I am the WORST

So, guess who is making me blog again this time?

Of course it's Peny Turner. I think her exact words were, "So... you've got all this time to blog for your job but you CAN'T EVEN UPDATE YOUR OWN BLOG??"

I imagine Peny is making the same face as this snarky golf club topper.

(If you'd like to see my work blog, check it out here: Ardgowan Hotel Blog)

Lots has happened since I last updated you on my life. It is now December, which means cold, dark days. The sun now comes up at 8:39am and goes down at 3:34pm. I'm not even kidding. The sun barely comes up, is directly in front of the window at Reception pointing INTO MY EYES around noon, and then conveniently ducks back down behind the trees around 2:00pm. Romantic sunset at 2:00pm people. The struggle is real.

Other than that, Clay has finally matriculated (as of LAST WEEK?) and we've got most things settled... in December. What a ridiculous ride this has been! What has even happened the last few months??

The Lade Braes in October!

September and October were absolutely beautiful. I think one day, I actually wore shorts. ONE DAY! And I remember saying to myself, "I better actually wear shorts once this year, just to say that I did. Otherwise, my life is too ridiculous."

I've lived most of my life from March to November in shorts. Oh, Scotland.

In October, Clay got to legit speak words to Bill Murray, I got hit on by a grown up French guy, and we drove around Fife trying to find a cow for me to touch. In November, we drove as far north as we've ever been, to the base of the Highlands in Pitlochry, and drove around looking at lochs and sheep and cows.

Standing in someone's sheep field! RIGHT TO ROAM!

This is how far north we got!

Life has been good. I'm enjoying my job, we're enjoying our friends, and we're exploring more around Scotland. God is definitely using this time to stretch us. We're learning to live on less, and it's been frustrating but much needed - character-building even. I have a job that I love, that pays us to live without me killing myself, and we are living on less than half of our income from the States and we're fine.

I'm not gonna lie, I spent a lot of pity parties over the last year and a half being bitter about how other American St Mary's students can have kids and no jobs, and still seem to have all this money to go buy cars and go to Spain and travel home every 6 months, and yes, I'd love to live that life, but that's not where we are now.

These cows don't care that I don't have any money!

All of that being said, we are skimpy on Christmas presents this year. We've bought ourselves new boots (with no holes!) and decided we're going to get a projector for our living room. After the all-day Harry Potter Marathon last month, we decided life would be more fun with a giant TV screen on one of our massive walls. Especially when we have our Lord of the Rings marathon in January... and so we can watch The Walking Dead on a giant screen!

So, if you'd like anything special from Scotland, please let us know. Otherwise, you're just getting Rowes for Christmas. No seriously. I keep having these moments of panic, thinking about disappointing people who will be expecting us to bring them goodies from Scotland. If you're expecting anything from us when we come home,  please ask for it.

If I could bring you Jasper in a field, I totally would!

Oh yeah, and we're coming home in A WEEK! I still can't believe it. I'm getting 3 weeks off from work (Scotland makes sure everybody gets paid vacation, y'all) and we're bussing to Leuchars, training to Manchester, and flying to Atlanta. It will surely be a great Christmas. I will be sure to document in pictures with Moo.


So, I always leave with a funny story. So here goes: Whenever we walk to get groceries, we pass the Kinnessburn, which is a little river that runs all over St Andrews and empties into the North Sea. It runs alongside this little path called the Lade Braes (which is beautiful ALL THE TIME). There's a little bridge we have to cross (which is pictured up at the top of this post) and I always look out at the Kinnessburn whenever I walk across it and think about Jurassic Park 2 when that one guy gets eaten by all those tiny dinosaurs on that little river while his buddy is listening to Mexican Restaurant music in his headphones.

**Insert pterodactyl sound here**

Wait! Here's a video of my boss sucking a giant Scotland Spider into this fancy contraption called a Bugzooka.

Ok, Now I'm done.

Carm

Bah-dee-ah! Dancin' in September!

This month always makes me sing Earth Wind and Fire.

I'll start with the most important things. For those of you who haven't shared in my constant worry that we were going to be shipped back to America, consider yourselves lucky. I pretty much operate on a worst-case-scenario basis, where the world is going to end for some reason or another, and even if things are good, there is always something that my brain will worry about and try to plan for. Clay turned in his dissertation back in August and then we knew we would have to wait until October before we found out if he met the requirements for his conditional PhD offer. Lucky for us, we received unofficial word that we are going to be here for the long haul.

we were going on an adventure!

