Two weeks of pure bliss

June 2nd, 2014. The day I was waiting, planning, dreaming and looking forward for almost four months. My family decided to cross the seas and spend two weeks with us in the UK. My parents had this trip long overdue. So they sorted their schedule out, pulled in my brother and family and planned out a mini vacation. And needless to say we were beyond excited to host them.
Lo and behold the day came after all the wait and our usually quiet house of two, filled with the laughs of six and the giggles of a toddler!

Since we had just two weeks to spare, we squeezed in two day trips to London and a five day escape to Scotland. London trip was the standard one.We quickly hopped through places like London eye, Madamme Tussauds, Regents park, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the sorts.

Picture perfect

All of us

At Regents park

After the shenanigans in London, we packed our bags and took a train to Scotland. Prakash had booked an exceptionally beautiful lakeside Victorian cottage for the seven of us. It was in a small town called Stronachlachar, around 40 miles from Glasgow!

Our cottage. Beauty!

The place was utterly remote, the nearest shops being fourteen miles far at Aberfoyle. Good thing we hired cars. The country side had a sense of calmness and throughout the drive from Glasgow to cottage; we enjoyed the visual delight of the place with still water lakes and wide stretches of lush greenery and cattle.

Scotland was beyond beautiful, although the weather wasn't as merry as the seven of us.  It was drizzling all through, with short but frequent appearance of Mr. Sun! Something we didn't know about Scotland was the midges(little flying insects). Those little fellas bite hard!

Beautiful walkway near our cottage

Never leave scotland without visiting a distillery, isn't? We aren't the ones to break the rules anyway, so we made our way to a nearby distillery, much to the delight of the guys!

The bad boys in the distillery. Brewed for over 25 years!

Since we had a toddler along, we chucked the idea of travelling around too much and rather be in the cottage or see places within five to ten miles radius, which was perfect because the weather wasn't co-operating anyway.

Us on the pier

Diya being a DIVA!

We also went for a 45 minute ferry ride which was absolutely breathtaking!!The visuals were beautimous.

On June 11, 2014 the little one turned ONE and prakash turned "Ancient" :D Yes, my niece and Prakash were born on the same day. That calls for double celebration, doesn't it? It sure was. We all dolled up in traditional Indian wear, cut cakes and took many many pictures. It was the perfect day.

Diya turns ONE.

After all the celebrations, we packed our bags and made our way back to Reading. Two weeks flew by so quickly! We laughed till our stomachs hurt, took umpteen pictures, filled our hearts with laughter, happiness and just pure bliss. Nothing beats some quality family time!

I missed them so much that I made a little video montage of the two weeks. Here it is!

"The love of a family is life's greatest blessing" 

Missing them!