Catching Butterflies with Darth Vader

On Friday Hagos and I drove to Scotland to stay with my folks to celebrate my dad's birthday. I made my dad and Hagos identical birthday cakes the night before and the car smelled amazing all the way up the road. Hagos had woken up with a stinking cold in the morning and we weren't sure we were doing the right thing continuing with our plans, but we'd been really looking forward to the weekend and didn't want to cancel. On Saturday we drove to Edinburgh to stay with our friends, Pete and Lyns, and their kids, Nate and JJ. Above is Hagos with his birthday cake and candles (that spelled his name) and two very interested parties sitting next to him.
A tradition, of sorts, has evolved whereby we exchange Christmas presents the first time we see each other after Christmas, so what with birthday presents and Christmas presents there were a lot of presents flying around. This is Nate as Darth Vader. I'm not sure who was most excited about this present between the kids and the adults. We got JJ Elefun, a game where a little elephant blows butterflies from his long trunk and you have to catch them with nets. I got a piano book that I've already been playing, some of my favourite hot chocolate from Coco Chocolate, a chocolate shop in Ed, and some polar bear post it notes.

Lyns and I tried to sneak upstairs to play piano, and we managed about fifteen minutes before being rumbled by the boys. As both Pete and Hagos were ill, Lyns and I took the boys out both days to give the big boys a rest, and to let the little boys expend energy. On Sunday we went to the museum and Nate showed us round.Nate as a spaceman.
From the museum rooftop.
An exhibition of Scottish Country Dancing in the foyer. I used to love Scottish Country Dancing when I was a kid. The dancing teacher called me his 'little sausage'.
We went out, briefly, on Saturday night for Hagos's birthday meal, to Viva Mexico, on Coburn Street (Cockburn?). We were joined by our other friends Rik and Kev and Sam. It would have been nice to have drunk margaritas into the night, but Hagos and Pete were both suffering by the end of the meal so we went home instead.

The above photo shows the boys watching Tom and Jerry on Hagos's phone (or, "Thomas Jelly" as JJ called it - "I want to watch Thomas Jelly," was a phrase he said a lot). I don't think either of them had seen it before and they thought it was hilarious and giggled all the way through. Hagos and I have wondered why Tom and Jerry is no longer shown on TV, whether it's now considered too violent for kids. It's difficult to tell. We all concluded it hadn't done us any harm!