Our Vacation from our vacation!

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We spent the last ten days or so with Heather's extended family in Johnstone (just outside of Glasgow). The first night we got there Heather's cousin Laura took us to a Sheep Shearing Competition. There were guys there who could shear a lamb in 30 seconds flat! By the end of the night there was a giant bag of wool and a pen full of naked and slightly disheveled lambs. We asked one of the farmers how much the bag of wool was worth and he said it was only worth about £20! We thought that seemed like a lot of work for only forty bucks.

We promptly spent the next days pub crawling in Glasgow, enjoying the street theatre at the Edinburgh fringe, going out with Heather's crazy uncle to his favourite bars in Glasgow including one of the loyal Rangers FC pubs. We were VERY careful not to piss the wrong people off or say soccer to a local. There were Northern Ireland football supporters that came in while we were there but even they are accepted ... they're just lucky they didn't walk into a Celtic FC pub. We also enjoyed our first anniversary in Johnstone but it only really consisted of sleeping until noon and a healthy breakfast of rolls and bacon. Our last night we went out with the Young Farmers crew to a barn dance in Stirling which was also a pretty crackin' time. It was really nice to spend some time in a real house in one spot and we are very grateful to the whole family for putting us up.

Suffice to say, we're spending a low key week by ourselves now in Aberdeen to start before we head onto the 6 hour ferry ride to the Orkney Islands for some isolated R & R.

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