Celebrating the life of my Grandpa

My wedding - June 22, 2007

On Sunday, November 18th, my grandpa - Howard H. Scott - passed away at age 86.  He was a good man and a strong Christian.  It's funny how you know someone your entire life but you don't learn about them until they're gone and it's too late.

Monday I woke and up early in Edinburgh and headed to the airport.  After 18 hours of traveling I made it safely to Kansas City to be with my family during this time.  I am so thankful that I am able to be here - thanks for the ticket Grandpa!

I've lost grandparents before - I actually only have one left - but I've never been a part of planning a funeral.  There is a LOT that has to be done people!  And my Grandpa was Catholic so that adds to the list.  Yesterday I went with my dad and aunt to the church to plan the mass.  We had to pick out scripture readings and hymns.  I know that Grandpa loved the Lord, studied scripture intently and attended mass numerous times a week, but I have no clue what his favorite scriptures or hymns are.  Fortunately it's all the Word of God and no matter what we choose it will be powerful.

Today I'm putting together pictures to display at the church.  My dad didn't want to deal with this but I feel like we should.  So I started looking through some of Grandpa's photographs.  And I realized that there aren't a lot of good quality pictures of him.  For some reasons the Scott's don't keep the cameras out when we're together.  Sad.

Here's what I learned yesterday about Grandpa:

• Grandpa wasn't Catholic when my grandparents got married.  Therefore they weren't allowed to get married in the church (Grandma Betty was Catholic) and got married in the rectory.  She got married in a suit and didn't have a wedding dress.  I'm guessing that she must have really loved him to forego the wedding dress that every little girl dreams of.
• He was baptized into the church as an adult at the same church where his funeral will be.  Well he was actually baptized in the school gym at the time because today's church was built much more recently.  And I'm pretty sure that he married his 2nd wife, Juanita, there as well.  
• He attended two different churches near his home in south KC.  One on Sundays and one during the week.  
• He has multiple prayer books that are so worn that I'm afraid they might fall apart if you touch them.
• He was a member of St. Vincent DePaul and Third Order of St. Francis.
• He had pigs on the farm.  I grew up on the farm and we had cows but I never knew that they'd had pigs when my dad was little.  Apparently he forgot to mention that.

I'm sure there's more that I just can't remember right now.  Here's what I did know about my grandpa:

• When I was little he came to the farm every day to work with my dad.  (When he got remarried he moved into Grandma Nita's house in south KC and we moved to the farm.)
• When he was with Grandma Nita, he work khaki's and a button up shirt.  When he was at the farm, he was in overalls.
• When I was little he would steal my sugar.  Not really sure where that came from but essentially he would tickle underneath my chin.  I always had to be on guard.
• He was tough.  He once broke his arm falling off the tractor.  My dad was combining a few fields over and he drove his truck - a stick shift - out to the field with his left hand (the stick shift is on the right in the US) to get my dad to take him to the hospital.  
• When I was little he drove an El Dorado with an image of horses racing across the back window.  It was AWESOME!
• He loved Grandma Nita with his whole heart.  In the past 10 months, Grandpa has been living with my dad because he hasn't been able to take care of himself like he used to.  Whenever he would get to see Grandma Nita, it would break your heart to see him have to say goodbye to her.

While it's always hard to say goodbye to someone you love, I know that Grandpa is in heaven.  It's been hard to watch him get old and I'm so thankful that his passing was virtually pain free.  I love him and I miss him but I know that I'll see him again one day.  

April 2012

Love you & miss you Grandpa!

Aubs

The Other Half of Life Across the Pond.....Mundane Daily Tasks.....Cooking

Taco Soup is one of our favorite fall/winter meals.  It's easy to make, tastes amazing and there's always leftovers.  And it was definitely included in the recipe box I brought with us.

After my very first shopping trip in Edinburgh, I knew that my recipe was going to have to be adjusted because not quite everything I needed graced the shelves at the grocery store.  So we started hunting and improvising.

For this soup, you need a couple different types of beans, canned tomatoes, green chilies, Rotel, taco seasoning and Ranch dressing seasoning.  Sounds easy enough to find, right?  WRONG!

In order to gather all of the types of beans the recipe actually calls for, I have to go to 2-3 different stores.  Kidney beans I can find pretty much anywhere but black beans and pinto beans are a different story.  So far here's where I've been able to find them.

