Saturday 6 March 2010 marked the one year anniversary of our wedding day. We had an amazing time relaxing at Turnberry for 3 nights. It was romantic and lovely, but of course it was also a time to remember how much fun we had this time last year with our friends and family in Oz. Presents for the first year are traditionally made of paper, so I gave Wes an ordinance survey map of Girvan and surrounding areas, as well as a 1946 photo postcard of the Turnberry lighthouse, complete with loving message and stamp from its original owner. Wes gave me a (mostly empty) book, the best part was the first page. It’s a wedding anniversary memories book, and so of course only the first year’s page has been filled in! To quote Wes in the book, here are some of our memories from our first year as man and wife:

‘Carving up the white stuff at Cairngorm and Glenshee; cycling and eating our way through the Italian Dolomites; bagging munros Lochnagar and Buachaille Etive Mor; yummy hot chocolate at Cafe Chocolat in Schiphol Airport; the coldest campout and world class waves in Thurso; warm sun, fine arts, macaroons and pleasant traffic police in Paris; Aberdeen Christmas with Gerrod and Kristy – two trees, vodka shots, turkey and mountain adventures; hiking fells, The Red Arrows and Herdwick sheep in the Lakes District.’

I forwarded our auction brochure to a few workmates in London hoping they’d buy some of the stuff (they do get paid more down there!). One of them sent the local PR company out to meet us so I had to pose in those crazy high Prada heels! It was the Press and Journal photographer (yes that’s my foot in the pose link!) who came out. It was absolute chaos! In a good way. We raised over £1800 from the auction, plus another £700+ from a cake bake sale. We were completely overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity. I even managed to successfully bid on a pair of tickets to the local football game, so the following day (Saturday 13th Feb) Wes and I headed down to Pittodrie Stadium to watch our local soccer team take on Celtic from Glasgow.

We had an excellent time, despite the midday kick off and the alcohol ban. The supporters were so excited, especially the Celtic fans. Loud and a little bit scary. It was an evenly-matched game too, so good for spectators, even though Celtic were the favourites going in. And as I found out this week at work, the game will be forever known as ‘the game with all the goals’ after a 4-4 draw. Apparently the Dons hardly ever score :|

Notice all the cops in the corner?

Check out the security in between Celtic and Aberdeen fans!

After finding the cache we stopped for a cuppa before heading back the way we came. As we were scrambling down the scree I saw ahead of us something unusual, alien-like on the ground. [The next bit is not for the squeamish] As we got closer we realised it was the scattered internal organs of a deer. We only figured out it was a deer, because one of the organs was a placenta complete with tiny dead foetus. It is easily the weirdest thing we have ever seen. I took a photo. We don’t know how far along the female was when she was killed, but the foetus is a perfectly-formed tiny baby deer, complete with hooves. Head diameter perhaps 3cm. If we had a shovel we would have given Harold a proper burial, but we just named him (obviously the gender is a guess) and hoped the buzzards would get him soon to complete the circle of life. What an odd experience. I’m including the photo; even though he’s dead, he’s so cute and peaceful.

So we went snowboarding – twice so far! The first time at Cairn Gorm with Gerrod and Kristy, the second time at Glenshee with my friend Cat’s husband and his mates. Cat was cosied up at home with little Aimee, bump and a hot chocolate. Snowboarding’s too dangerous when you’re up the duff, so she lent me her gear and off I went. And didn’t I find out how dangerous it is! Oh my tailbone. Two weeks later it still hurts when I walk and when I bend over. But it was so cool to be on the slopes doing something with Wes that he loves. He had a fantastic day up on Glas Maol in the afternoon cruising off piste from the black runs, he’s so talented!

And of course the surf is working as well, so Wes has been out in the water too (I’m far too chicken to get wet in this weather – water temp seven degrees).

We’ve also been out walking/geocaching. I’m completely addicted to geocaching now.

As you may have read, we had some car trouble, in fact Wes at first didn’t want to drive it at all! But we convinced him we could call the AA if he got really worried, and his worry was justified when the whole exhaust fell off! Lucky we are members of AA (we joined when we bought the mini), and they came to our rescue!

We managed to squeeze in a day of skiing, we’ve been blessed with the ‘best snow conditions for 15 years’ this year, so we were in luck! Unfortunately the visibility the day we went (27th Dec) was so poor, down to 10m at times. Ok for me though – I had my first snow sports experience ever. I had a snowboarding lesson, and I was only going 10-20m at a time anyway!

We popped out this arvo to nab a couple more geocaches, and it was a gorgeous sunset.

We still don’t have the GPS tech, but we were able to cheat a little, by starting with a city cache, and memorising the google map location and the hint before we left the house. The only downside is that city caches are usually nanos (tiny caches), so no chance for moving on any trackable items. In fact, the first cache we found was about the size of the middle joint on my pinky (or smaller than a 3D 5p coin, whichever you can picture easier!), it was a magnetic dot stuck on a well in the street. Seriously we were giggling like schoolkids when we eventually found it. This well is part of a series of well caches around Aberdeen (The Wells of Bon-Accord), and we will start to try and find them all.

Who knows, we may even get ourselves a GPS for Christmas, if we can wait that long! And yes it’s cold, maybe 6-8 degrees that day, Wes only took his gloves off to unscrew the tiny cap of the magnetic nano cache.

Anyway, the bonfires are usually coupled with fireworks, or in city areas just the fireworks. Thursday night November 5th we watched the fancy fireworks set to music at Aberdeen Beach. But Saturday we wanted to experience the ‘proper’ burning of the Guy. Scott from work suggested Banchory so we took the mini for another spin down the B9077 (she does love that road!). We ate stovies, a traditional Scottish dish, then elbowed our way through the munchkins and kiddlywinks to front row position by the warmth of the massive burning pile of trash (mainly broken pallets, garden waste, a few wooden planks and doors). The fireworks at Banchory were much more impressive than the city ones, even if they didn’t bother with music.

I still have mixed feelings about fireworks in general, after Mum and I visited Gerrod and Kristy in New York. While we were there, we took a tour of the UN Headquarters building, and there was a poster declaring that if we all gave up fireworks for just one New Years Eve, we could use the money to get all the third world countries out of debt. I’m not sure if I got the statistic exactly correct, but it was something like that. So whenever I’m enjoying the spectacle, I think about that poster, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it.