We tricked mum to come up for a week and she thought it was just going to be here looking after Ellis, little did she know that her beloved antipodean daughter and husband had flown over as well!!!!!

Poor mum nearly had a heart attack when Rachel rang the door bell when she answered it, I am sure they were tears of joy rather than any thing else……?

It was great, it is not very often we get the whole family together, we spent a lot of the time going for walks in and around Deeside, below is in Glen Tanar where we had a great walk with Ellis first visit to the Cairngorm National park

We also visited the local falconry centre, Lara and I had been meaning to come here for years, and it was well worth it, you get to handle the birds and a couple where even tame enough to stroke.  Amazing creature.  One decided that the bate the handler had wasn’t enough so plucked his own lunch in the form of a local starling out the ski and happily ripped it to shreds.  Rather amazing to watch nature in action like that.  My favourite was ”Smudge’

He was a barn owl who liked to be scratched under his chin!  cute little fella he is above with mum holding him.

Ryan now works for Wilson so brought a back of rackets with him, most days we played either squash or tennis, it was great to play as a family, Rachel was the worst ball girl ever though, in fact I think she actually fell asleep!

A huge massive wopping thanks to R&R for coming over to see us, it is a huge effort and promise we will be over to Oz soon when Ellis is big enough to take the flight.  The rest of the pictures can be seen by clicking here