So what does that mean now? Well, for starters, we need to get Clay's marks in October, get that pesky confirmation of acceptance number from the University and then (very quickly) apply for loans and visas because... WE'RE COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS! (as I'm typing this, I am envisioning myself as Kermit the Frog and how excited he gets and waves his hands around. You should imagine me like that too).

It's been over a year now since we've been home. A year since we've seen our friends and family. A year since I've driven a car and eaten Chick-fil-A. I am so excited I can barely stand it. I can't wait to hug everybody. You have no idea. I am going to cry for 3 solid weeks hugging every single person I've wanted to hug for the last year.

We make the same faces!

SO - Christmas! The Ardgowan Hotel has graciously given me 3 weeks off, and I could not be more grateful for my amazing reception team for allowing me to do this! We'll be leaving (hopefully) a few days before Christmas and then staying through the 1st week in January. Gotta work out all the flight plans with my lovely grandparents and then start making plans to see EVERYBODY! If you want anything from the UK let us know and we will stuff a suitcase FULL of stuff for you!

Times are good people. Really good. Even if the days are now officially less than 12 hours long. The sun is going down at 6:55pm. I can't tell you how sad this makes me. When I get up in the morning now, it's dark! But on the plus side, there's an owl in our yard and I get to hear him at dawn and dusk. He sounds like a teeny tiny little hooty owl. I wonder if he will bring me letters from Hogwarts?

There also may be an opportunity that I may meet some celebrities this week. There's a golf tournament called the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship happening, and it's basically pros versus amateurs, which turns into celebrities. In previous years, Samuel L Jackson, Michael Phelps, Hugh Grant, and Michael Douglas have competed. The person that Clay and I are hoping shows up, however, is Bill Murray. I've heard too many stories of his shenanigans in St Andrews, and we are going to try to find him this week.

Lastly, I'll tell you something hilarious that I do that my parents absolutely love. So, we live in St Andrews, right? The Birthplace of Golf? The home of the Old Course? Well, on the St Andrews Links website, they have a live camera feed of various places around the Old Course, including the Swilcan Bridge, which is the famous bridge where EVERYBODY gets their picture taken. (You saw the picture of Bill Murray and Michael Phelps up there, right?)

Well, I told my parents about this webcam, and then made the mistake of walking down on the bridge while they were looking at it. I guess it became more real when they realized they could not only FaceTime me, but also simultaneously watch me DANCE (at their command) on the Swilcan Bridge in front of God and everybody while they watched from Florida. I guess it's good proof for their friends that yes, I do indeed live in the Birthplace of Golf.

So if anyone wants to watch me dance on the Swilcan Bridge in front of strangers, please let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

That's all for now!

Carm

Summer in Scotland

You know how sometimes you get so caught up in life that you forget to do things like blog so your mom will be happy?

Many thanks to Peny Turner, AGAIN, for gently encouraging me to update my blog and keep everyone in the loop.

Last you heard, I was leaving Mitchell's and beginning a new journey at the Ardgowan Hotel as their Reservations and Marketing Manager. I can tell you with 100% confidence now that I was crafted by God for the customer service industry. Throughout my time in restaurant management, I was constantly torn between absolutely hating it and loving it so much that I couldn't leave. It's hard to explain, but those who love serving people can probably sympathize with me. 

I thought for the longest time that I wanted a desk job - completely the opposite of managing a restaurant. Nobody to bother me, I could just plug away at my work and be done with it. With this new change of pace though, I've realized that I really just love customer service... and at the Ardgowan, I can have both. I can sit at a desk and I can run around doing things for people. I can serve and help people, but not at the expense of my sanity.

Not only do I absolutely love my job, but I have been able to help all kinds of people from all over the world. I've met the President Emeritus from the University of Georgia, and he "called the dawgs" with me (and hopefully, secured Clay a job after PhD). I've met the owner of Taco Mac in Atlanta. I've been able to help parents from all over the US feel at ease about dropping their 18 year old freshmen off in a foreign country thousands of miles away. I get to pretend that I have connections with restaurants to get groups of golfers reservations on a Friday night. And I feel like, unlike when I worked in a restaurant, people really appreciate when I go above and beyond.

