Latest On-goings & a Scottish Thanksgiving

                So we recently went to a Mongolian BBQ for one of our friends (Jon who you may have met at our wedding) who is moving to London for work. As you can see it's quite the experience. Basically you make your own meal with a variety of wacky ingredients, and they provide some recipes you can try (beside me in the picture. The meats are probably the most wacky - if you click on the picture you should be able to read it.




Alyson and I both tried Camel and Wild Boar! Once you choose your meat and other recipes, you put it all together (including spices) in a bowl - like I'm holding - and then give it to the chef. He then cooks the whole bowl on a gigantic hot plate (along with everyone else's).

         We also recently went out to dinner with my family in Perth for my oldest brother Neil's birthday. This managed to successfully coincide with an Aberdeen football match (we're good at making things work like that!). Alyson, Maggie, and my mum went to Tullibody to play with Emma and Michael, while Neil, my dad, and I went to the football then came to Edinburgh. As Alyson may have mentioned, everyone then came to Edinburgh for church the next day. I had the [mis]fortune to be set apart as 2nd cllr in the bishopric in our ward. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.

Last week we also had the opportunity to celebrate thanksgiving with some other Americans in our ward. It was an interesting experience trying to coordinate but worked out alright in the end. There are about 10 Americans in the ward at the moment.

Baxter

My best animal friend in the world passed away today. We will miss him dearly.

love you pup. (6/5/1995 - 17/10/2011)




Baxter moved in with us probably about this time last year. He generally had very good health up until his last year where he had a few bladder infections, and one more serious case where the vet says he had a mini-stroke. They treated him for that and he recovered quite quickly, but warned us that it was likely to recur at some point in the future. Unfortunately on Saturday evening I guess he had a more serious stroke (8 months after the original stroke), and he deteriorated from then on. He was still able to recognise us, but the stroke happened very close to the part of his brain that controls balance and a few other things, so he couldn't even stand up. He was also very nauseous, and dizzy, so he didn't have an appetite, and couldn't keep anything down. The vet told us that because he hadn't improved within the first 48hrs that he was unlikely to get better even with treatment. It was probably the toughest thing that I have ever done in my life to have him put to sleep and to have to say goodbye. Our flat seems very very empty now, and we are struggling to come to terms with not having him to mooch for our food, or to have to go on walkies. I'm sure the pain will dull over time, but I had Baxter for more than half of my life - 13 years (he was 3 when we got him from the shelter). He was there through very trying times and very happy times - a constant companion. We will miss him dearly.

Alyson and I had enjoyed going for family walks with Baxter. We never went too far, he was an old pooch, but he loved to be outdoors and sniff all that there was to sniff, and we loved to take him. He kept us both company when the other was away, or even when we were both at home. He was always happy to see us, and to pay us attention (so that we would also pay him attention). He was truly a part of our little family. There is so much, that although from the outside seems very little, made our lives in some way or another revolve around this beloved dog. He was a great dog, and we were lucky to have him for so long. I look forward to seeing him again.

London

 It would appear that the blog makers (Google?) have decided to update the format to write these blogs, and as such I can upload a lot more photos which is great. I much prefer the new set up.

Anyway! As you can perhaps tell from the photos, we had a recent trip to LONDON! We did quite a lot in a very short period of time. Alyson had never been (not even flown through Gatwick or Heathrow) so we wanted to cover quite a bit. It was mostly sight-seeing and just taking pictures from the outside although we did get the chance to actually go inside a couple of places. My brother Jamie lives in London so he was kind enough to not only let us stay in his flat, but also to show us around. I have only been to London once before actually touristing.

We saw so much stuff, as you can see from the top photo - we actually got the train from Edinburgh to London (Kings Cross). That might be a highlight for any Harry Potter fans. The next photo is Alyson standing next to some odd (I thought it was odd) wall art made entirely out of plants/grass.

 We saw a lot that first day, including Tower Bridge, which is probably one of the more famous London landmarks (not that they are lacking those in London).  I have to admit that I have a very different style of being a tourist compared to Alyson - who can go almost non-stop all day. My legs were pretty knackered after the morning.

 The Millennium bridge (also a Harry Potter feature); the Tate Modern; and St. Paul's Cathedral were also features of our Saturday morning. Jamie also took us to a place called the Borough market which was quite cool. It was basically just an immense expanse of food vendors, and Alyson managed to get a particularly tasty fresh & hot roast pork sandwich for lunch there. They had freshly squeezed lemonade as well. As you can see from this next picture we made a stop off at THE Globe theatre. This was a must for Alyson, and it is kind of cool to think how long this place has been around although I'm not a Shakespeare fan.

