The Bartulla Way: Our first anniversary

I can hardly believe it's already been a year since Jeff and I got married. Sunday, the 28th we celebrated our first anniversary. It also has been almost a year since we got to Scotland. This past year, while has been a bit crazy at times, has really gone by relatively quickly! It's been full of ups and downs, but all about living and adjusting to Scotland. The marriage part has been wonderful and we've truly been blessed.

Happy First Anniversary!

So our celebration was a little low key. We didn't really want to do much, especially since our Dublin trip is just around the corner. But we did the typical thing of exchanging gifts and we had a really nice dinner out on Saturday night. Jeff did something incredibley sweet and completely took me by surprise. He ordered a cake from the local bakery that was similar to our wedding topper cake from the wedding. Considering he did it from memory alone, he did great! And the cake was pretty tasty and made the occasion even more special. We couldn't bring our topper over here........for obvious reasons.

The weather has been really cold, windy and overcast the past week. But yesterday, Monday the sun was shining and the wind was pretty mild, so Jeff and I decided to get out and about and find something to do. We really had NO idea where we were headed or what we were doing, but we did some browsing on the Tom Tom and headed toward the Highlands. I knew the Highlands had some snow and had some bad snow a couple of weeks ago, but had no idea some of the roadways were still closed. But we drove around and stumbled across a few things and just enjoyed the view!

The narrow roads and steep inclines we came across. This road was a 12% incline, as signs indicated.

Just along the roadway while we were driving up

One thing we stumbling upon was a little tea shop. Cute little place that had a fantastic view! We stopped in and had some coffee and a snack to warm up. They had a few things for sale in their gift shop area and I got the neatest serving dish made of a recycled wine bottle. It is made up toward the Highlands in a village (town) called Tomintoul. The picture on the label shows using it for either cheese, crackers, fruit............or something like that. I thought it was pretty neat and think it will make a great holder for a small serving of cheese and crackers.

The view from the tea shop

My recycled wine bottle aka serving dish!

A church we stumbled across while out

And a castle nearby the church. We are thinking it's a residence at this time so we didn't get to close

The castle overlooked this frozen loch (lake)

The back of the church, heading back down the road

We were out and about driving around and exploring for a few hours. Decided to head home before it got dark since there was snow up in the mountains but not down by the house. On our way home we stopped to get a shot of the area we had been. It's a little park/rest stop and we've stopped there several times since we've been here to just enjoy the view. What we didn't realize when pulling in there was that the snow was over a foot deep! And we got stuck! So needless to say after 2 hours and some very kind Canadians stopping to help us with their 4x4.......we finally got out! Note to self................the Yukon, no matter how big and tough she might seem.............is NOT a 4x4 and does NOT like the snow! :)
I would also like to say that we must have had 4o cars and trucks pass by us in the nearly 2 hours that we were stuck and not a single person stopped to see if we were okay or could use some help except a Canadian! Well that's not entirely true..........we did have a Scot stop and help us when we were finally almost out.....but we came to the conclusion that it was only because we were in the way of him stopping and getting a photo himself. :)