It's been a fun week!

Marcia and Rutger arrived on Friday afternoon, at almost the exact time as our Mat Hem delivery, so that was perfect timing. The Aspö Marathon was on Saturday morning. I'm not in full running condition, so I ran only 7 laps, which is one-third of a marathon. I am happy to report that our community raised over 30,000kr for a children's cancer charity!

We went out in our boat in the afternoon to have a picnic at a nearby skerry. Rutger is an experienced boater and he gave me plenty of advice. We also went to Nämdöbote to climb the observation tower. It was a great day.

We ended up having a family shift change: when they left, Marcia and Rutger's kids Tim and Camille came out to spend a couple of days with us. The good weather held, so we took another boat trip and the girls topped up their tans. Annika and Olle came over for dinner and we all had a great time.

The next day, Peter and Jeanette (along with their son Niklas and adorable granddaughter Noelle) gave us all a ride to Nämdö for lunch. We got to have one last visit at the venerable Guns Livs, the grocery store on Nämdö which has been sold to a still-unknown buyer. That's bittersweet for archipelago residents; Guns has become a bit tired over the years, so a bit of investment is needed. But it's been the the same family for many years.

Sadly, we have to leave a few days early as I had a work commitment crop up, so we are ordering an early taxi boat for tomorrow. But we'll be back for a long weekend as soon as we can arrange it.

Lots of photos of all this fun are now available in a Flickr album.

Settling in

We flew in on Sunday because Ollie's dog sitter was busy on Saturday (and we won't leave him with anyone else!) That gave us a nice evening with Rutger and much of the day Monday to shop in Gustavsberg at our leisure. The house was in fine shape and I started on my little projects.

One task was to install the new footstool cover we ordered from Bemz. It fit really well and is pretty funky, as you can see from the before and after photo here.

We also got the boat back into the water and I installed a new bilge pump that would turn on automatically when the water accumulation gets too high. I also made little tops for the deck railing poles (in Swedish, stolphatts, or "pole hats"). I was going to buy some at the building store but they were clean out. Perhaps that's a good thing because I found a whole new world online of deck railings and pole caps. That will be worth a blog post on its own one day.

Marcia and Rutger are coming this afternoon to spend the weekend, and tomorrow is the Aspö Marathon. I'm in fair shape, so I'll do a few laps, but not a full one! Stay tuned for photos and updates.

Our summer return

It's time for our official summer holiday! We leave this weekend for two lovely weeks on our island.

Ollie's back with his dog-sitter, and everyone's happy about that. I have a few projects at our bus, but nothing too demanding. Stay tuned for more updates on island life.

June's weather

Here's the June recap. We appear to have hit the nicest days when we arrived on the 17th! There was a bit of rain when we were there, but a lot more fell earlier in the month. We could certainly use more, though.

I added the sound meter. It's fun to see graphically the changes in the house when we show up.