Thankfully for me we had planned to go and see a show which meant I would definitely get a chance to rest my legs. Purchasing tickets was actually the first thing we did on the Saturday morning. In London (as I imagine they do in New York as well) they have lots of vendors selling tickets at a discount so we managed to get some cut price tickets for... JERSEY BOYS. I have to say that out of the whole trip it was probably the highlight for me. I really enjoyed the experience.

 In the evening on the Saturday we had the chance to go on the London Eye. It is basically a glorified and giant Ferris wheel, but it's quite cool to be able to see things from on high.

 On Sunday after church we did a bit more exploring (once the rain had subsided) and went to pay a visit to our Monarch. Apparently she had forgotten our appointment and had made other plans in Balmoral. This next picture (although only showing the front portion, it is indeed much much larger) is, as you may recognise, Buckingham Palace. Below are the houses of parliament and "big ben". Apparently big ben is actually only the name of the bell and not the tower/clock.

There are many other pictures but I can only be bothered uploading so many for now. On Sunday we also saw Westminster Abbey and a couple of other things briefly, including the American embassy. It is quite a substantial complex which surprised me.

On Monday we had to leave in the early evening so we really only had time for a couple of things. We decided to go see the 'War Cabinet Rooms'. Basically this is an underground bunker complex, located underneath the Government buildings in London and used by Churchill and his cabinet during WW2. It really was fascinating. We also saw Downing Street (where the Prime Minister resides) and then went off to the British Museum. Safe to say there was plenty to see at the British Museum. Our trip down to London had been rather delayed on the train apparently because of a fire near the railway line, thankfully our trip back was less disrupted. When you add in the time it takes to get to the airport, checking in an hour early, and the time from the airport in to town, taking the train is actually much the same. The train also takes you directly from the centre of Edinburgh to the centre of London. It helped that we had 1st class tickets too, they were on a special deal and actually cost as much if not less than the other fares on offer. All-in-all this was a good trip.

Champion Haggis and the Hot Tub

We had the luxury of going on holiday again with my family to a place called Kinpurnie. It's about 15 miles outside of Dundee (if you decide to Google Map it). The building you can see here is actually divided into 2 cottages (East/West Newbigging) so there were some of us in each house. Thanks to my oldest brother Neil we had his projector set up in one of the living rooms hooked up to an Xbox. The other half-house served as the more social/eating house.

The houses each had a hot tub which was great fun to be able to just go whenever we wanted. I don't know if it was quite as nice as Park City, but that is not quite comparing like for like.

Emma's talking is really coming along leaps and bounds. At 18 months she can already say all of our names and tell us what sounds animals make as well as count to 12. Quite impressive! She had lots of fun singing "5 little monkies" with Alyson, waiting every time to do the "snap" of the alligator. For a full explanation you will just have to ask Alyson. It was great to spend time with my family again.

We made sure to make use of the facilities despite the weather. We did actually get a few sunny days which was nice. We also had the nice surprise of my aunt Sally coming across from California. It was a rather impromptu visit, but great for my mum as not all of our family had managed to make it on the trip.

It was Alyson's first time to Dundee, and we didn't see as much of the city as we might have liked. Anyone who has listened to me for long enough knows that I don't hold too high an opinion of Dundee though (or Glasgow for that matter). We did get to have an all-you-can eat Indian buffet. We also visited the home of Scottish champion haggis (though we have yet to apply our own taste test).

Our next adventure is not too far away. We're headed to visit my brother Jamie in London and that will hopefully have another lively blog entry in store.

SAS Training

So we managed to make good use of yet another groupon. This time it was to play paintball for 3 GBP. Unfortunately the discount is somewhat short-lived as most of the paintball places here don't allow you to bring your own paint. They charge the equivalent of $12 for 100 paintballs.



We purchased a bunch of them since $5 each seemed like such a bargain. We originally had 6 people coming with us, the number dwindled once we realised the cost of paint.

It took us a couple of games to really find our bearings, but we finished on a high in a capture the flag/bridges game. Both Alyson and I managed to take one of the flags (there were only 2) and we were playing with guys who had clearly gone paintballing before.

The bruise above was from one of Alyson's several paintball inflicted welts. She is quite proud of her war wounds.

KELSO

We had a week away with my family this month in "the borders" (the name is self explanatory, but in case you're stumped - this is the region just north of the border between England and Scotland). Interestingly the name only applies north of the border, you wouldn't go south of the border and still call it "the borders".

