Aye, Love Scotland

I'm sorry, what's that you say? That doesn't look like a picture of Scotland? Jake, in the Emergency Room? What? Yeah, you're right. But it's relevant to our Scotland trip, and you'll begin to understand why.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I got a call from the school nurse, "Jake says he swallowed something and he's saying that it feels like it's stuck in his throat. You might want to take him over and get him checked out." Okay. Don't panic. Don't panic. The entire drive to the school I'm imagining all the things he might have swallowed and all the surgical methods that will have to be employed to remove it. I get to the school and Jake takes his time coming to the front office.

"Do you know why I'm here, Jake?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where we're going now?"

"Yes."

Then we begin to discuss what it is he swallowed. "I didn't mean to swallow it."

"Well it didn't fall into your mouth on accident. Why did you put it in your mouth to begin with?"

"I don't know." Well, putting in his mouth was without a doubt going to help him figure it out. Nothing like rolling something around on your tongue to solve a mystery. It was probably the *Aha! I know what it is* that caused him to swallow it.

"What was it? Where did you find it?"

"It was on the floor in my class." Gross. "It was, like, this little rod with some triangles on the end."

Are you all just dying to know what it was? Yeah, well so was I. So we get to the emergency room, which always makes me think how funny it is how slowly things move in an Emergency room. We finally get our X-ray and while we wait for the doctors to deliberate, I discuss with Jake what they might have to do to get the rod out, like pumping his stomach or even surgery. Now, these are things that we have talked about before because this was not Jake's first ingestion. Granted, the last one was when he was not quite two, so he doesn't remember it, but we've told him the story in an effort to prevent further ingestions. Fail.

The doctor finally comes back and tells me that we can "probably take a conservative approach on this." They hand me a toilet basin and send us on our way, telling me to bring him back in the next day if nothing "turns up."

Whaddayano? Wednesday comes and nothing to show for it. Back to the ER. The X-ray shows that it has moved into the large intestine. Good to know it's moving, bad realizing the rate. As we pack the toilet basin in our suitcase I think to myself This is going to be a great trip. Looking back on it, I realize poor Jake didn't stand a chance on this trip. The kid could have pooed out gold bricks and we still would have been irked because we had to dig through it to find what he swallowed. Add on top of that his frequent fits and you would think I would rank this as one of the worst trips ever. However, I am learning to look past all of that. If I don't, we may never take Jake on another vacation again. Long story short: two sifted poops later, it finally came out on Friday and we never did figure out what it was. Now, if you stayed with me this long, here is your reward: some pictures from our trip. Enjoy!

When we got to Scotland on Thanksgiving, the castle looked like this.

By the time we left on Sunday, it looked like this, and it was still snowing.

Here's a few pictures from our visit to the castle.

And here's some pictures from the Royal Yacht Britannia

Yes, that was the Queen's desk. These next ones are from our wanderings, which we did A LOT.

If you're a dog lover, and you're curious as to why we wandered around trying to find and photograph this statue, click here.

And, last but not least, can any of you figure out why I took pictures of these last two places?

I'll tell you in my next post! Hehehe. That wouldn't be so bad if I didn't go months at a time between posts. Oh well, gotta keep my readers coming back for more.