Hols: the finale, a mega-miscellany.

Time to get back to concentrating on work. But a last (for now) look through all the holiday photos has been fun (for me anyway). One of the things I like best about photos is that, were they to be believed, life would always be sweetness and light. I don't take photos of the kids bickering, or crying, or of the dirty laundry or the dishes. In my photos we're all in a permanent state of bliss, and, actually, I'd rather remember the bliss anyway, so that's okay.

Hols Part 3: Lots of Socialising.

My parents, who also have a caravan, came for most of our first week. We didn't tell the kids they were coming and they were amazed to see Grandma and Grandpa (and dog) arriving.
Graham and Penny are a lovely couple from Yorkshire that we've got to know as they come at the same time as us. They had six dogs with them. The one in the picture is Croft, a huge but young and energetic Chesapeake Bay Retriever. (The black one is my parents' dog Vida). These six dogs are thoroughly trained and we have a long running competition to see who's better behaved - their dogs or our kids!
In our middle week, three caravanning families from our church joined us. That meant we had ten children among us to roam around having fun. This allowed us grown ups plenty of chat-time:
Him Indoors has an uncle and aunt in Oban who have a bed and breakfast. They're into cycling and cycled out to see us one day:
Him Indoors's brother, sister-in-law and niece joined us for our third week:

Hols Part 2: A Room (on wheels) With A View

In the six summers we've owned our caravan we've gone to this place (a bit north of Oban) four times. Here's one of the main reasons. The view from the window each day changes constantly with the light, the weather and the time of day. Sometimes the island of Mull disappears from view altogether. You can often see the weather coming before it gets to you! It's impossible to do it justice with a camera as it is really a 180 degree-plus panorama. My camera has a "stitch" facility but I've no idea how to use it! And yet I keep trying to capture the view anyway. Here are a few of my feeble attempts.

Hols Part 1: Transports of Delight

Sadly this was stuck to a stand and the engine wasn't running, but at least the blue light was flashing.
Okay, so the rock jumping wasn't actually me, but our friend Nathan. What a hero!
Walking was a common means of transport on our holiday. In this picture the tiny dot on the path is Youngest Child who was having a bit of a sit down protest, as she wasn't keen on going for a walk that day. She got over it though.

Nine of us (Him Indoors' brother and his wife and daughter were there during our third week) went a bike ride to the Go-Karting, which I LOVED.

Two boats but I only got shot of "driving" the wee one.

Setting off to come home yesterday, feeling very sad.