Hassells in the Highlands

Recently there was a Family Day at Dounreay.  Dounreay is the nuclear reactor site here in Scotland and is where Mike has been working for this past 15 months. It is the reason we came to Scotland.  (And by the way - he was extended to complete another task, which means we will be home in December.) “Family Day” means that the site was opened up to allow for friends and family members to walk around the site in the company of an employee. We all had to be accompanied because Dounreay is a highly secured area.  It is heavily guarded. Men with automatic weapons are posted at the gates. Highly trained dogs patrol the perimeter and barbed wires cover the tops of fences. People going in and out must have security clearance and they must enter a pass code and scan their badges to get through the gates to actually enter the property. This is not a place one can just wander into. To get pictures of the place, you must park in the lot that is a quarter mile awa...

Summer. Where did it go?   It was going to be a busy summer and I knew it would go by very quickly – and it did!   In some ways, I feel like I missed it, because looking back, it looks like a blur. It was a blur of visitors and traveling – and yet I was still able to be very present in the midst of it.  And because of visitors and traveling, it has been a LONG time since I posted. But not from lack of things to write about, that’s for sure! I could surely bore you with the details of each and every adventure, or just try to convey a few interesting and/or fun things that happened along the way. I choose the latter. But just for a quick recap, the last 5 months have looked mostly like this: April – 2 weeks in 5 cities in Italy with Wes and Cristy Bratton and Steve and Glenda Schlahta May bank holiday – 5 days in Marsailles, France Early June – Mike and Heather Erhart stayed with us for a week Mid-June – Mom came to visit. She was here for almost...

On the Swilken Bridge in 2017 Many golfers pine of making the pilgrimage to walk the hallowed grounds of St. Andrews. Many dream of playing the Old Course, and to many, it will always be just that, a dream.   You know the kind that causes you to momentarily lose focus on the world around you and, for a brief moment, you are oblivious to your surroundings as you visualize yourself teeing off of the 18 th hole in anticipation of walking across the Swilken Bridge.   After living in Scotland for nearly a year, I knew my opportunity, as slight as it was, to actually “play” the course was slipping away.   Jodi and I had already accomplished the feat of walking the grounds, which we did last August in between our trip to Venice and Edinburgh where we experienced “The Fringe” and attended the Military Tattoo.   While we were at St. Andrews I of course had my picture taken on the famous Swilken Bridge. So, in a sense, a golfers dream was achieved…….but deep in the ...