Day 509: Up to snow good

16/12/2022

We start the week with a special episode of Sewing with Sophie, with main character, Sophie, whipping up a skirt, for Eloise. There was just one problem, Lachlan had thought it was a kilt, oh yeah, we still need to do something about that. He was having a jolly good time.

It is getting silly now, setting off to work it was -8°C. It takes me longer to deice the car than the drive to work. “Snow and ice are continuing to cause widespread travel disruption across the UK”. Turns out “Scotland on course for coldest December in a decade”, in fact, “UK has its coldest day since December 2010”. Murray and Liam felt the full force of it but that is a story for another day!

Everything was freezing, babyccinos were the only way for Lachlan and Juju to warm up.

We are loving our Monday catchups, we had to brave the cold to get back home, Lachlan entered standby mode.

Lachlan’s afternoon nap went this well, see below, and then it was time to pick up Eloise from nursery. Lachlan was a happy boy in the front baby carrier, it has been a while since he was in there.

The kids were especially happy Tuesday morning, we all know how much Eloise loves matching, she was delighted to find out that her bro now fits into her beloved Country Road collection, someone has spent too much time with Hazel. Luckily she has a wardrobe full of them for him to grow into thanks to being spoilt by everyone in Australia.

Another day, more ice to scrape. In Scotland, there is a gritter tracker map. It is always entertaining to see their names, “Scotland’s gritters with hilarious names including ‘Gritty Gritty Bang Bang’ and ‘Sir Salter Scott’ can be tracked live on a map”.

We are definitely in the territory where warm lunches are becoming a necessity.

Tuesday night, we began our compulsory British residency duties and started to watch Harry & Meghan’s controversial Netflix documentary series.

It was another cool one Tuesday night, but -8°C seems to be the new 0°C. Turns out it is not just the UK going through a cold snap with a “pre-Christmas cold spell delivers snow and near-record-low summer temperatures in south-east Australia”. Wednesday morning, the kids were screaming for snow.

Eloise was determined to make the most of it, darting about the “crunchy grass”.

Lunch was a funny one, with Lachlan putting on a bit of a show. Eloise was a tad frustrated that he was not taking his “cheese lunch”, one of her favourite past times, as seriously as she was.

Safe to say, Lachie was having a blast.

After dropping Eloise at nursery, the cheese had caught up with ol’ man Lachlan, he was completely out of it having his grandpa nap.

Eloise was learning all about hand hygiene at nursery. Lachlan already knew all about this from his Baby Shark phase.

We can see on the site’s backend metrics how often each video is played, Lachlan is disappointed that you have not all jumped on the Baby Shark bandwagon with him. Although he seems to be moving on, so it may be a good time to offload those Pinkfong shares.

On Wednesday, there was exciting news out of the science circles, “an elusive goal in the global race to create clean, green nuclear energy has been achieved, US scientists say”, as the US take the lead in the global race to discover an energy source capable of keeping up with Lachnado.

Thursday morning started with some baking to warm up the house, there were plenty of chuckles coming from the kitchen.

Thursday was our fourth-year wedding anniversary, we all celebrated with Italian at Raffaelle’s, Lachlan of course was in strong agreement. Eloise stepped up to the plate and took another wedding anniversary photo for us, thanks Eloise, at least she didn’t flip to selfie mode this time.

Of course, all nights out end at Loop & Scoop. Eloise had a few testers but settled for her trusty strawberry. There were lots of vegan options for Lachlan and he was overwhelmed selecting a flavour.

Over the past couple of weeks, some of you may have noticed, Lachlan has developed an incredibly passionate and somewhat aggressive “cheese” smile, he is a funny one.

Eloise does love her ice cream, there is no denying that, however, she is possibly the world’s slowest ice cream eater. There was no risk of it melting as we headed back out into the cold.

When we got home, all exhausted, Super Mum put Eloise to sleep while she left Liam to put Lachlan to put Liam to sleep, of course.

After almost a week closer to -10°C than 0°C, the novelty of the freezing was starting to wear off, seriously what do we have to do for snow around here? We were still hopeful, our best chance looked like Friday, “the wintry weather is set to continue across much of Scotland, with warnings of further snow and ice”. Also interestingly, “a family of beavers has been approved for a move from Tayside to Loch Lomond”, perhaps we can catch a glimpse next year.