• Black beans: Sainsbury or Real Foods
• Pinto beans: ASDA

Luckily the Sainsbury and Real Foods are within walking distance, but ASDA is nowhere close.  So, in order to use pinto beans in the soup I have to make sure that they're added to my delivery order whenever I have one - which usually coincides with when Luther needs food (because no one wants to carry that much dog food home when someone will bring it to your front door).

Tomatoes are easy - Rotel not so much.  I did find Rotel at the hispanic grocer, but it costs about £1.50 per can which is a bit out of my price range.  Luckily I was able to find whole green chilies in a jar at Sainsbury so I throw in an extra can of tomatoes and cut up enough green chilies to make one of them Rotel and then more to equal a can of diced green chilies.

Taco seasoning - done.  Ranch dressing mix - no good.  Again, I found this at the hispanic grocer but it was more expensive than the Rotel so I asked my mom to include some in her first care package to me. So we double up on the taco seasoning for now.

The recipe for this amazing meal is below and I would definitely recommend trying it.  You can substitute and make changes to meet your needs.  If you recycle, which I hope you do, you're bin will be full after making it.  Just remember to rinse your cans.

Hope you enjoy this as much as we do.  And thanks Mom for passing it along to me.

Taco Soup

1½ pounds ground beef, browned and drained

1 can rotel tomatoes

1 large can diced tomatoes

1 can kidney beans, drained

1 can chili beans, drained

1 can black beans, drained

1 cans corn, drained

1 can chopped green chiles

1 onion chopped

1 pkg taco seasoning

1 pkg Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing mix

2 cups water

salt and pepper to taste

In a large stock pot or crockpot, mix all ingredients together and simmer at least 2 hours. Serve with corn chips and grated cheese.

Love you & miss you!

Aubs, Luke and Luther

Urquart Castle

For our 2nd Scottish castle adventure, we stopped by Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness.  Although it is now a ruin, it was one of Scotland's largest castles in its day.  Unlike Craigmillar Castle, most of the structure has been lost and it is hard to determine what many of the rooms were actually used for because many of the loose stones were moved and consolidated in the early 20th century.  (I'm going off of memory here - so please don't quote me on this.)  The structure at the far left end of the castle in the picture below is a later addition built by the Grant family.

Here are some pictures of the castle grounds along with some views of Loch Ness.  We were not fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of Nessie this time.  Hope you enjoy!

Love you & miss you!
Aubs, Luke & Luther

My First Trip to the Highlands - By Luther

This past weekend, Mum & Dad took me on a trip with them.  I LOVE trips!  It means that I get to do a lot of exploring and smell lots of new things.  And I'm a lucky pup because Mum & Dad rarely leave me behind.  I get a little anxious when I see Mum get out the suitcases but I always know that I get to go when Mum starts packing my things with hers.

On most of our trips we take a car, but we don't have one over here so we took a train.  Mum is always a bit anxious whenever we try something new because it's a bit of an unknown, but I wasn't worried.  We walked right onto the train, found Mum & Dad's seats and I crawled under the table to settle in.  (You can see pictures of what the inside of the train looks like here if you're interested.)  The people on the train loved me - but who doesn't.  I mean, really?

We took the train all the way to Dingwall - a small town just outside of Inverness in the highlands - and walked about a mile to our hotel.

And guess what - we stayed in a CASTLE!  Tulloch Castle to be exact.

I made myself right at home and got ready for bed, knowing that Mum had a big day planned for us on Saturday.

Saturday morning, Dad took the bus back to Inverness to pick up a car so that we could do some exploring around the area.  He came back with a pink Ford Fiesta - haha!

Then we headed to Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness.  Even though the castle is a ruin, I'm not allowed to go in because of the high volume of visitors.  So I had to stay in the car.  Which means Mum will have to tell you about the castle later.

From there we headed north up the shores of Loch Ness so that we could go for a hike.  Mum found a trail in a book called The Old Coffin Road.  We didn't see any coffins but we had a lot of fun anyway.  I got to run around, get my paws muddy and drink from the freshest streams on earth.  It was AWESOME!

We came across this really interesting structure on our walk.  Not sure what it was, why it was there or how long it had been there, but it was cool.  

And check out the nails holding this thing together.  OUCH!!!!

That night I got to experience another first.  My first PUB!  We went to a small place called Benleva.  It was totally a local hangout, including local dog hangout, but the food was good (I can attest - Mum shared her Aberdeen Angus burger with me) and the atmosphere was cool.

