Apr 13, 2011-by Deason

yuck, pond scum on my bait!

Fishing in Florida is fun. My Grammy has a condo. In the back yard is a pond, not a little one, a big one, and we fish in it. Yesterday I caught four large mouth bass. My Grammy caught none. I used rubber worms as bait. The hooks we used are not weedless, and we had a hard time getting the hooks out of the fish.

Apr 12, 2011

We met some of our Florida friends at the Naples Botanical Gardens. It is absolutely beautiful, it has 4 or 5 different gardens which are broken down by different regions of the world. They even have a kids garden. In the kids garden they have a tree house, an enclosed butterfly garden, and lots of different plants that the kids can water themselves. Dahlia would only water her feet, but the kids really did seem to enjoy it as much as I did.

Apr 11, 2011

I feel so much better when it is warm, maybe it is just the fact that we can get outside, or maybe it is because we don't have to wear multiple layers of clothing (I hate doing laundry, less clothes means less laundry), it is really all of those reasons, but I just feel good. It won't be long before the Cape starts to get warm again too, I can't wait!

The kids like the warm weather too, both of them could spend all day in the pool. Dahlia has no fear, she just throws herself into the water. She holds her breath, and keeps her eyes open and jumps into the water as if she is going to swim across the pool to her brother. I wish there was a way for her to realize the dangers of the water without actually letting her drown a bit. I obviously won't let her drown, but we are just going to have to teach her to swim, and fast!

Apr 10, 2011

We had a pretty good flight. We sat next to an older gentleman, who had the aisle seat. When he saw us coming towards him, he put his head down as if he knew we were going to be his seat-mates. Once we reached him I politely said "excuse me...we are sitting with you", he gave me the most dramatic huff and eye roll I have experienced since high school. Well, the kids were fantastic, and when we landed he spoke to us for the first time by saying with a surprised tone "they were good". I just said "yup".

I can understand how someone may not be psyched to be seated next to a woman and her two kids, but he was a little dramatic for my tastes. I did find it amusing that every other kid on the plane seemed to have a fit at one point or another, and even the dog who was traveling in a bag in front of us kept barking the whole flight. It made my two seem even better.

I was excited to get some pictures of the cape from the plane, usually every time we fly there is too much cloud cover, but today was nice.

Apr 7, 2011

The boat should be in the water sometime next week, it just needs some fresh bottom paint, and a new coat of wax. Hopefully, there won't be any delays, otherwise we might be temporarily homeless. Fortunately, the kids and I will be in Florida for the recommissioning, and any stressors related to putting the boat back in the water will be on Chris. I personally didn't like watching the boat being taken out of the water, it was hard watching everything we own being swung in the air right in front of our faces.......insurance or not! I do feel guilty leaving, but Deason's birthday gift from my parents this year was a plane ticket to Florida, and I didn't want him to go alone!
It has finally been getting nice out here, I don't dread going outside anymore. We actually got outside today and went to the playground with some friends, and we didn't have to leave because we were too cold!

Mar 20, 2011

These pictures were from the moon rise the other night. It was beautiful!
I haven't mentioned the boat in a while, we had talked about doing a re-power, and we decided against it. For a number of reasons we decided to keep the hybrid system. We never had a problem with the electric motors, we just kept having problems with the generator over heating. Once we finally got that problem fixed (at the end of last summer), we decided that we should give this system the benefit of the doubt since it did get us from Florida to Massachusetts. The other reason is that we just can't afford to do it. It would be a very expensive, frivolous undertaking. The system is a good one, but for us being new at this whole "living aboard" lifestyle, whenever there was a problem we immediately pointed the finger at the hybrid system, because of course, it couldn't be that we were inexperienced??!!
So, instead we are getting a water-maker, doing some other small projects, and hopefully increasing our cruising funds. The boat is scheduled for recommission in April, and we move back on board May 1st. We will stay this summer at MacDougalls, and hopefully start heading south mid-September. Hopefully, it will get a bit warmer before we move aboard, I am getting real tired of the cold weather!

Mar 13, 2011

It has been a while since I last made a post! There really hasn't been that much to say, although, today is Deason's 9th birthday! I can't believe how quickly these years have gone by, he is almost in double digits! Happy Birthday!