Our First Family of 4 Vacation... EVER!

We got back from Pitlochry and dropping off the teens in Aberdeen and spent the next few days "recovering" and taking it easy around the house.  Gideon didn't feel well, so we postponed our out-of-town vacation to the end of the week.  We had never taken a vacation just the 4 of us... since I'm not counting traveling to get places as a "vacation".  

But the beginning of the week, the kids played in their room, we watched movies, read books... and stayed in our pjs. :) (Except for when we had people over to hang out.)

(Naomi is sitting on top of the dresser to play with her castle.)

Well... Naomi did get dressed one day.  She put the whole ensemble together and did her own hair.

After we stayed in town for Wednesday evening Bible Study, we packed up and headed to Inverness.   For our first Vacation we decided we were not going to plan... but see where the wind took us.  We left not even having sleeping arrangements.  (and let me tell you... family rooms are NOT standard in hotels/b&Bs here in the UK)

Inverness is around a 3 hour drive from Peterhead.  And I had a few places around Inverness that I wanted to see...

DAY 1:

First stop:  Culloden

"Outlander" fans... anyone? :P

(this is Culloden in Gàidhlig )

(Naomi climbed in the "boot" when we got back to the car.)

Second stop:  Clava Cairns

 (N was in a HUGE posing phase... you'll see lots of self-requested shots of her.)

Gideon asked what was going on in the Bible when these stones were placed here.  So JR did the calculation and we came up with Abraham!  So, thanks to Gideon, we talked about how when God was calling Abraham to leave UR and leave the worship of moon and stars behind him, the people in the British Isles were worshiping the same moon and stars.  It was a neat tie-in to the better parts of history that Gideon and Naomi (and we) already know!

Third stop:  Loch Ness

 (We got yelled at for having the kids climb on Nessie.  I was trying to have them recreate a photo that I have of me and Claudia!)

(the Loch Ness behind them)

Fourth stop:  Urquhart Castle

We got to Urquhart 30 minutes before it closed.  And since the till was down, we got to go in for free!  Bonus!

We headed into Inverness for dinner and then headed to our hotel.  (The kids LOVE staying in hotels!)

DAY 2: 

The next morning, after our complimentary breakfast, we headed to the nearby, largest Tesco we've seen in Scotland.  There we found this:  

Anyone spot anything wrong with this shirt? :)

We had no fixed plans, but we'd heard that "Landmark" was fun.  We weren't even really sure what it was, but headed there anyway.  

We had a blast on the water rides.  We ran into a family we knew in the park (as they were on their way out :( ).  We took a lovely wooded walk...  It was a good time.

Then we headed back (the scenic way)~cutting through Scotland~ to make our way back to Peterhead. The temperature dropped 15 degrees as we crossed the island!

Well... one family of 4 vacation down!  Now there's no stopping us!  (except time and money) ;)

I'll blog the rest of July later!

~Daisha