On Friday morning, there was an early Christmas miracle! After a week of sub-zero temperatures, we awoke to snow! Plenty of it, “the Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for parts of the country from 07:00 on Saturday until 21:00 on Sunday”. The only issue was that we were not feeling the best after some suspected food poisoning. This was not a good enough excuse for the kids who were raring to go.

It was a snow-themed breakfast as we waited for Super Mum to arise, Lachlan was not too fond of this sitting around idea though and was ready for action. The kids had been looking forward to this.

We all rugged up with lots of layers and darted out the front, funnily enough, we were quite warm, it was 10°C warmer than the rest of the week had been. Eloise was quick to teach her brother bad habits, throwing snowballs at Dad, while Lachlan could not believe what he was seeing.

Once we had trashed the snow out the front, the kids raced through the house to the backyard to find a blank canvas. Lachlan had a shot at his first snow angel but was still stunned by all this mysterious white stuff.

Lachlan retreated to his beloved slide but it was not quite what he was expecting.

The kids then wanted to make their third proper snowman. Lachlan refuses to wear mittens at the best of times so we had to grab him some snowman-building utensils.

The snowman was coming along well, Eloise thought long and hard and decided to name the snowman Lachlan. Such a creative girl, she could not have chosen a more confusing name.

It was then time for Lachies’s backyard sledge ride. Note to Grandma Nicholls: We did not choose Lachlan’s attire, the boy just loves jumping into Eloise’s wardrobe and seeing what he finds.

All this snow play was hard work, Eloise had a great idea to make some fresh orange-flavoured snow cones.

After midday, we thought we would venture further afield with the sledge. Eloise set to work preparing the car.

This is where the day started to get interesting. The plan was to head up to Mugdock Country Park because we thought there may be some decent kid-friendly slopes there. We took it carefully as there were cars literally drifting all over the roads. Our Spanish front-wheel drive wagon with slick tyres was not coping well. There was one road in particular where a number of cars were stuck and the coche joined the queue. No amount of the coche’s useless quirky features were going to get us out of this one. Thankfully a strong Glaswegian man was pushing cars on the road and eventually made his way to ours. Turns out we should have stayed a little lower and we may have bumped into Ange Postecoglou who was “helping stranded motorists stuck in snow on his way to training”. Jamila asked us how everyone manages to drive in the snow. The answer is, not particularly well. We then powerslid to Milngavie and tried up near the football field.

There was no shortage of snow proving tricky conditions for football with “EFL and non league matches postponed due to snow and frozen pitches”.

Lachlan found a mega snowman, decent effort.

Eloise had one thing on her mind though and chucked Lachlan on the sledge to hurry him up. Lachlan was taking it all in and was a wee unsure about the ride.

We found a promising-looking slope. Unsure how it would go, we sent the snow koala down first.

Besides the time he flipped it, Lachlan seemed to be enjoying his solo rides. A nice introduction to sledging. Certainly nicer compared to the time we chucked Eloise off the edge of the Cairngorms.

It was finally home time, although the cheeky snow koala had other ideas. Lachlan does not like throwing snowballs because he does not like his hands getting cold, but he gets a real thrill when someone throws one at him, he likes dodging them while he giggles. The snow koala did manage one final run.

We were all feeling pretty flat by dinner time, Liam went to pick up some food with great difficulty, a lot of the snow had melted and Milngavie was covered in ice. Safe to say the Elfingrove is no longer the UK’s largest ice rink. He had to follow government advice and “walk like a penguin”.

Everyone and everything was struggling with the icy conditions as one of those wee robots we saw roaming the streets near Bletchley Park, close to Cambridge, got stuck. “A delivery robot that got stuck in the snow has thanked the man who put it back on the right track”.

Meanwhile in a much warmer place, the Strikers were on fire, “Sydney Thunder skittled for 15 all out in Big Bash against Adelaide Strikers in T20 cricket’s worst score”. Not since Hugh’s primary school cricket team took the field have we seen scores like this.