Christmas is Coming

The house all lit up

At the weekend it was time to open the boxes of Christmas decorations and to set about making the house looking festive.  We have miles of exterior lights so next year we may really go for it.  It took most of the day to put up the exterior lights and Hannah and Rayna were a real help holding the ladder when needed.

The tree inside

Inside the house the brand new Christmas tree take pride of place next to the window.  the kids had great fun decorating.  Tyler was especially happy, when he ran out of ornaments he went on to use some of his toys under the tree.  First of all his cars then planes then finally they were joined by Buzz Lightyear and Woody.  They looked so good we decided to keep them there.  We also were able to add the decoration we bought in Scotland last year.  

Tyler adds his own ornaments under the tree

Just a few more weeks of school and we're all set for Santa to come calling!  Although if Tyler had his way he'd eat all of the chocolates in his advent calender to make it come quicker.

Our family ornament

Central Christmas Parade

Getting ready for the parade to pass

 So its the time of year for the Central Christmas parade.  This year we met up with Chelsea and Josh with Braydon.  Tyler was with his dad for the weekend (much to Braydons disgust).

It's not Christmas till you've seen the Coca-Cola truck

 As always much candy was thrown and caught as well as several nice toys, that the kids managed to get.  As an added bonus Chelsea decided to treat us all with some of her latest dance moves (watch the video) ;0)

 

Cheering for beads / candy

Trick or Treat

All dressed and ready to trick or treat

Haloween night is a much bigger event over here in the States than it is in England.  Many of the houses make a great effort and decorate and all the children go door to door collecting candy (sweets).

In the picture above you can see this year Hannah wore her Zebra costume, Rayna was a fairy and Tyler was a Ninja.

As you can see in the video Dawn probably got the biggest scare of the evening.  Everyone had great fun and the kids now have enough candy to last the whole year. 

Homecoming Week

The Door to Dawns Classroom

Dawn as the fairy godmother

Last week was "homecoming week" at the school Dawn teaches at (Central High).  Homecoming is a celebration of the football team and includes a day of festivities, which included various displays in the school gymn then a parade around the school on floats (made by the students) and finally ending in a football game.


This year the classes were tasked with decorating their classroom doors in a theme.  Dawns theme was Disney and she and her class set about creating their own version of Disneylands entrance.  All of trhe students faces were photoshopped onto a Disney character and added to the door causing much hilarity throughout the school.  

As you can see Dawn was characterised as the fairy god mother from Cinderella.

The football game was a real close game with Central really struggling in the first half.  The second half they found their way and just managed to come away with the win in the dieing seconds.

One of the floats to celebrate homecoming

School Trip to Port Hudson

Hannah, Rayna and some of their friends

Last week, Hannah and Raynas school took a visit to Port Hudson where they were taught all about life in Louisiana during the civil war.  It was an open day so Martin went along and enjoyed learning all about the historic site.

There was much to see but the most popular part was probably watching the big cannons being fired. 

 


 

Getting ready to play town ball

Watching the blacksmith work

Some of the children learn about the medical treatments on the battlefield

Learning about the rifle

Eating lunch at the end of the day

A Visit from Hurricane Isaac

Hannah and Tyler maker their own entertainment

 One of the drawbacks of living in a really hot state located near the sea is the threat in the summer of Hurricanes.  This year we were visited by Hurricane Isaac.  As hurricanes go this was a reasonably light one, although it stretched out to cover 400 miles across.  The problem with Isaac was it was very slow moving so when it came with its winds of upt to 100mph and its torrential rain it stuck around for the best part of two days battering the towns nearest the coast..

We're lucky that we live far enough away from the coast that by the time it reached us it had lost a lot of its power, eventually being downgraded to a tropical storm.

 

Our house - you can see next doors gate on our drive

 We lost power for about 4 hours which again isn't bad as some who lost it for days but those 4 hours were long enough with Tyler continually asking for us to turn on the TV and asking why we couldn't cook food.  

As you can see from the video above taken this morning we were lucky that Isaac eventually moved on, much longer and we could have been flooded. The ditch out the back is about 5 foot deep and 7 foot wide so you can imagine how much water it's holding.    I think some of our neighbours across the street may not have been so lucky.

Thanks for all the facebook messages and rest assured we are all safe and well.

UPDATE

After promising he wouldn't get wet we let Tyler outside.

Hmmm he needs some work on keeping his word ......

Back to School

Dawn, Hannah, Rayna and Tyler all ready for the first day back at school

Well, after an amazing fun packed summer filled with such excitement and fun it was time to return to normality.  After a tearful farewell at the airport saying goodbye Nan, Grandad and Kelly at the start of the week all thoughts were now on starting the school year.

It was especially exciting for everyone as the girls moved to a brand new school and Tyler now has to wear uniform and travels to school on the bus.

