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.