We’ve been invited to a wedding, which is tomorrow and we’re very excited, but also a bit nervous about that! It will be at the Deerness Hall, but the Dance only starts at 9pm, so that’s way past our bedtime, but it will be great to see a wedding! Also, Maleah and me went on my favourite bike tour (long way round to the shops) and after our shopping - this week’s paper (with a mention of our children in the Chess report!) we had a hot chocolate, watching the cars go by and the starling feeding it’s babies, who are hidden in an old petrol pump!

We’re slowly saying goodbye to people, which is very sad! There was a huge beautiful concert for Thelma Holt, the marvellous head teacher, and we got a very long and nice mention! A little embarrassing, but also very touching. I don’t know how Thelma managed not to cry - I was very close various times.
But it was also impressive to see how musical St. Andrews is! The orchestra was amazing, playing a part of Beethoven’s 9th symphony and several teenage boys standing up and singing amazing solos!

Also, we’re planning a farewell party at the Deerness Hall. It will be great to see all our friends again, and then we will have to start packing seriously! Matt is very nervous about getting everything in the small car we are using. Once we are in Edinburgh, we will exchange it with our house swappers for our larger car. But getting all our things there might be tricky... I’m going by plane with the kids and hoping to take an extra suitcase so hoping we will manage!

Unfortunately Matt’s not on holidays yet, as there’s just too much work to be done for his work and he’s too good a guy to just let his colleagues out in the rain... But he still takes some time out to fly kites with us, which we all love!





We cannot believe that we forgot to bring our kites out earlier! Nanouk’s getting very good at flying it and Maleah is just learning to guide hers. Unfortunately we lost Mim and Jeremy’s kite! I was ripped out of Nanouk’s hands at the beach and blew out onto the ocean. Nanouk tried to catch it but we called him back, so we had to watch it fly towards Scotland Mainland and are still waiting for a newspaper report about a UFO sighting...
Luckily it’s Maleah’s birthday soon, so the postman is being awaited eagerly!

Something else that fascinates us is the speed at the mowing of the fields. Matt’s hay fever really caught up with him, which we understood, as all the fields were full of grass, but now, all the farmers are working together mowing it all at an amazing speed! Fascinating to watch! And the hay fever is getting less with every tractor we see taking the silage away!

This might be our last (or second to last) update from Orkney, depending on the stress we feel next week! We’re loving all your comments about our Happy in Orkney Films! And whenever we watch them, it makes us happy - which we can really use, when we get sad about leaving or stressed about packing!