Kuching, Malaysia

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for us on Savannah.  After leaving Brunei, we took a quick detour back to Labuan and then headed to Miri, our first port in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia.  We stayed there a few days (long enough to see their fantastic Sunday Market) and then did a 3 day, two night passage to Kuching. 

We found some friends along the way.

The overnight passages in this part of the world can get a bit hairy.  There are plenty of ships around, but then you add to it the oil rigs and the high probability of logs floating in the water and it can make a captain’s butt pucker pretty good.  Luckily, we managed to traverse the waters with no incidents to speak of and fairly calm seas.  They got a bit rolly, but considering we were supposed to be going upwind, we felt pretty lucky with the calm state of the water.

Our voyage to Kuching was to meet up with a bunch of kid boats.  Jake hasn’t been with kids in months and for the first time in our cruising history, we felt we needed to take some drastic measures to give him some play time.  Unfortunately, the stars were only half way aligned for us…it was a good opportunity to teach my kid that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.   I say half way, because half of the boats were able to make it.  All the kids are great, but Jake has latched on to one in particular and fortunately, he has latched onto Jake as well.

As for Kuching itself, what a fabulous place.  It seems like every town we go to gets better and better.  We anchored in the Santubong River for a few days and while it was really pretty, it was very far from town and hard to catch a bus.  As a matter of fact, we never saw the elusive bus…we either caught a ride with someone or took a fairly expensive taxi.  So we decided to move to the Kuching Marina. 

Our view from the Sauntabong anchorage

Giant cotton tree in the middle of downtown Kuching.
Some new local friends told us we just missed the blooming.

I took a cooking class and learned how to cook chicken curry the "right way"
as well as how to not waste my pineapple :).

On the way, we stopped at a little island that’s part of the Bako National Forest.  We attempted a hike one morning but it was just a comedy of errors.  We didn’t check the tides so when we arrived at the beach, we had to drag our dinghy literally about 100 yards up the beach (there are really big tides here).  We were basing our starting point on a sign that said “Enter Here” and a few blurps from some other cruisers.  I guess we should have checked it out before dragging the dinghy all that way.  The trail went about another 100 yards and then disappeared.  There were signs of an old trail, but it was long grown over.  The last thing we wanted to do was get lost in a rainforest.

Can you see the dinghy?

Since it was low tide, there were tons of rocks exposed so we decided to rock hop and see what we could find.  Eventually, we thought we found another trail, but it ended at a small Chinese Shrine in a rock, much like the Catholic fisherman shrines we found all over Mexico.  It ended up being a fun walk and quite the work out (we had to drag the dinghy all the way back down to the water as the tide hadn’t come up by the time we left).

One of the bigger pitcher plants we've seen.

Our next adventure was entering the Kuching Marina.  We’ve had a gimpy starboard engine for a while.  The plan is to get her fixed in Thailand.  She chose just the moment Andy was trying to spin her around in the tight, tight space in the marina to give out on us.  Thank God for our fellow cruisers, the dock guys and our ever calm captain.  We were able to get her tied up without spending any money, but we put on one hell of a show for the crowd. 

Our most humorous adventure was when we went out to town to find a restaurant that serves sago grubs.  Jake has been dying to try them and we finally found somewhere here that is supposed to serve them up nice and tasty.  Apparently, they’re a local cuisine and a must try.  We showed up about 5:00, after watching a movie and were told that they weren’t open yet (turns out, the chef keeps his own schedule.  We tried to eat there the next night as well and not only was there not any grubs, there wasn’t a chef either).  We wandered over to another restaurant that I had read about and decided to wait out an upcoming storm there.  After partaking in Happy Hour a bit too long and deciding the storm wasn’t going to end, we called a cab.  Well, he never showed.  So we asked the bar tender to call us another cab.  After a total of probably an hour or so, a cab finally showed up.  He didn’t speak good English but assured us he knew the Kuching Marina.  I’ve rambled quite a bit so to make short of it….the only thing I can think of that he thought we said “cuchee marina.” Ha!  He took us to a row of strip clubs and parked in front of the one that said Marina Lounge.  Honest mistake.  I mean afterall, a man, his wife and their 8 year old son, where else would they want to go?  After talking to his dispatcher on the phone (who spoke much better English), we finally made it back to the KUCHING Marina.  It made a good story anyway.

The inside of a Chinese Temple in Kuching

We’re off tomorrow with our new kid friends to explore the Rajang River.  Not sure we’ll make it the 60 miles up we have planned, but we’ll see.  Looking forward to some Longhouses, monkeys, crocodiles and maybe finding those grubs.

Duty Free in Labuan, Malaysia

Labuan…we had never heard of it until a few months ago.  It’s a small island just outside Brunei.  It’s part of Malaysia but is not part of the states of Sarawak or Sabah.  It’s its own little entity.  I would tell you the history of the island, it's part in WWII, and how it became it's own federated state, but that would require me to do more research to make sure I was being accurate and well, I'm lazy.  Google it.  Being duty free, it’s a major stop for most cruisers as alcohol in this part of the world is both scarce and expensive. 

