Second half of May

A lot to catch up on - 2 weeks with no blog reports. Funny how things have changed - I was posting virtually daily when I was working but now that I'm retired the posts seem to be getting less and less frequent. Retirement is a busy business.

Cade's graduation details arrived in the post:

Not something we do in the UK - strictly an American thing just now, but, then again, we never used to have fancy senior proms here - and we do now. Watch this space then.

A strange thing happened the other day - and we've no idea how or when it occurred. We - or, rather, Jo - noticed that one of the side panels at our front door was shattered:

Strange, eh?

On to matters Luca now. He's in his final year at primary now and will be starting at secondary school in August. He collected his new school tie the other day:

Luca's football season with Colony Park is coming to an end. I went along to his penultimate match at Oldmeldrum with Gary. Luca did well and scored a penalty. His "reward", which Gary treats him to after every match - win, lose or draw - is to go out for lunch - this time to Inverurie Garden Centre, where he scoffed down a day's worth of calories in one sitting.

The following weekend I did a double sitting with Luca. Carole was away eventing and Gary was taking part in the Oldmeldrum Hill Race, so I took Luca to his kickboxing class on Saturday morning. His reward this time was lunch in the small cafe/restaurant just 100 yards from their back door - the Scone and Yon. It's a former private house conversion - although very little internally has changed. It's still very obvious which room is which. The former living room was full so we were taken upstairs to what had been a small bedroom with a dormer window. It felt seriously weird:

The food was OK however.

On Sunday, Luca's final match was out at Millbank, near Alford. It was another glorious day and we all turned up to watch him play - me, Gary, Carole and Jo. Here's Jo and Gary having a seat and a chat at half time:

After every match has finished, the teams line up for each player to take a penalty. Exactly as he did the week before, Luca despatched his with ease:

Luca played well and his team won again. We celebrated with lunch at a nice cafe in Alford.

The weather had been brilliant and forecast to continue that way for at least another week, so it was time for Jo and I to make our long promised visit over to the west coast. Plockton, Applecross and Torridon were on our radar. Due to other commitments, the earliest we could travel was Tuesday this week. We're now back home and will report back on our trip in my next post.