Time at home just flying away

Wow, it's hard to believe that it has been nearly a month since the last blog update. Hopefully those of you who regularly read the blog will forgive us for such a long break, while we are at home from the Logos Hope.
The past 4 weeks have been a fantastic time of meeting up with family and friends and having some good R&R.
The first week we were all together, we went up to Crieff Hydro for a few days courtesy of our best friends Colin & Alison. Crieff is a lovely country hotel and we had a great lodge in the woods. Our kids all enjoyed the kids club and swimming in the pool every day. I enjoyed cooking great meals for us all and the highlight of the week was going quad biking for an hour through forests and streams, up hills and into quarries. It was brilliant.




















We then had a week with lots of appointments with doctors, dentists, hairdressers, a hospital and other mundane activities. We also enjoyed lots of meals at friends homes, sharing about our time on Logos Hope and just catching up.
Thanks to a very generous gift from friends, we were able to take off for a weeks holiday in Portugal.









































We just went to get some sunshine and sit on the beach, but unfortunately the sun chose not to shine on many of the days we were there so actually it wasn't nearly as warm and sunny as we hoped. Still it was nice to all just get away together as a family.
As soon as we got back home, and the washing was done, we were back in the car next day to travel down to Steve's parents in England.
We had a fantastic few days in Merseyside as it was hot and sunny and I enjoyed sharing my birthday (30/5) with my nephew who was 12. This is the first time we have been together for our birthdays and we had a lot of fun. Along with the grandparents, my brother's family and ourselves, we went to something called "Ariel Extreme" a very high ropes assault course which most of us really enjoyed except sister in law Gill who didn't want to go on becauase she was terrifed but ended up going on to help Kara who was on her own on the bottom level. Of course, once she got on, Kara perked up and took off, leaving Gill behind and not enjoying it at all.

We rounded the day off with a fantastic bbq in the sun.

We are now visiting Heather's brother and family in the north of Scotland for a couple of days before returning to Edinburgh where we will be staying put until we return to the ship in London on 15th June.

We hope to catch up with many other friends from the church in the next 10 days and then we will be waving goodbye to Edinburgh for the next year.
The kids have enjoyed being away from the ship but Heather and I have not enjoyed trying to do home schooling and have great appreciation now of all teachers.
Hopefully I will be able to add some pictures in the next couple of days to brighten up this entry so if you are reading this with just text, look again soon to see the pics.