Kyle's new task...

Making me dinner! This past week was a bit crazy. Monday was a 10 hour day for me at work, which did not inclue my commute. I phoned Kyle around 5 and told him to eat without me, unless he wanted to try and roast a chicken for the both of us. And he did! All by himself. I didn't even give him any hints. For those of you who know Kyle, you know how impressed I was coming home to a yummy roasted chicken. He actually ended up making dinner 3 times last week! I might like this new routine...

New Stuff

So, Kelli and I, as of today (Sunday the 27th) have officially been in Aberdeen for three years. Kind of crazy. We are both a bit sick of feeling like we live in a dorm room, so we tried to make some changes to the flat to make it feel a bit more homey. Fortunately for us, our landlord dropped me an email a couple of months back and told us he was ordering us new couches and a new kitchen table with chairs. Nice. So, we pushed some of the book shelves against one wall and now have something of a reading nook.



I'm not sure this is the best picture of me...or the table for that matter, but you get the idea. We moved the old kitchen table into the spare bedroom for Kelli's desk, and we moved the other desk in their as well. So, we kind of lost our spare bedroom, but since it was used for about two weeks a year we thought it wasn't a bad thing to lose. Now we have a dedicated work space for when we need to work at home as well as an actual living room, which really helps make the place feel more like an actual home.



So, this could very well be our last year in Aberdeen (the Lord only knows), but I think this will help us feel a bit more settled in all of the unsettledness that seems to accompany our pilgrim existence.

Summer in September

Today was truly a beautiful day. Days like today totally make up for the weeks of rain we experience in August and July.



On our late morning walk we came across seals basking in the sun. They kind of look like logs in this picture; however, we did see them flopping around.



The stroll through Seaton Park was just lovely.




We topped off the afternoon with a nice berry salad, and then hit the books!

Dude's garden

Sir Walter Scott had a pretty awesome garden. Evidently walled gardens were all the rage back in the day, the equivalent of having a pool manse or something. We wanted to show you some of the crazy flowers he had, so we hope you enjoy!





You can see the house in the background to give you some perspective on the yard.




It might have been raining at this point...but what do you expect?

Not an Abbey

Abbotsford House was Sir Walter Scott's sweet and awesome pad. This guy was the rock star of his age with this place.



As you can see, it has the feel of a castle, which is true both inside and out, and had some unbelievable grounds (we'll show more in the next post).



The picture above is from the front of the house, and the picture below is the back. The back had a view overlooking a river and had a good amount of forest surrounding the property. He also had a beautiful side yard and garden with a walled garden next to it (next post).



Most impressively, he had a study and a library that was incredible. We couldn't take pictures inside so we had to download these from the website, but let me just say that this is the less impressive of the two rooms. They still have 9000 rare books in his library. His library, pictured here, had reading tables and overlooked the back of the house. The window of the back of the house was from this room. His actual office was surrounded with these same book shelves, and had a spiral staircase to a mezzanine level of the same. Beautiful

Sweetheart Abbey

On our second day of abbey exploring Kelli and I meandered down South to hit up Sweetheart Abbey. This wasn't the largest of abbeys, but it was built out of a red stone you find out here sometimes, which gives the structure an interesting look. That, and the fact that grass had grown in the inner-structure made the look of the place really interesting.


Here you can see the red in the stone a bit more. This was a tomb that sat on the side portion of the cathedral next to the altar.



Here is a shot while standing in the middle of the nave looking down to where the altar would have been. The grass was so green that it almost mutes the color of the cathedral.



This pic is the same as before but now standing outside of the main entrance looking down the nave.



This last shot is from the corner of the graveyard looking back at the abbey. It was beatiful while we were there.

Dryburgh Abbey

This abbey was off by itself in a forest.

There was quite a lot of detail remaining in the architecture...

A 'comfy' seat to take a rest from exploring in the rain!

A sweet and awesome old book shelf.

A great spot to listen to monks sing (there was a recording coming from somewhere).

A nearby hotel on the banks of a river.