Neil, Jess and the Bhoys 2018

 Yeah, this better not be a sign of things to come. Here's round 2 of describing this summer's heroes.  Not in order  - you can read them in any order you like, but then if you've already read the one about Malcolm, you're cheating. Despite his faces below, he has been a pretty good sport about this whole process.  He was really good when I took him to Rite Aid and he and the guy tried to get a good picture of him.  The trip to CVS will be the fourth attempt at getting this correct.  They have been real ball busters with this one.  The background is too dark.  His face is too light, the face is more than 1 3/8'' large.  The face is more than 5/8 from the top... Fucking seriously? Jess says he looks like me in all of these pics and that every single one of those faces is mine.  I'm not sure what she's talking about.  I think he may be rolling his eyes in one of these. That's "My boy."  Our first.  Despite all...

"Let's play charades...I go first!" This phrase kicks off almost every single dinner that we have.   Often lunch and breakfast too. It occurred to me that some of the readers don't really know the boys, you may have seen pictures or you hear a story now an again, second hand through a family member or friends.  I think to fully appreciate the blog, you probably need to have a better idea of who your heroes will be be over the next few months. That's Malcolm. Yes, Malcolm in the middle.  At least for a little while longer.  And right now, he is the the typical middle child.  He needs lots of attention, and to be honest, he does kinda get screwed sometimes.  He can be as tough as he looks in the picture above (the beer actaully looks like it could be his), or as sweet he is in the three below.  He can be your buddy or your worst enemy. That really depends on the day, if he's just woken up, if you took his tablet, if you gave him...

June 10th: It looks like our first phase of planning (at least spots that we are staying) is complete.  It used to be that we did it all at once, lodging, attractions, and plans for driving....not anymore.  It's really hard to find time to do anything  - time just to speak when we have these three.  Now that the cat is out of the bag, Jess is wiped at the end of the day and time where she would have been planning is often occupied by business stuff.  And, before you ask why I don't do the planning, that's not the deal.  I'm just as exhausted with work, the ride home has been a nightmare lately, especially on Fridays.  There are way too many people on the roads here.  They are texting, not paying attention and there are almost always two to three accidents on the way home, especially Fridays.  It would go a lot better if you were allowed to drink while driving.  I don't think one beer would be so bad.  It's taking close to two h...

Preparations... Hopefully this is it.  The final pieces of the puzzle are being set for the trip. The very last night is set not too far from the airport so that we can get up and get out to the airport without any issues.  I think we need to be there by 7 am for the flight home.  That is going to be torture.  Neil and Malcolm will probably be up, but not the Dunc-Truck. We will be spending two nights in  -------, in the far north of the mainland.  I was hoping that we would have this sorted by now, but apparently not.  Many of the places up there have a minimum stay of five nights, so we are going to have to do some searching for something cool.  I was hoping to stay right on the water. My goal is to come back when everyone is old enough so that they can carry all their own stuff and we will hike and do lots of outdoors activities on the islands, inner and outer Hebrides, the Shetlands and Orkneys.  I'd like to be able to hike a bunch...