Sailing SweetHaven: It's been a while.

It seems we are in a drought do boat work, before Christmas we had a good spurt of work we were getting done on SweetHaven until we got to the point of trying to acquire a chimney pipe for the wood stove which proved more complicated than we anticipated and everything else came to a stand still. Between work schedules, crumby, cold weather and holidays and family events in succession poor Sweets has been left to her own devices down at the marina, we check on her about once a week to make sure she's dry and the lines are secure.

This makes me sad and nervous. Nobody buys a sailboat thinking it will be left to rot in a boat yard and sitting stagnant in the marina but that is what happens about 90% of the time. (I don't know about the actual statistics but to me it seems pretty high.) I can blame the weather and lack of time and funds and holidays all I want but when it comes down to it, those are the excuses everyone else falls back on to rationalize why they,ve spent thousands of dollars on a boat they never use. We say "someday" but I'm afraid someday will never come and it scares me to death. It has to come! We need to give ourselves a kick in the pants and get going on our boat rehab because we have pretty much put all our eggs in this one floating basket. In a year from now we will be posted out of Whidbey Island and we have no recourse and no where else to go, Sweets needs to be ready.

Thanks to my grandparents we have a plan. A weeks from today the kids and myself (and my mom) and flying down to Orlando, Florida to stay with my grandparents in their vacation home there for 2 months. Poor Mark has to stay behind and work but with this two months without the family around, he is packing up the dog and bird, closing up the house to save on utilities and is moving on to the boat. Being there everyday for two months he will have uninterrupted time to work and get the massive list of projects at least underway if not completed. I'm feeling hopeful, this next two months needs to be productive we want to take our first big trip on her this summer.

So what have we been up to the past two months?

We we blessed enough to have my grandparents spend more time visiting with us before they took off to Florida. Unfortunately in this time Mac dropped their iPad and cracked the screen. So Mark ordered a new screen and replaced it for the second time. With all the iPad in this family, we have broken and replaced five screens in two years. Apple charges $300 for them to do this, we buy a new screen off ebay for $30 and do it ourselves (thanks youtube) after the fifth time we are getting pretty good at it.

Surviving wet and cold weather, which means a wet and muddy dog.

Plugging away at school that we are desperately behind in.

(Looking at parameciums through the microscope.)

Playing in a cardboard boat.

More computer repairs.

Valentines days.

Olympics! We don't like to pay for cable, we don't like regular TV at all. We watch our shows and movies off of Netflix and Hulu but we did want to watch some olympics. We splurged and bought a digital antenna to pick up NBC. Of course living in huge sticks where we do, our indoor antenna needed to be rigged up outdoors. After days of trying, this was the sweet spot, on top of a ladder and painting pole. Of course every time we get wind or rain (which is every day) we need to go and readjust it. But hey, Go Canada!