Getting back out there!

Kristen here - Today is Sunday 10/04/09. Tomorrow is my birthday!!! Ok, so now we have and end in sight! It looks like we're going to head out of here on October 20th. This weekend we went to my parents house for a birthday party. While there, we grabbed a bunch of our cold weather stuff. Hats, mitts and warmer clothes will be needed for the trip down. It's not too cold here right now, but when you get out on the ocean at night, it gets quite chilly! I'm envisioning the last time we headed down, and had to bundle up and use a heater in the cockpit at night! Of course that was in December and we'll be a little earlier than that this year.

The current plan is to head down to Washington DC and stay there for a while. Chris and I will work a bit from there, and we'll also bring the kids to the sights. I am super psyched to bring the kids around. They have never been to DC before and every time we pass by there, they want to stop and see stuff! Now we'll have 2 weeks or so to see everything! Why do I see boat school going out the window for that time?!

Oh, and that's the other thing. I ordered the kids school books for this year. I decided to use the same books that their school at home uses. I ordered used books from about 9 different suppliers, and they have been slowly trickling in through the mail. It looks like we'll end up doing about 30 weeks of school this year, which is much less than last year. It also looks like the public school books are MUCH simpler than the Calvert books they used last year. That was quite eye opening. So, I'm going to hang on to the Calvert books they didn't finish and use them if we finish the public school books early. They kids say they are excited to start school again, but when I gave them a project the other day I got a little bit of resistance. We were going the the Hudson 400 celebration, so I had each of them do a bit of research on Henry Hudson. They grumbled a bit, but still did the project.

On Friday, Kaitlin reminded me that I promised we would have her birthday party before we left. Next weekend we will be at the boat show, and the following weekend we will be at Chris's cousins wedding, and after that we are leaving. So the only free day was today! So on Friday we called her friends and invited everyone. It worked out well, and everyone was able to come. I'm so glad that Kaitlin got the chance to have a party at home with all her friends!

On Wednesday we leave for the boat show! The boat show is going to ROCK this year! A bunch of our cruising friends (sadly not all) are going to be there. And we're all staying on the same dock. We're going to be driving down, but we'll be staying on an empty boat. They kids are mega excited to see all of their cruising friends. It'll be like the Bahamas again! I really miss everyone and can't wait to see them again! Then we'll have to convince everyone to travel together again as well. Oh! and I'm going to buy the MEGA tub of Prisim Polish! That stuff is awesome!

We'll be at the boat show until Monday and then it's back to work. The following weekend is Chris's cousin's wedding, his 20 year high school reunion AND his Mother's birthday. That is going to be quite the weekend!

Now we're just going through the list in our heads of everything we need to do before we pull away from the dock. We have to get supplies that are easy to get with a car, stock up on food, and get project supplies. Oh yea, we never did get all those projects finished. We did however get our cap rail sanded and painted. Thanks to my dad for doing the sanding!!!!! I got 2 coats on the back half of the boat and 4 coats on the front. We need to have 6 coats total on both the front and back sections. Last week was rainy, so no painting got done. Hopefully this week will be sunnier!

So I think things are going to start getting a little crazy, but in a good way, from here on. I'll try to post more often as our cruising life gets back in order!