Let's be honest, nobody respects you when you work in a restaurant. I had a Masters Degree, 7 years of experience, and was making more than most teachers when I finished at Chick-fil-A, and still, people looked at me like "that poor girl. she probably couldn't do any better." Like, somehow, I had made a wrong life decision along the way and ended up at a restaurant because it was the only job that would have me. Some people just love to serve, and that's why I stayed for so long. 

But all of that aside, things are good here at Castle Rowe. Clay has a week before he turns in his dissertation, and then we pray and pray and pray that he gets the marks to send him on to PhD. He has been getting lots of positive feedback from his supervisor, and he slowly feels better and better about it. We I go through waves of confidence and terror, and the great thing about it all is that we won't find out if he got the marks until about a month after his PhD starts. Yeah, I know. It doesn't make sense. But then that leaves us with a very short amount of time to find the money to reapply for visas and student loans. Have I mentioned the exchange rate is terrible right now?

I know I know. God is going to take care of us. He's done it over the past year and he'll continue to do it. Did you know a year ago today, we got on a plane and came to Scotland? We didn't have phones, we didn't know where we were going to live, we didn't even have directions from the Manchester airport to St Andrews. We just got on a plane and ended up here. It still blows my mind that we actually live in Scotland. 

Tomorrow, we have reservations at Maisha, the Indian restaurant where we ate our first jet-lagged and hangry meal in St Andrews. I'd say the last year has been crazy and great.

our living room with furniture, finally

July was literally the sunniest and warmest I've ever seen Scotland be, but August has brought rain and shorter days. Hurricane Bertha was nice enough to scoot on by the UK, making it rainy and windy, reminding us that 1) we can never escape hurricanes, and 2) winter is coming. Scotland tricks us with long, sunny summer days, to the point where we aaaaaaaaalmost forget how bad the winter was. It's coming. 

New Park, our little "neighborhood," never ceases to amaze me. When we first moved in, we loved the colors of the trees around the house, then as winter moved on, you could see the hills beyond the trees and watch the haar roll in over them. As the sun came out in the spring, the whole yard was full of daffodils and now, we have blackberries beginning to ripen. We found an old abandoned stairway leading from the back of the property down to the Lade Braes, and I can't help but wonder what this place looked like in it's prime over 80 years ago. 

    

a nice place to put a chair and creep on people walking down the Lade Braes!

Here's hoping the next year in Scotland is just as good as the first!

I'll leave you with a picture of what Clay would look like if he had (my) hair and was a hipster worship leader. I can't believe he sat there and let me take pictures of this. 

 Carm

Changes!

We'll start with the usual info: the weather has been lovely. High 50s/low 60s, not a ton of rain. The sun is coming up at 4:30am and going down at 10:00pm - although if you're walking home from work at 3:30am, you'll start to see the sky turn light blue and pink with the sunrise. The birds sing almost non-stop because the sun is up almost non-stop. It's like a stinkin' Disney movie here. 

It's been difficult to find time to blog when you're either working or sleeping. Literally, I feel like that's all I've done in the last 2 months since I posted last. Work a billion hours, sleep a few hours, get up, and do it all over again. I've had several locals ask me if I live upstairs at Mitchell's. It would probably be easier if I did!

BUT! Things are changing, and rather rapidly, I might add. 

On Monday, I am starting a new job! I will be taking over for my good friend Mairi Bunce at the Ardgowan Hotel as their Reservations and Marketing Manager. The Bunce's are moving to Austria toward the end of the summer, and Mairi was nice enough to pass me along some info about her job. Literally, within the span of about 3 days, I was applying, interviewing, and being offered the job, which left me the fun task of trying to submit my month's required notice to my current job while my boss was on holiday for 2 1/2 weeks. 

I am excited about this new job and the new possibilities. I have been in the restaurant industry for nearly all of my working life and have never really had the opportunity to branch out into different fields. I almost feel as though I've been doing this job already in addition to running a restaurant. I'm just ready for a change of pace. I know working 14 hours a day is difficult for anyone, but you seriously don't know exhaustion until you've been on your feet, running around a restaurant for the entirety of your 14 hour shift.