Tyler gets off this bus on day 1 (still wearing shoes!)

 The first day seemed to pass without incident and everyone managed to get on the right buses and arrive at the correct locations.  We were especially pleased that Tyler managed to travel on the bus on his own and even managed to still be wearing his shoes and socks at the other end, something we never thought would happen!

As of yet the girls seem to be loving their new school and like their new teachers very much.  Tyler also enjoys his new school, however he's been getting coloured paw marks on two of the days he's been so far.  Different coloured paw marks mean different things but anything other than white is not good.  But we're working on that.

After all is said and done we're not doing too bad, the early mornings are starting to become habit again and next week the homework starts.

Tyler leads his class mates off the bus into school

A day on The Water

Sitting in the shade enjoying a chat

One of the things we did whilst everyone was over form England was to take a trip down to visit Paw paw (Dawns dad) and Mimi. Whilst there we had the Louisiana equivalent of fish and chips (fried catfish and fries).

The children were all fascinated by the dragonflies and Tyler couldn't resist getting wet (what's new about that).

Hannah shows a dragonfly and Tyler gets wet

As a great treat we went out on a party boat had a look at some of the natural habitat and some of the animals that lived within it.

Rayna takes a turn at piloting the boat

Our Wedding Day

Well we did it, on July 28 2012 after months of paperwork and forced time apart we finally managed to tie the knot.  Our wedding was a fantastic event surrounded by family and friends who we are very grateful for their gifts and shared time with us.

It's been a very hectic few weeks and so we just wanted to get something on the blog so we could keep it up to date.  There's just a few pics on here but as we work our way through them we'll add some of our favs.

 As you can see from these pics the kids looked amazing and did us so proud playing their parts in the wedding day brilliantly, making us so proud.

Journey Back to the USA

Trying to get some sleep at the airport

OK so we all knew the flight back to Louisiana was never going to be easy.  With 8 people, 10 pieces of checked baggage and enough hand luggage to bring across huge amounts of possessions.  Added to that I (Martin) had to go through an immigration check in as I was travelling on my newly acquired K1 visa,  it was always going to be a challenge.  However little did we know of how much of a challenge it would turn out to be.

So the initial getting to Heathrow wasn't too bad although the check in was a bit complicated as a lot of our stuff was cross packed in all the suitcases, (when you move abroad its cheaper to bring an extra suitcase and pay than to ship anything by about £100).

The airplane (American Airlines) was hardly modern and only had one screen per every 30 or so passengers so unlike other times we've flown you have no control over what to watch or when. For a ten hour flight this was pretty poor but somehow we managed it.  So we eventually get off the plane in Dallas and head for the dreaded immigration.

As previously mentioned Martin was travelling on a K1 (fiance) visa basically meaning that I was intending to marry and stay in the USA.  Although i had been a little nervous about the whole thing it actually wasn't too bad.  I handed over the unopened envelope and was escorted to another waiting room with approx 15 other people.  We all sat looking nervously at the window and after a few minutes my name was called.  After a quick chat with the immigration officer and a few forms being signed I was sent on my way to catch up with the rest of the family (Nan, Grandad, Kelly, Dawn and the children).  Checking my watch as I left the room I saw we had about an hour and a half to get across the airport to catch our next flight to Baton Rouge.

Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and a huge storm caused many flights to be cancelled (including ours).  Now we had to queue to get a place another plane, nothing was flying to Baton Rogue so we opted for a flight to New Orleans (after arranging for Dawns dad to meet us there).

With 20 minutes to go before the New Orleans flight we were informed that this flight and every other flight had been cancelled till the next day.   More queuing and trying to get confirmed flights ended with Dawn and 2 of the children confirmed for the 7.30am and the rest of us on standby.

So now we attempted to settle down to sleep in the airport, the staff did supply camp beds and thin blankets but needless to say there was not a lot of sleep for anyone.

We managed to get Tyler onto the 7.30 flight with Dawn and the girls which left Nan, Grandad, Kelly and Martin now needing flights.  Kelly managed to get on a flight at about 10 (she had to fly on her own).  Nan, Grandad and Martin finally managed to board a flight at about 12.30.

All in all a nightmare of a journey, we had attempted to fly on no less than 7 flights which were either cancelled or full, we were so happy to get home.

A trip up the Cairngorm Mountain

A trip up the mountain

One of the final things we did on our trip to Scotland was a trip up the Cairngorn Mountain on the mountain railway or to give it its proper name the funicular.  The funicular takes passengers from the car park to near the top of the mountain, where we all had a good look at the views and gift shop (not more shopping).

family snap shot on top of the mountain

 

A day in The Highlands and the Leault Working Dogs Display

The Girls running free in the Scottish Highlands

Yesterday we took a drive into the Scottish highlands up a very quiet B road that looked like it was hardly used.  We drove along looking at the breath taking scenery and then we where lucky enough to spot a huge heard of wild deer on the very top of the mountain.

