Sheep Guarding Llama

In our fourth episode we start off with Dominica, Emily, Madeline and I going to the nearby ruins of ancient Aptera to learn about the Minoan civilization that was there as well as later Greek and Roman and even Ottoman settlements. The girls discover their first amphitheater, as well.

Then the next morning, Emily, Madeline and I drive all of the way south across the island to the almost inaccessible Glyka Nera, or sweet-water, beach where ice and snow melting high in the White Mountains turns into an underground river and bubbles up through the rocks on the beach to flow into the Libyan Sea. We had quite the adventure as the girls had never done a real hike before and were not very prepared for the terrain or the exposure in the hot Greek summer.

After being in Athens and Santorini, we bring the girls to the island of Crete where Dominica and I (and Liesl and Luciana) lived in 2016 and loved so much. We arrive first in the capital of Heraklion and then travel to our rental home in Aptera and we visit the city of Chania (Xania) and go south to the village of Palaiochora to hit our first beach on Crete.

Our second video from TakeFlight is out, this time instead of the city we our on the very, very touristy island of Santorini where we explore Kamari, Oia, Thira (or Fira, Thera, etc.) and hit the beach, the towns, go shopping, see the sunset and take the ferry!

Tuesday. A more or less quiet day at work today. The big news for the day is that after a lot of work teaching myself video editing and teaching myself the OpenShot non-linear video editor I finally completed the first episode of Take Flight for YouTube, which is up on a new channel, and got it posted! I am incredibly excited about this one. It was a ton of work and this is something that I have been wanting to do for a really long time.

The first series being made is the “Grand Tour 2” created from the footage from taking Emily and Madeline to Europe in 2019.

First episode: Athens, Greece. Please watch, like, and subscribe!

And, of course, the regular daily vlog as well.

The new gutters got installed today to the part of the roof where we had the roof removed on Sunday. So now the work on the roof is finished and it looks great. The space in front of the house looks even better than I imagined that it would. I loved those pillars, but the house is so much more open now. It looks so much more open.

Now we just need to paint the house. Without the brick of the pillars covering a huge portion of the front of the house, the painted wood is twice as prominent so the update of new paint will go even farther.

Monday.

Finally everyone is back to the office today and the huge, overwhelming workload is done. So many people have been sick for so long that it’s made it so hard to keep up. So I actually got a chance to catch my breath today, which I really needed.

Dominica had to go to the dentist today to get a crown fixed. Dungeons & Dragons was supposed to be tonight, but Kat had some work come up this evening so we had to cancel for tonight.

Burger King Impossible Whoppers for dinner tonight. The kids played video games tonight, Minecraft, Beat Saber, and Liesl and I started Dragon Age.

Did some late work after the kids went to bed.