In all fairness though, I was lucky to get the job at Mitchell's. A guaranteed pay amount every month, an opportunity to serve the people of St. A, and some great friends to work with. And it came along with perfect timing... when we were getting pulled closer and closer to financial doom - meaning, either taking out another massive loan or going back to America in December. I am thankful for the time that I've had there and the skills that I've developed, and hopefully the stress I experienced will help me appreciate every other job I have for the rest of my life. 

Josh and me on Wine and Cheese Tuesday!

ALSO! Clay has finally gotten his offer letter for the PhD program! We were a bit worried for a while, as everyone else was getting their letters, and the professor that Clay originally wanted to work with decided to take a year of research leave. But, all he has left to do is do well on his MLitt dissertation and we're here for the long haul. We finally have some definite answers about our future here and I couldn't be more relieved.

Let's see. What else has happened? Clay and I celebrated our fourth anniversary, we're already trying to make plans to go back to America at Christmastime, and we still don't have any children and they are not on the radar. We do have some pretty sweet names though. Newest one? Fife. What a hipster that kid's gonna be. 

what i imagine little Fife to look like! I'm positive she will have terrible eyesight like her mother and read books like her father.

I've got all the windows open in the flat and I understand now why very few places here have air conditioning. If it's 57 degrees in June. in JUNE! I also picked up a snail last night on the way home. a SNAIL!

Ok, I've clearly run out of things. Until next time!

Carmen

One Year.

Sooooo. Anybody know what happened a year ago this week?

I'll give you a hint: It involves where we currently live and one of my eyeballs.

This time last year, we announced to our church and the world that Clay was accepted to the University of St. Andrews, we would be moving to Scotland in the fall, and then my eye decided to start eating itself from the inside.

Kate Ryan, the frisbee champ.

It doesn't feel like a year ago. I remember like it was yesterday. Got up, dropped Clay off at NOMA for work, went to CFA for my ever-hectic Saturday shift, and all my cute kitchen ladies insisted on calling me "ojo rojo" and telling me I had pinkeye. We spent the evening enjoying a lovely picnic in City Park, playing frisbee and croquet with the Solomons and the Ryan/Scott Conglomerate. All the while, my eye was getting redder and redder. Sunday, we told our church we were leaving, and I cried and hugged everyone. Monday, we went to see Jurassic Park in 3D, and that's when I could tell something was horribly wrong. I remember looking around the theater in the dark, telling Clay something was wrong with my eye.



I'm pretty sure he said something along the lines of, "Shut up, there are 3D dinosaurs on a giant movie screen."

So began the worst week. Tried to go to work and my boss kicked me out. How I even drove home in literal blinding pain was beyond me. Misdiagnosed by a walk-in clinic, spent $100 on useless medication, and tried to go back to work. All the while, my eye got redder and more painful, to the point where I couldn't sleep and my eye clamped shut. Went BACK to the doctor, who referred me to an ophthalmologist, and that's where it all began.

Uveitis week. You've all seen my progress. So how have we progressed in Scotland?

One year later, and it's been 3 months since my last flare up. My eye still has scar tissue in it, but you can really only notice a difference in really bright or really dark spaces. One eye expands and contracts based on the lighting. The other just... stays. My vision has greatly improved. If I look at things through my bad eye, eventually it focuses and becomes clear. Just takes time. I have worn contacts regularly for over a month with no issues, and I've been off all medication and eye drops for almost 2.



Looking back on the past year, it's easy to try to blame someone for my eye. Blame the walk-in clinic for misdiagnosing me, making me suffer through painful uveitis with no medication for 4 days, possibly creating irreversible damage to my eye. Blame the ophthalmologist for never taking the extra 5 minutes to listen to me talk about what my eye was doing and rushing me out without thoroughly thinking about the consequences of weaning me off eye drops so soon. Blame the rheumatologist for putting me on useless medication and giving me hope that my eye would go back to normal. Blame myself for stressing out, causing me to become sick and my antibodies to become low, making me susceptible to illness. Blame God for giving me a crazy HLA-B27 gene and not healing me like I asked all those times.

