (also found in the barn - Shen's old one from his study)

I'm not sure where this super stylish part here came from, but I'm pretty sure it's been a few decades since this pattern was fashionable!

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Things I'm loving...

Late again with this week's Things I'm Loving, but we're still away on holiday and in holiday mode!

This week we've been loving beaches and more beaches!

We might not get the scorching temperatures up here that you can get over-seas, but you do have access to plenty beautiful unspoilt beaches, and you tend to get them all to yourself too!

And let's face it, being married to a red-head means that hot sunny holiday locations are far from ideal!

Whenever we visit a beach the boys always dig a big hole.

It's a boy thing, I think.

This has now developed into building a big trench that you could use to defend the beach in the case of another D-Day-type landing attack! Not that I imagine the Outer Hebrides will be high on the invasion list, but it's good to be prepared nonetheless! :0)

Meanwhile, I was down at the sea enjoying the waves.

Of course, every good defensive position needs to be tested out, so here come a couple of attackers....

I'm pleased to report that no-one was injured in the Battle of Dal Beag, and that the defensive position held very well!

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Weekend Fun

There was quite a choice of things to do on the island on Saturday.

Firstly, the tall ships were in town.

We had already been up close to see them the day before, but on Saturday I took this photo of them from the town centre.

There was also a Celtic Music festival on last week, and as part of this, there was an inter-island shinty match between Lewis and Uist.

We popped along to watch some of the match, which was won 3-2 by Lewis. Yay!

After this we went along to the Highland Games.

One of the highlights of this is the strong man competition, which included the stereotypical Caber Tossing.

First challenge, is to get the caber off the ground. They actually made this look pretty easy!

Then they have a wee run before throwing the caber. The aim is to get the caber to flip right over.

This one hasn't quite managed to flip it, so he get's no points.

Now it's someone else's go. 

He had more success, you can see the caber falling the opposite way.

Any willing children were invited into the ring to take part in a tug of war.

First the bigger ones. James is second from the right in the red top.

Then the smaller ones. Our Mr Competitive, David, is at the front.

Calum was in the opposing team, making him even more competitive!

That evening, after dinner, we were having a hit around with the shinty sticks. David was obviously thinking of his day at the Highland Games as he then turned his shinty stick round, held it like a caber and said, 'Look, I'm one of the strong men,'

before then throwing it up in the air like a caber!

Soon they were all joining in, in the evening sunshine.

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Afternoon Tea with friends

Tonight's post was going to be about the Highland Games we attended at the weekend.

However, since I can't get use of my dad's laptop just now, my mum's doesn't recognise my camera memory card, and my husband's doesn't even have a space for the memory card, then that post will have to wait!!

Instead I'll just share these photos of the treats we had this afternoon when friends came round.

(And how did I get these photos uploaded? I took them on my phone and uploaded them directly to Picassa. Just in case you were wondering!)

Calum's best friend's dad comes from the island too, and their family are up here on holiday just now as well. We did kind of co-ordinate our holidays so that we would at least overlap for a little while here and the boys could get together, even though they see each other every day at school!

Last week we were at the beach together.Today wasn't so much beach weather so they came over to the house here. Our bigger boys, Calum's friend and his brother, and both the daddies spent a good part of the afternoon out on the croft playing football. The mummies stayed indoors with Alasdair and Calum's friend's three month old baby brother (Yes, they have all boys too. Something in the water where we live).

Then when the daddies were equally exhausted they all came indoors.

The boys went off to play a Knights Battle game while the adults had tea, coffee, some of these scones:

and a wee slice of this:

Then all too soon the afternoon was over and it was time for them to leave.

I hear rumours of another meet up at the swimming pool tomorrow though!

OH, and best of all, as you will have guessed from the references to him, daddy arrived to join us on our holiday on the evening ferry last night :0)

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Baba's Bag

Before we came away on holiday, Alasdair got a new bag.

A super-cute boy needs a super-cute bag. He chose this 'Timmy Time' one himself.

Inside it we packed a few essentials to pass some of the time on the ferry journey for him.

He chose these himself too.

There was 'Maka-Paka'.

His favourite books.



And a couple of cars.

We also had to take his trusty Thomas trains but they have their own case and were far too big to fit in his wee bag.

One contented little Baba.

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