Winter Weather Alert

On Friday, the BBC started to report that Scotland was in for a blast of winter weather over the weekend. The weather report on the telly showed a huge spot of white covering the entire northern part of the country and the reporter warned of "significant, heavy snowfall." She quickly followed this by saying that certain areas, especially the Grampians, may get as much as 5 centimeters of snow. This made me smile, of course, because I now know that 5 centimeters is a hair under 2 inches. In upstate New York, a forecast for two inches of snow would prompt people to break out the capri pants and lawn chairs! The forecast proved to be intimidating enough to all residents of the Kingdom of Fife, however, and all of John's various sports practices were cancelled straightaway.

The snow never materialized, of course, though we did get some misty, drizzly rain for most of the weekend. While the cancelled rugby match freed up a good portion of our weekend, we decided to stay close to home in case the roads did get a little slick anyway. And of course, our friends David McCabe and his daughter Franny have just arrived from the States for a week-long visit, and needed a bit of time to adjust to the time change. So, on Friday night we walked into town and had big helpings of noodles at a little noodle bar on cobblestoned Market Street. On Saturday David and David McCabe took the girls in for a bit of shopping and some fudge donuts, and on Sunday the kids played Playmobil while I watched the England v. Scotland rugby match and David and David sat across the dining room table emailing funny Youtube clips to each other. I did take the kids to the leisure center for an hour at the swimming pool, and David and David made it to Anstruther for some fish and chips takeaway for dinner, but otherwise we stayed close to home all weekend.

Earlier in the week, David and I had taken the kids to a playground across the street from our house, where a father and son were playing football. Without saying anything to us, John ran up and joined them, and in 10 minutes was good friends with the boy and begging us to let him go over to their house for a playdate. The father of the boy was American, and said that John should join up with them on Sunday morning for a football clinic at the university. John participates in a clinic on Fridays put on by the Junior Saints program, but this was a professional school that seems to be a bit more rigorous. John was keen to go because the little boy, Declan, was going to be there, and since the rugby tournament in Perth had been cancelled, we agreed to take him. When they arrived, David began an explanation of how John had been invited by a friend to join and that he wanted to try one session to see what it was like, but one of the coaches cut him off mid-sentence and motioned for John to just join in. It's always interesting to see how casual everyone is here about these kinds of things, compared to the States, where a child would have had to have a physical form signed by a doctor and an application form with insurance information and a permission slip signed by both grandparents under supervision of a notary public before being let out on an athletic field!

So, the weekend was a bit of a wash, both in terms of the weather and our energy level. But Emma was so happy that there was someone in the house to play with besides her brother (who has been her only playmate for two months straight now!) that I think she and Franny didn't even notice that we weren't doing too much. The week ahead calls for more rain, unfortunately, but when I went out for a run this morning, it was a fine and dry 40ish degrees (which is good, because after a weekend full of noodles and fried potatoes, I needed to go for a very long run!). So, we have our fingers crossed that the rain (and the snow!) will stay away!