Then on Sunday we went on a BIG hike.  After checking out of the castle (I mean hotel), we drove down to a car park (translation: parking lot) in Dingwall to find the start of the Knockfarrel from Dingwall trail and headed out.  It was so much fun.  I got to meet cows, sheep and even saw a miniature pony.

In Scotland, there are "right of way" laws which means that much of the trail we took went through private land.  Because of that there are kissing gates and stiles to help you get through/over the fences without letting out the livestock.  The kissing gates are much easier for me to get through.  If the stiles are small Mum & Dad have to lift me over.  Good thing I'm not a fatty.

Kissing gate - you push the gate to one side, enter and swing it back behind you so that you can get through.

Stile - just steps over the gate.  

The hike overall was great.  We saw some beautiful views and trekked through lots of mud - my favorite.

Dingwall.  You can see the Tulloch Castle in the middle on the hill.

This is just a little bit of the mud.  The end of the path was AWESOME! 

Loch Ussie

Cromarty Firth in the distance

Overall it was an awesome weekend.  I'm so glad Mum & Dad took me with them.  But now I think it's time for my afternoon nap.  I'm still worn out.

Cheers!
Luther

P.S. I almost forgot.  Thanks Aunt B for giving Mum & Dad a GPS a couple of years ago.  It came in very handy to help Dad as he was driving us around.  And the British lady makes sense now!

Highland Whisky

A couple of weekends ago, Luke and I went with the university's Water of Life Society (WOLS) to the highlands.  It was a great trip and we had a lot of fun.  Unfortunately we didn't get to explore the highlands - but we're going back up there this weekend to do that.  But what we were able to see from the car was breathtaking.  We saw a ton of sheep, got snowed on for a bit and were able to try quite a few new (to us) whiskies.

We left Edinburgh on Friday morning and headed north to Glenmorangie. The Glenmorangie Orignal was actually the first single malt whisky that Luke and I tried while still in Raleigh.  It's a good place to start if you're not yet a whisky drinker.  Relatively smooth and nice simple flavours.  At each distillery we were given a tour and after piecing together different sections from each tour, I think we managed to figure out the general idea of how whisky is made.

The stills here are the same height as an adult giraffe. 

After Glenmorangie, we stopped by Black Isle Brewery on our way back to our hostel.  Notice I did say "brewery" so no whisky here.  But we did end up picking up an 8 pack of their Scotch Ale which is quite tasty.  It's actually funny that we went to this brewery because there is a Black Isle Brewery lory (translation: large van/truck) parked in the lot where we take Luther out before bed.

On Saturday we headed south to Tomatin.  Tomatin actually is a town centered around the distillery where everyone who is employed there also is provided housing.  This was also where there was snow on the ground.  There wasn't much and it was all powder so you couldn't do much with it, but it was pretty.  Tomatin wasn't new to us either.  We had gotten to share a dram with George while staying at his house when we first arrived.

Melding of seasons - autumn and winter. 

For Lucas - unfortunately they didn't have an 1981 cask.

From there we headed to Speyside to the Glen Grant distillery with a stop at Culloden Battlefield (the final confrontation of the Jacobite Rising) for a bit of history.  Glen Grant was my favorite stop of the trip.  The whisky was nice, the tour guide was enthusiastic and the attached gardens were beautiful.  After we finished our tour and tasting, we were able to walk through the gardens and just enjoy the wonders of Scotland.  I guess I should note here that most distilleries are situated on or near streams because these are the source of the water used for making whisky.  The garden runs along this stream with a wooden bridge that criss crosses the stream.  It's hard to tell you how pretty it was - but luckily I have pictures.

From there we headed back to the hostel where we had dinner and then the President's tasting.  Three whiskies selected by the WOLS President - which essentially means you know they're going to be good.

Then on Sunday we headed south again to Dewars World of Whisky where they make Aberfeldy.  Here we got to watch a video about the Dewars and then walk through a museum before our tour.  It really was a "World of Whisky".

Our last distillery on the trip was Blair Athol.  Of the 5 tour guides we had, this one was the craziest.  Can I just say that I love funny old men?  They don't care who they offend and therefore do so often.  We weren't able to take any pictures inside the buildings here but I have some of the outside and the leaves were really pretty so it's just as well.

And that was our trip.  Even though we're going to the highlands this weekend, I don't foresee us stopping at any distilleries.  We'll be too busy exploring the countryside and looking for Nessie.  I'm convinced that she and Luther will be BFFs.

Love you & miss you,
Aubs, Luke & Luther