Above is Martin's birthday cake (it was his birthday cake a week and a half ago). They managed to get a really cool firework for the middle of it. It was some sort of mint chocolate chip ice-cream cake.
The house was quite old, and some of the furnishings were also old, but it had some great facilities including a pool and hot tub similar to Eden's. This is where I could be found most of the time.
We also got to make use of the BBQ and occasionally sit out on the decking. Unfortunately the weather was less than kind to us over the course of the week. Last year at Crispie we had almost nothing but sun, so this year we had to be a bit more creative with our activities. Alyson played a lot of "bananagrams" and we played a few quite competitive games of family Monopoly, as well as 'Articulate' and Trivial Pursuit.
Everyone managed to make it, but Jamie and Roz left very early as Roz has taken a post-doctorate position at the University of Texas. She will be there for the next 2 years, as far as we know Jamie will be back and forth between Texas and London.
Baxter loved the trip as the garden/yard was substantial and closed off which meant he had lots of room and security to roam freely and explore. He also enjoyed being round Emma who always ends up sharing her food with him. He can be quite shy around big groups, but when it's my family he doesn't seem to notice.

The most unfortunate event of the trip was the loss of the Rover. While Alyson was practising her driving with my mum the engine seized due to a radiator leak. This in turn destroyed a gasket and the car was a goner. We have since replaced it with another Mighty Micra (for the sake of reliability and cost...it's significantly cheaper on the insurance, and on petrol). Joe can tell you all about riding in one of those since we took him all the way to Loch Ness and Aberdeen in my last red Micra.

The top car is the same colour, model and age as the Rover. The bottom is the same for our new micra.

1 Year on...

5 minutes from now, Alyson and I will have been married for one year! It's a nutty thought, and yet quite a lot has happened in the past year. We decided that to celebrate we would go somewhere new for dinner, and the "Petit Paris" in the Grassmarket part of Edinburgh got the pick. It was great food for a very reasonable price, and nice to have some French cuisine again. Everyone in the restaurant, that I could tell, was in fact French. We have quite a number of French students come through Edinburgh each year, so presumably that fuels their workforce. It is definitely a restaurant we would consider taking guests to visit.

As we discussed highlights of our 1st year Paris was definitely near the top of the list. We thoroughly enjoyed that trip, and hope to take

more like it this year (circumstances willing). Barcelona has been one possibility, and I'm definitely keen on doing something substantial for my graduation. We have also been lucky to take 2 trips back to the States, as well as a couple of other brief trips elsewhere in Scotland. I think over this next year it will be a priority to see more of Scotland, and add to our own personal guidebook for our visitors.

This particular location will certainly feature (and just happened to be on our walk back to the car). How many of you can say you have a castle at the centre of your city? (No the Salt Lake Temple doesn't count).

This "Oreo cookie bash" was our dessert from Peckhams. I'm not too sure what an American equivalent to Peckhams would be, but they have some great pies and cakes, as well as other random items.

Border Raid!

We had a nice visit to Preston/Leyland/Chorley this weekend. It was actually Alyson's first time 1. Across the border, and 2. in England at all. I hadn't realised that she had never even flown through to Heathrow or Gatwick etc.. It was also her first time to the Preston temple (our local temple, inasmuch as Preston can be defined as local).

It was great to get to do a session, but even just to be back at the temple. Going to Preston is, as you can imagine, a much bigger deal than popping down the I-15 to Bountiful. From Edinburgh it's roughly 4 hours by car, so not exactly something you'd like to do just on a day-trip. From Aberdeen it's almost 7 hours. For me, it brings back many fond memories and positive emotions from my time in youth. We would go down for 5 days during the summer as a youth group. They have a hostel style accommodation centre there for members to stay in. The rooms are relatively nice, and fine enough when all you really use them for is sleeping and changing. We actually stayed with David (who lives 10 minutes away in Leyland). The temple is called the Preston Temple, but it's actually in Chorley - which is south of Preston.

There are several medium to large sized cities near Preston, including Manchester. One of the luxuries of our visit, as you can see, was a trip to Krispy Kremes on the outskirts of Manchester. This is one of the very few "hot light" stores (where they make the doughnuts on site) in the UK. The rumour is that in the next year or 2 they are going to build one in Edinburgh. Unfortunately they had slightly fewer flavours and didn't have the cinnamon ones I like so much, but regular glazed is always good. David was a good sport over the weekend and had set aside most of his time to hang out with us. It was nice to catch up. Deb was unfortunately at a conference over the weekend so we didn't get to see her.

As you cross the border there are several interestingly named villages and towns on the Scottish side such as Ecclefechan (the 'ch' is a hard 'K' sound) and Gretna. Gretna has become quite famous because of its situation just on the border. It is almost right on the border, you could probably walk there from the England.

Time for a short history lesson... Scotland has always had, and still maintains a separate legal system to our English neighbours. We are proud of it north of the border, and strive to maintain the distinction. One of our many differing laws in times gone past was the age of consent for marriage. In Scotland it was, and still is, 16 years old. In England it was at least 18. Many couples would come to the nearest town on the Scottish side of the border to elope to avoid this issue. Gretna was one of the main beneficiaries. It's quite fun to visit and see how they have done it up for the tourists.

