Spynie Palace, Snow etc

Last weekend Historic Scotland was doing a "free entry weekend" for a number of their properties. It included exciting places like Edinburgh & Stirling Castles, however, I thought that would be too far of a journey to do on a Saturday (esp with icy road conditions, etc), so we opted for a more managable day out and went to Elgin, where we visited Spynie Palace. It dates back to the 15th century. I think Peter thought it might be rather boring going to a rather ruined site, however, I think that made it a lot more fun for the children - they could run around and there wasn't anything they were forbidden to touch! Benjamin & Abigail didn't want to leave, but eventually we got rather frozen (as it was just above freezing point there - and below freezing back home!), so when the sun went away, it was *cold*! Anyway, here are a few photos from the outing - however, they're rather poor quality. It turns out I not only forgot my camera's memory card (so only had the tiny internal memory), but also had nearly dead batteries - so we only barely managed to turn it on for a few seconds here & there to snap one photo before it died again, meaning the pics were rushed & poor quality. But, these pics are all I have!



Walking down the path to the palace

Can't really see any faces here - well, not hardly!

Not very good photo of me (too dark anyway) and only a bit of Abigail, and can't see Benjamin at all really!

Lookout point from the top of the biggest tower - there were *lots* of stairs to climb to get up here!

Bits of wall, where I think they had a chapel at one point (like 1600s) - was a palace for bishops.

The tower we climbed up, with viewing point visible at the right corner. Benjamin thought the place was so exciting - he kept running in circles with Abigail and saying "big castle"!

On Tuesday we had lots of snow! Well, it seemed like it to me anyway. I think Abigail must have been telling Benjamin about the idea of building a snowman (tho they didn't do it), because for the next 24 hours Benjamin kept talking about "snowman". Cute smile on Abigail's face, but B is looking the other way.

In the front garden again - both looking at the camera this time!

Abigail on her own, enjoying the snow!

OK, you say, what is this?! :-) Well, it's a prize I won! Back in June I wrote an article about cloth nappies for a competition (on a cloth nappy website) and I won! Nothing special, as only one other person wrote one as well, and just a dozen or so people voted - but still, it was fun! There were various delays in the prize getting here - as the person who worked for the company that sponsered the prize no longer worked there, so emails weren't getting through, and eventually when 2 weeks ago contact was made the the owner of the company, I thought I would get it at last. But 2 weeks elapsed...and no sign of it (only coming from Wales). In the end, it arrived...the cause for the delay...Australia was written after my address ! LOL It was complete with customs label, Airmail postage & sticker etc. It was marked in Australia and they wrote "try UK", so it came to me at last! It's a lovely Wonderoos "birth to potty" pocket nappy, with microfibre inserts, 2 cloth reusable wipes, and some lovely smelling soap samples for making up wipe solution.

Benjamin looking pleased in his new nappy - even if he has a funny look on his face and is poking out his tummy! :-)

Back view of prize nappy!

OK, enough of my boring talk...I'm off to bed...tho maybe first I'll crochet a few stitches in some baby trousers I'm working on! ;-)