Honestly, it's just one of those things. I don't know why it happened, but I'm thankful that I'm not where I was a year ago. Thankful that, even despite all the hospital visits and prescriptions and medication and pain, we still made it to Scotland and God has taken care of us in every single step. There's no way, through all of the medical and financial obstacles that we faced in those last 4 months in the States, that we would have made it here. I've done the math, I've looked at our bank accounts like a mental patient, and there's NO WAY.

So I'm thankful. We could have said we made it to Scotland all on our own, but uveitis just made it that much more difficult to do it on our own. It's a fantastic miracle and a complete testament on how, despite illness or stress or impending doom, God takes care of his own.

But anywho. Scotland is nice and pretty today. Right now, it's near 60 degrees, mostly sunny, and it feels heavenly. I have the windows open and everything. Ummm, and the sun goes down at 8:00! For those of you who have been in our flat, you know our living room/kitchen has these ginormous windows, and lucky for us, the sun shines into one of them the entire time it's up. I'm pretty sure while I've been writing this, I've gotten a sweet face sunburn from all the sun. Completely different from the weather 4 months ago. There are daffodils blooming everywhere and bunnies are hopping around in our front yard. The birds and seagulls are almost deafening during the day, and the lower humidity just makes it perfect.

I picked these from the front yard!

Bunnies! and more daffodils!

But I've found over the last few weeks that there are very specific things that I miss from America. I miss hole-in-the-wall barbecue restaurants with my grandparents and cookouts with friends. I miss Braves games and the sound of crickets and cicadas. I miss going to the beach with my sister and being sunkissed and warm. I miss people-watching in the French Quarter. I miss Target. I miss Community Coffee and Chick-fil-A. I miss driving and I miss shopping and being able to go wherever and get whatever I needed within an hour because I could just drive there, shop around, and drive whatever back to my house. Such is life, huh?

But Scotland is nice. I'm happy here. I'll leave you with some pictures to prove it.

double rainbow on south street!

got these from my mom today! Foxy sweater and matching socks :)

Carm

Spring!

You know how moms are really good at encouraging you to do something without telling you "you better do this or else you're in big, big trouble?"

Peny Turner told me it was time for a blog post.

It's been nearly three months since I've updated everyone on my life. It's been busy but not much has really happened.

January was dark and quiet in St. Andrews. Students were at home for winter holiday and the sun was coming up at 8:40 and going down at 3:55. This has taken some getting used to. Many people here told me to prepare myself for the depression that would come with all the dark after Christmas. Honestly, I think it's because they never left the house. Luckily for me, I had a job that actually got me out and doing stuff instead of sitting at home in the dark. Don't get me wrong, the fact that the sun came up TWO AND A HALF HOURS after I woke up and was down two hours BEFORE I went home was pretty sad, and what little sunlight you DID have was covered by cloud or rain or rainy cloud, but it didn't last long.

January was also a slower month at Mitchell's, which meant there were many nights where it was just me on the front of the house. For those of you who have worked in a restaurant, you understand the stress of not knowing if you're going to be busy and trying to handle everything from the bar to the deli to table service on your own. It was doable, just character-building, I guess.

The week before my birthday, Clayton and I took some holiday time and went to Glasgow to explore. We went to the University, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the Necropolis, and some old cathedrals that made me feel like I was living out the real-life version of the Sword in the Stone or Harry Potter. It was fun to get out of St. Andrews and go somewhere we've never been.

About to walk around on the Necropolis

inside the cathedral

this is Dumbledore's office, just to give you some perspective.

inside the main room of the Kevingrove - these faces!

February was busier, at work and in life in general. On my days off, Clayton and I started exploring around
the city of St. Andrews and making a point to walk somewhere we'd never been. We walked the entirety of the Lade Braes (until it had us traipsing through the woods and eventually into someone's field on the outskirts of town). We walked down the entire 2 miles of West Sands beach, crunching on seashells and watching people wind surf with skateboards? We walked outside of town until we saw Highland Cows and down part the Fife Coastal Path .

Trying to touch a critter. These sheep were not having it.

Did anyone else know how GINORMOUS Highland Cows were?!