Thankfully the weather was fantastic for the whole weekend. The temperature rises gradually the further south you go in the UK. We had some pleasant scenery to enjoy on the drive down.

We also made a quick trip to the "LDS Bookstore" (an English equivalent to Deseret Book, where almost everything is imported in, presumably from Deseret Book). They have exuberant prices, somewhat fueled by import costs, and otherwise fueled by people with fewer options except online shopping here to get mormon culture items. The one thing they normally have that I like to get is A&W Rootbeer, which they also import (no mormon culture reference, but it's one of the only places to buy it!). Unfortunately they were all out when we visited.

David and Deb are currently planning on emigrating back to the US after summer, so we hope to go down again before they leave. It really was nice to take a short trip, and to be back at the temple.

Calton Hill

So last week we had a couple of visitors from Utah - sisters of one of Alyson's roommates in D.C. They had been touring/were about to start touring Europe and had decided to make a trip to Edinburgh. They spent 3 nights with us, and were mostly independent to go about during the day. On the last night they were here we decided to go for a short walk up Calton Hill. This is an image of what it would look like during the day...the rest are our actual pictures. Enjoy!

We will take more of these when we get more immediate family visitors!!!

When can we come back...?

Here she is in front of one of her "must visit" sites when returning to Utah. I'll admit it's not my favourite chocolate in the world, but as far as American chocolate goes, it really is good.

I have several "must visit"(s) in the US, none are particularly exclusive to Utah though I guess. I always like to take a trip to Old Navy. Not overly classy, but they do nice casual and comfortable clothes at a very reasonable price.

That fits all of my requirements. I also have a love affair with Chicken Alfredo at Olive Garden. Carl's Jr, and Krispy Kremes also make the list. The one exclusive to Utah would be Park City. That is one of my favourite places to visit any time we go to Utah. There is just something very satisfying about the scenery and the general ambiance there.

Alyson tells me this is Brody's standard photo pose. I'm quite amused by this, and he's not our only niece/nephew to have adopted a standard pose. If you have access to Martin & Sarah's blog (http://babyblack1.blogspot.com/), you will see that Emma likes to go for an especially toothy grin for all her close-ups.

Here we are at the Alpine Slide ready to let rip. They make a pretty good go at having suitable things to do during the summer up in Park City (in case the scenery wasn't enough already). I still quite fancy going up in the gondola at the Deer Valley resort though and looking around some of the other resorts. I am hoping that at some point in the coming years I will also be able to go skiing for the first time up in PC. I was discussing this a few days ago with Alyson that it's a bit unusual for me to think of Winter actually having decent outdoor activities, and being able to make the most of the cold as well as the heat of summer. We do have ski slopes in Scotland, but no resorts of the size of Park City, or like those in the Alps. There certainly isn't the same kind of all-round leisure experience there that accompanies places like Park City either. I'm excited to give it a bash.

I think another important thing for me on my next trip will also be to have a bit more priority on trying to see old friends in Utah. I haven't really seen anyone outside of Alyson's family the last 2 trips that we've taken, and I feel bad about that since it's not like I'm in their neck of the woods year round. Equally, we would really like some visitors (I won't try to be coy about it!).

This is where we hope and expect to see at least some of you in 2012. I think this picture is taken from the castle (hence why it's not in the picture as you might have been wondering). It really is a great place to visit, and we hope to be showing at least some of you around over the next 12-14 months. It is worth both your time and your money and we're just going to get more insistent the longer you leave it to visit us! I have already suggested to Alyson that we should just threaten to go on a cruise instead of visiting if no-one comes out (the cruise would actually cost less). In all seriousness though, we really hope that we can start planning Scotland 2012 in the very near future with you. (If of course you'd like to come sooner, we won't complain).

P.s. if any of the Bean/Hall family would like more photos, we have quite a few of Brody, and some of Dave at the RSL game. It just takes longer than I'd like to post them up.

The Election & New Job

So safe to say the election went pretty well from the pictures you can see here. To the left we have several of the newly (re-)elected SNP MSPs for the North East of Scotland including the First Minister for Scotland and my Dad. The country is divided into several regions, and then into even smaller representative areas called constituencies. In the North-East region, the SNP took every single constituency. There is a possibility that within 5 years Scotland could no longer be part of the United Kingdom, at least not in the way it is now.

This is my Dad making his acceptance speech after being re-elected with over 50% of the vote.
Here we have Neil and Alyson at the election count.

This is the number of ballots for Dad compared to his closest opponent.

Here we have Alyson and I in our election-best. We even managed to get on national TV! Thanks to the election win there are now over 30 new SNP MSPs. Given Alyson's experience, she was a strong candidate to fill the new vacancies for staff. Sure enough, less than 2 weeks after the election she has now found a new job full-time. As it happens, her former employer also got re-elected which is fantastic.