Birthday trip to Inverness!

Now I am the ripe old age of 23!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had a lovely family time of it:

On Friday morning Ben and Oliver got up and made me scrambled eggs in bed- my favourite! Scrummy mango-y juice too, yum! Then I opened my cards and presents in bed (a Pentreath family tradition I definitely wanted to keep!!): a really interesting looking parenting book and a baking book from Ben's family, the autobiography of the CEO of Tesco (for anyone who doesn't know, I LOVE Tesco...!) and £30 to spend at a fabric shop (wowwww!!!!!!) from my family and a set of steamer saucepans and a gorgeous owl doorstop from Ben... (I LOVE owls at the moment and it matches our other owl things... and I need to steam things!) and an IOU because one of the presents was late being delivered!!! It should be here tomorrow... exciting! So that was my exciting haul- I must be becoming an adult! :S But my real present was... a trip to Inverness!! We planned it a bit last minute but as Friday was a flex friday (basically, Ben has it off), in the morning we took off up north. Inverness is about a 2-2.5 hour drive and it was lovely, even though it was a bit drizzly. We stopped enroute at a National trust site: Brodie Castle. As is customary nowadays we spent most of the time at the playarea and it was a particularly good one with zip lines and everything! But our boys were a little more cautious.

Then went on to a ruined castle (Urqhuart) right on the edge of Loch Ness. It was GORGEOUS and the sun even came out!! Very, very lovely. We spent a long time at the Loch and the castle and there were lots of interesting films and exhibitions about the castle under siege etc... but Nessie was nowhere to be seen :( 

Then we headed into the centre for a birthday tea at my favourite restaurant- Pizza Express, yum! We all had pizza- Ben ALWAYS has a pizza with an egg in the middle of it and olives, and I had a pancetta, sundried tomato yummy thing and we gave lots to Oliver (and Zachy was on the milky!) Yum. Then we headed off to the lovely little B and B we'd booked up... and everyone slept okay!!! I was quite dreading Oliver partying all night long as soon as he saw we were sleeping the same room/Zach woke him up when we wanted some milk. But it was all wonderful! What a blessing. Our bed was so snuggly and soft too. Ahhh. A wonderfully large and delicious full cooked breakfast followed on Saturday morning, after which we went off to a place called Chanonry Point because we'd heard that you can often spot dolphins from there. Again we were blessed because there were at least FIVE dolphins swimming very close to shore!!!! Probably closer than about ten metres! They were bobbing up and down, and doing synchronised swimming (genuinely!) and a couple of somersaults, it was incredible!! They were really showing off. We got a few pictures of tails and fins coming out of the water, which was the best I could manage- they were so fast! Fab... 

I'll return one day with a flashy camera and snap some somersaults! 

We ended our amazing Inverness experience with a trip to Culloden Battlefield... another National Trust site with a whopping great visitors centre and lots of hands-on info about a battle with the Scots and the British (Jacobites and Bonny Price Charlie?) Very interesting, although Ben was quite engrossed and I had to run around with the boys quite a bit to keep them both happy. Lots of bobbing and nappy changing ensued! :) Then we headed home. 

What a brilliant, brilliant time! Ooh, and on the way we drove past the Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Stadium. Hooray!!! I waved and phoned my Dad since we love it for its name :)

So this week it is back to normal and Ben has a full five day week... real life! :) Which I rather love. One more week of loveliness until Ben leaves us for nearly two weeks next Sunday evening :( He is going on a fieldtrip for work to Buxton and Scarborough. Savouring every moment while we are all together.