Now it's March. The days are longer (sun up at 6:20 and down at 6:20!) and the sun has been out sooooooo much more. You don't realize how much the sun makes a difference in the weather until you've experienced windy Scotland at 50 degrees in the rain, the cloud, and the sun. Seriously, 50 degrees in the sun is like flip-flops and shorts weather here. I never thought I would say that, especially thinking about how cold I was the morning of Mardi Gras last year and it was 58 degrees.

But our trip down the Fife Coastal Path was nice. We went Sunday after church, and lucky for us, it wasn't too windy and was sunny and warm(er than usual). We walked/hiked for about 5 hours, past the Fairmont and St. Andrews Bay Golf Course, and got to see some crazy things. Giant pieces of the rocky coast out in the water, random black cows on the path (who would NOT let me touch them!), and a very old WW2-looking bunker that we were brave enough to crawl into and walk around in it! We made some plans for eventual camping when it gets a little warmer. Should be fun!

climbing around with his walking stick

this was right about the time my foot sank down into the mud

inside the WW2 bunker!

this is where we turned around and started back!

cow selfie. I had to moo at her to get her looking at the camera. Also note how high up we were. The cows climbed up there!

and then this happened. Do you see it?

he climbed up on the rock! WITH HIS WALKING STICK?!

We're also waiting for news on PhD. For those of you who don't already know, Clayton and I came here with the understanding that the 1-year degree he is getting now (MLitt) would help him prepare for eventual PhD work. However, he still has yet to be accepted into the program. His would-have-been supervisor is on research leave and can't take on any more PhD students at the time. This is all unofficial information heard through the grapevine, and nothing is definite. We haven't heard a no, but we haven't heard a yes. It's a scary place to be, especially considering the whole reason we came here is for PhD and we dropped everything and spent everything to get here. I am praying for a quick decision, and then some amazing scholarship to fund us while we're here (yes, I believe we're staying).

All that being said, I am continuing to look forward to our time here, especially when the sun comes up at 4:30am in May and all of the cheap traveling we have yet to do. Did you know we can fly to Dublin for £9.99? That's cheaper than a train ticket to anywhere. Should have some more adventures to blog about soon.

the lovely sunny view from the window right now!

I'll leave you with a funny story. I don't know about you, but I'm incredibly cheap and I hate change. When we first moved from Crutcher #2 (AKA Burnt Bathroom Apartment) into Crutcher #4 (AKA Exactly Crutcher #2 But With Minor Annoying Differences), our toilet paper holder almost immediately came out of the drywall in the bathroom. Like, literally, ripped a hole in the wall and we had nowhere to put toilet paper. We decided to try to glue it all back together one night, and the only adhesive we had in the house was Gorilla Glue for some reason. Long story short, the Gorilla Glue only held in half of the toilet roll holder and the other half continued to rip out more drywall, making it completely pointless. So, the Gorilla Glue stayed in the bathroom for the next 2 years. One day, I was brushing my hair with my probably 10 year old hairbrush (remember how I said I was cheap and hated change?) when it completely ripped in the middle. The actual brush popped out of the stem. Time for a new hairbrush, right? WRONG. I conveniently had an effective adhesive within 12 inches of my broken brush! So I Gorilla Glued it. Now, for those of you who don't know, Gorilla Glue is the color of honey and expands a ton when it dries. So, the next morning, I woke up to find honey-colored glue puffs all around my hairbrush. So, I peeled off those puffs, and ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to say that I still use that brush. Why buy a new one when you can Gorilla Glue the one you love?

we've been through so much, little brush.

Carm

Tis the Season

Last you heard, my parents were in town. Boy, did we have a good time.



We spent most of Christmas Eve wandering around St. Andrews, enjoying 40 mph winds but plenty of sun. We wandered all over, to the cathedral ruins, through St. Salvator's Quad, and then to the Old Course. Since nobody was out playing, and it was Christmas, we just walked right out onto it, to the little old bridge that Dad has been dreaming about walking on for years. Got some good pictures, and then had some fish and chips at the Tail End.



Christmas day, we went to church first thing before I had to run to work. Yes, Mitchell's was open for Christmas. Finished around 6 and made it home in time for Christmas dinner with the family. They apparently had been watching Star Trek all day. Lucky. 

Boxing Day, we decided to trek into Edinburgh to wander around... on one of the busiest shopping days of the year! We got some good deals and explored the town for a few hours before coming back.