Nan, Grandad, Hannah, Rayna and Tyler cuddled up in the mountains

We stopped and had a little snack and the kids ran around enjoying the freedom that a quiet area offers.  We all had a great time playing and then on the drive back down the road a deer actually ran across the road in front of the car.  I doubt we'll get this close to a wild deer again.

Neil working his incredible sheep dogs

In the afternoon we went along to the Leault Working Sheepdogs display and what a fantastic display it was!  I think this was a firm favourite with the whole family, the dogs were incredible as they worked the sheep and at the same time mingling with the crowd.

Tyler mixes with the stars of the show

The whole display was incredible and Tyler, Hannah and Rayna all helped sheer a sheep and were given a piece of wool as a souvenir.  But that wasn't all, next the baby lambs needed feeding and they were released to the bottle weilding public, a truly memorable experience.  We can't recommend this experience highly enough the details can be found here Leault Sheep Dogs .(watch the above video). 

Hannah and Rayna feed the lambs

Tyler Grandad and Nan feed the lambs

 Neil Ross, who runs the display is and extremely freindly man and spent along time with the children teaching them how to blow their sheep dog whistles.

Neil Ross teaches Tyler how to use his whistle

Some of the stars of the show

A Day Shopping in Pitlochry

The girls get sized up for their kilts

We spent a fun day looking in the shops at Pitlochry, there were many traditional shops selling all sorts of things.  The girls decided to spend their birthday money on a kilt each and a set of bagpipes (Nan and Grandad helped out with the cost).

The girls treat us to their bagpipe playing

 When we got home we wentonline and watched some videos of Scottish dancing and the girls showed us their version, they're really get into the whole Scottish thing.

Dawn also spent far too much money so we're not going shopping again for a long time. :0)

Kincraig Village Fete

Scottish pipe band at the fete

We happily stumbled across the Kincraig Village fete yesterday and all of its local traditions.  We saw pipe bands, a stunt horse display, a mini highland games, some owls and the highlight of the day the childrens races.

Rayna and Tyler both took part in the races (Hannah didn't feel like it).  Rayna wasn't ready in the first race and they started while she was still getting ready.  Luckily enough she was allowed to run in the next race and she did really well.  Tyler on the other hand was ready and got himself into his starting position straight away.  As you can see from the video he had a little tumble after the start but he didn't let that get in his way.  He picked himself up and still managed to come first.  For the rest of the day he proudly showed off his medal to anyone he could, telling them the full story of his victory .

The real Hedwig from the first Harry Potter movie

 The next thing we saw was super cool, the real owl that played the part of Hedwig in the first Harry Potter movie.  This whole trip is starting to have a bit of a Harry Potter theme!

A Trip on the Hogwarts Express

Tyler on the hot plate before departure

We had a special treat the other day.  The Jacobite train, the one used in the Harry Potter movies that travels to Hogwarts was scheduled to travel from Fort William to Malaig and it was too much of an opportunity to miss out on.

Dawn, Tyler, Hannah, Rayna , Nan and Grandad on the train

 The train journey took about an hour and a half and covered some beautiful countryside.  We were lucky enough to see some deer in the mountains, and some fantastic waterfalls.  We also travelled over the fantastic bridge that was seen in the Harry Potter movies.

When we stopped at Malaig we had about two hours to look around and went down to the port and watched the fisherman unloading their boats.  We didn't realise until Nan spotted him that there was someone else also very keen watching what the fisherman were doing.

Tyler even tried to show him where there was a fish on the port but it didn't apear that the seal could understand him (watch the video).  We did throw him a fish that we found on the side but he looked at it in disgust when we threw it in.  We guessed he was a fussy eater, to be fair the fish wasn't in the best condition.

The seal we saw in the harbour

Emma Comes to Visit

Emma entertains the children

By a wild fluke, our friend Emma Duggan had a wedding to photograph in Scotland this week.  As soon as we realised we invited her to come visit and whilst she was here to take a few pics for us as a reminder.

As a special treat the kids performed their version of "lean on me" a family favourite.  We all had a really fun time and at the same time had some terrific pictures taken.

One of the many great pics taken by Emma

 A big thank you goes out to Emma for spending a fun day with us all and for taking some fantastic pics. 

A day at Loch Morlich

The girls watching the canoeists

We spent a fantastic day just down the road from where we are staying at Loch Morlich.  It's a beautiful lake which attracts many people to try out water sports as well as just relaxing by the water.

 We had a great day watching the canoeists, sailers etc and it got really hot, just t shirt weather.  We even had a couple of successful attempts at flying the kites we had bough and the kids fed the ducks including a couple of little baby ducklings who were being protected by their parents.

Tyler posing by the Loch

Family attempt to fly one of the kites