January 28th Marmaris marina, Turkey.

I'm sure that everyone has given up on reading this blog as we have not entered anything for a couple of months!! Well maybe now that the holidays are over I can be more productive for everyone.

We left Kilkea II here in Marmaris in the evening on the 6th of December on a bus for Istanbul. We are really getting too old for a 14 hour bus ride all night! Not a lot of fun. We spent three days in Istanbul and enjoyed the Blue Mosque, Topkapi palace and just wondering around the old part of the city. The population of the city is officially seventeen million but more likely over twenty. We then flew up to London for the night then back to Canada through Calgary to Vancouver arriving on the 11th.

The Blue Mosque

The first three weeks we spent in our house as it had not been rented since September and manged to do a clean up of the yard and fix some items in the house. It was very strange living in the house as we had borrowed a couple of beds from Henning and Linda and the kids laid in some groceries, kitchen utensils, and bits of furniture. We augmented these by bringing up some pieces from the our power boat. My mother joined us for ten days over the Christmas period and it was great to have a big house to live in with the fire place going which made for a nice cosy and warm time. The day we moved into the house it was shown by the property management company and rented for the second of January, so on New Years day we had to move out of the house and back down to the boat. Not so much room there but warm and comfortable.

Our front yard at Christmas

The best thing about being back home was visiting the children and grand children. The grand babies were wonderful and growing at an alarming rate especially to their parents dismay. There ages now are seven months, fourteen months and two and a half. Our grandson Eamon is the oldest and just loves trains so we spent many days playing and watching him play with all his train stuff. The youngest is Callum who at seven months just wants to get going and play with all his brothers stuff and cannot figure out how to get his body moving. I think he will be on the move soon and probably will be walking if not running by the time we are home in the summer. Our grand daughter Elise is walking all over the place but Bailey the dog keeps good track of her. We had the pleasure of babysitting her for four days while Nevan and Sarah had a short holiday to Las Vagas. Lots of fun and we got to live on land again!!

Eamon Grandad and Callum Nevan and Elise

It was great to see so many of our friends again but after six weeks it was time to leave. We flew to London then Dusseldorf, Germany to, what else, visit the boat show there. Had a good time and met up with many old friends from the EMYR. Jens and Valerie picked us up and we spent a couple of days with them in Frankfurt before leaving for Istanbul and Marmaris. This time we flew to Dalaman (the closest airport to here) rather than attempt another bus ride!!!!!
It is nice to be back on Kilkea II and find all is well with her. The weather is warm with clear blue skies and we can walk around in a tee shirt and shorts again.

Natalie and Marian on Kilkea