Creeping forward...

The big girl has returned safely from her adventures. She once again successfully navigated dual airports and a change of planes with no mishaps other than wasting a bit of cash on Tiger Beat style rags starring "The Greatest Boy Band of ALL TIME, One Direction!!". I'm proud of her new found travel confidence and as to the obsession with the latest boy band du jour, I am looking at it as a right of passage. I survived my obsession with The Police, she'll survive as well.

 I now have a bit of toddler wrangling help while Mark continues working on installs on the boat, which means I might actually be able to finish a blog post. Kitty doesn't want to let Maura out of her sight because she is pretty much convinced that Maura has been circling over head in a "hair pain" for the past month. So glad to have Maura back and not just because she is so darned helpful with the wee one. We missed her terribly, but I think having age appropriate adventures without the parents is important. So she is back with an appreciation of US history thanks to a trip to D.C. and a newly discovered love of kayaking thanks to camp. And I am back to the blog...

Not the greatest of shots but the point and shoot was handy. The color is accurate

Mark continues to slowly but surely install the lights and fans. Its a painfully slow process for several reasons. The first excuse, er reason is the heat. When you are born and bred in Scotland you do not easily adapt to temperatures in the upper 90s f. Working inside a boat where the temperature goes up another 10 -15  degrees will slow you down even further. Mark has been a real trooper though and has continued to run new wiring for the lights and fans, build mounting bases for our reading lamps and install them with very little complaint. The main thing left on the main salon light installation is to wire the lights into a dimmer switch. We need a dimmer switch so we can properly adjust the lights for times when we need to throw some Barry White on the stereo. Who am I kidding? There is no Barry White on Ceol Mor, only Barney that blasted singing purple dinosaur. Dimmable lights will still be a nice feature to have despite the lack of Mr. White.

Another big reason for the slow down has been that Mark's job has actually been requiring him to work. It was easy to keep up the 3 days of work, 4 days of boat work while his work project has slowed down. Now things are getting busier at work and Mark has had to put in 4 days of work a week (egads!) and had to go to Paris for a week for work. I toyed with the idea of Kitty and I tagging along to Paris with him until I looked at the airfares and realized the cost was almost exactly the same as a new dinghy. I want a dinghy more at this point in time than a trip to Paris so Kitty and I kept the home fires burning while Mark got to do a Les Miserables turn in France.

 I should have a photo of the beautiful macarons that Mark brought home from Paris but they were filled with chocolate ganache. The only person who loves chocolate more than me is Kitty. The macarons did not stand a chance.

Mark's next work trip looks to be to Norway. While Norway is the land of my grandfather, I do not feel the need to celebrate my heritage with either pickled herring or boiled and dried reindeer heart. While that trip will mean a further delay in the refit, think of the calories and money saved.

We are hoping to go out for a mini shakedown cruise in the next few weeks before Mark heads to Norway. Keep your fingers crossed that the Gulf stays storm free because you know you want to see lots of photos of....water. Brown gulf water. And rigs. 15 months to go...

Nothing to do with anything, just love Kitty's obsession with her tiger hat. She wears this all the time, preferably with nothing else.