Saturday 23 November 2019

Edinburgh Castle

A few weeks back it was the school October holidays. Alas, I now have teaching commitments that make it hard to take the whole week off (unhelpfully, the University is closed to students the following week), but I did manage to get a day off to do a bit of a day trip. since we got our Historic Scotland cards we've been planning to see Edinburgh Castle, so this is what we did.

We parked at Ingliston and took the tram into the city. This meant the day was bolstered by an exciting tram ride! Based on how that was received, I think we could easily to a day trip involving a ride on the tram there and back then home again, without doing anything else! However, this time we did get off the tram and went up to the castle, and had a thoroughly enjoyable day out. There was a bit of fear in the lead up to the 1 o'clock gun, but even that worked out okay in the end.



Yes, the weather was also spectacular!






Naomi's baking treat

A while back we changed the "treats" for Naomi and Miriam away from being based on rewarding good behaviour (this seeming to matter less for them - we now use "screen time" as both reward and punishment); so now every other week they just always get some one-to-one time with a parent of their choice. Two weeks ago Naomi picked me, and rather than the usual request for McDonalds, we did some baking together instead: chocolate eclairs! Very nice indeed. We were pleased with them anyway, and they were gone in a very short time.










Quiz Night

Last weekend, our church has a quiz night on in aid of Tear Fund. Now, Jay and I used to do pub quizzes at least weekly, and for obvious reasons this is not something we really do much any more, so we were keen on taking part. As it happens, Miriam was getting her best friend over for a sleep over (this not having been possible on the actual birthday weekend) so it was quite helpful for me to take Naomi out for a couple of hours in the evening.

We had a great daddy-daughter time together. She is really bright (providing a few answers of her own that no-one else in our team had) and we ended up placed third out of five teams. A good evening!