Spent the last few days of their visit working. Such is the life of an adult, am I right? They had fun exploring on their own and we had dinners together. We went to church together Sunday and then sent them on their way. We had such a great time!

Now, we're back in the swing of things. Clayton is back in the Baillie room working on his PhD proposal and I'm working working working. January always makes me look back at the year and wonder if we even had a clue where we'd be today when it started.

January: Rang in the New Year with the Solomons and the Ryan/Scott Conglomerate, watching people light things on fire and push them across Bayou St. John. Went to Atlanta to spend time with family and friends, touring Turner field and seeing Sam and Danny's new grownup house. I turned 26.

February: MARDI GRAS. Did anyone else see the Bellatrix/Voldemort thing we had going on? It was beyond amazing. So good that strangers followed us around.

March: Went to the NOLA taping of America's Got Talent, and Clayton is definitely in the background of some of the shots with the judges. Got my hair cut even shorter thanks to Elise and Keeva. Went to Art in Bloom at NOMA and Kate got into Pratt. Started playing Mexican Train just about every week. Had a crawfish boil.

heidi klum!

pratt! pratt! pratt!

April: Uveitis. It hit in full force and I spent the next 4 months rotating between the ophthalmologist and rheumatologist, only for them not to find out what was wrong with me. Told our church (and everyone else) that we were moving to St. Andrews, Scotland for Clayton to work toward a PhD. Moved in with John and Lauren for the summer to save money (and wouldn't have been able to make it here without them).

one of many afternoons spent at Dr. Fitsmorris' office.

May: Said goodbye to The Lord's Church. One last hoorah with the Solomons and the Ryan/Scott Conglomerate in Pensacola. So so so much fun. Celebrated our 3rd anniversary. Had lots and lots of bloodwork done and watched my face blow up because of steroids and our savings go to doctor bills. Still had uveitis.

brunch!

creeper.

Matt totally makes this picture amazing!

3rd anniversary date!

June: Moved Trev and Kate far far away. Got some new glasses. Pigged out on random things late at night because Lauren couldn't sleep and was pregnant. Had Indian food for the first time. Started freaking out because of the lack of planning for our eventual move across the world.

July: Celebrated the 4th. My last CFA Appreciation Day. Cried hysterically just about every day because we were moving. Quit CFA and cried and cried and cried some more. Went to Kentucky for Jolynne's wedding. Came back, cried some more, and moved. Spent some time with my family in PCB and saw Emily in Graceville for the first time since graduation.

my kitchen ladies!

managers unite!

August: Spent some time in Atlanta with family and friends. Had a sweet going away party at the Ritchie's. Went to TWO Braves games. Started making plans for what eventually would get us our flat. Said goodbye to everybody, and I mean, EVERYBODY. Went to the airport, not knowing if we were getting on the flight, and got business class. Landed in Manchester without a place to stay, without transportation, without phones or GPS and just let things happen. Eventually made it to St. Andrews and stayed with Philip for 10 days. Moved in with Alex after that. Made a bunch of friends in the meantime.

atlanta airport!

September: Still no place of our own. Flat won't be ready until October. Spent most of this month being rejected for job after job after job. Watched the entire series of That 70s Show, the UK Being Human, and the first two seasons of New Girl, so that's something, I guess.

October: Moved in to our flat, even though it didn't have beds yet. Got internet and utilities set up. Watched our savings get dangerously low. Begin no-job-freakout mode. Watched the leaves change colors. Had an interview for a job with the University that was going to be perfect. Ended up not getting it. Spent a large portion of this month sitting at home watching Friends and becoming best friends with the contractors working on our flat. They were very Scottish and I had a hard time understanding them.

November: Got a job right at the last possible second before all of our money was going to be gone. Got to see my sister and Amanda and celebrate Melody's 30th birthday.

December: Got to experience our first snow, and went to Edinburgh for the first time. Watched Elf and ate Christmas pudding. Spent time with my parents and rang in the new year at work with kisses from Scottish men in kilts.

All in all, I'd say 2013 was pretty good. I'm currently sitting in the living room, watching it rain (again) and looking at the hills in the distance, thinking about all that it took for us to get here. God took care of a lot of the details and though it hasn't been ideal, we've been ok. Here's hoping 2014 is just as good (minus the uveitis).

Carm