We had low expectations as everything I’ve heard or read from other cruisers made it sound dirty and industrial without actually saying that.  It just goes to show, one cruiser’s rolly anchorage is another cruiser’s paradise. 

As we pulled into the harbor, we were astonished by the number of huge ships.  Jake tried to count them all and decided when he hit 40 that it was just too many.  Labuan is the landing site for much of the equipment needed on the oil rigs around this area, so the ships are always coming and going.  Lucky for us, we were able to skip the rolly anchorage and dock inside the newly renovated marina.  It’s the cheapest marina yet.  While it didn’t have many amenities (you get what you pay for), it did serve our purpose and was conveniently located right in town.

In addition to the duty free shops on every corner, Labuan has a lot to offer to a cruiser.  I was later told by a young lady that grew up there that four years ago we would have been disgusted, so I feel lucky to have arrived after the “major clean up.”  We found the market, all the grocery stores and even the pork shop (a well kept secret). 

I would have liked to have rented a car and seen some of the more touristy things like the white sand beaches and bird sanctuary, but we were only there for a week and had a lot of stocking up to do (and the days were hot, so a few hours out and we were done until the next day).  We did manage to see the Marine Museum (not much, but it did have some really clean aquariums, extremely old whale bones and it was free…can’t complain) and when I went jogging I would jog to the WWII memorial, so I checked that off on the list.  There is a weekend market and we arrived while the Strong Man competition was happening.  Jake really enjoyed watching the ridiculously large men do things like lift cars up and down. 

Unfortunately, we failed to take many pictures of the city.  We did manage to capture a few fun moments at a new friend's house ( a fellow southerner for sure!) with our other cruising buddy's....

Our host Jerry, on the right, good friends Richard and
Katie enjoying a good laugh, cigar and wine.

Richard, our very good friend, enjoying a rare
treat, a cuban cigar while drinking a 15 year old wine.

Jake, passing time while we get treated to a gourmet happy hour
complete with fine wine and a gorgeous view of the
South China Sea.

 Our week came to an end and we, along with three other boats, motored the short distance to the tiny country of Brunei, tucked between Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysia.  Playing a big part in the oil industry makes Brunei one of the richest countries in the world.  It may sound familiar to you as it’s been in the news for recently implementing Sharia Law (and owning the Beverly Hills hotel...Hollywood is all up in arms about it.).  While I normally wouldn’t want to drop a dime here, the insanely cheap fuel makes it irresistible (.31 liter...we need over 400 liters...add it up).  We find ourselves motoring more than sailing here in Malaysia.  As we begin to explore, we’re getting a little more insight into the country and the people.  I’m going to hold off on my judgment for the time being.  I will say the Royal Brunei Yacht Club is top notch so far…swimming pool, clean showers, nice restaurants, toilet paper in the bathrooms (don’t laugh, I’ve had a roll in my back pack ever since we left Palau), and even a large washing machine free of charge.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings…

I"ll leave you with some pictures from Tiga Island at the mud volcano (more like mud hole...but cool anyway).

My two cents...

Well, I wasn’t going to weigh in on this as I think it’s been done enough, but in support of my friend Charlotte and her family, I feel like I need to say something.  By now, most of you guys have probably heard about the rescue of the sailing vessel Rebel Heart off the coast of Mexico.  On board were Eric, Charlotte, and their two little girls.  The youngest, Lyra, was ill and the family decided to call for help.  The US Military came to the rescue.

I think my fellow cruisers and the boating community have done an outstanding job of supporting Charlotte and her family, while attempting to educate those who are well…uneducated in the sailing world.  Anything I would write would probably just detract from the eloquent words of others.

With that said, we heard the news of the rescue only 2 weeks after having another good friend here in the Philippines lose her boat on a reef that was way off the mark and subsequently have it stripped clean by pirates that heard her distress call….they even took her cushions from what we heard.  We read and heard unkind comments about that situation as well.  Mostly from armchair sailors or people that have never been on the water to start with…another group of uneducated folks.

I guess I’m shocked (though I don’t know why) at the arrogance of others to comment on things they know absolutely nothing about.   Andy and I feel close to both of these tragedies as we feel there are a lot of parallels to our life and I hate to think how it would feel to suddenly have an entire country weighing in their various opinions on how you chose to live your life and raise your kids.  With Charlotte and Eric, well, we’re about the same age, Eric was in the Navy like Andy, we were both in the financial industry, Savannah and Rebel Heart both left from San Diego and they were following a very similar path to us, just a few years later.  It could have been us (and still could). 

As for our other friend, we’re here in the Philippines and get to see first hand how off the various charts are in these waters.  One of our navigational programs actually says “Inaccurately surveyed area”  and other smart things like “Breakers reported, unsurveyed.”  Hell, the US Navy ran aground on a reef here that was 7 MILES off on the chart.  One guy actually said to us (I’m not sure if he was talking about the Navy or our friend at this point) “You’re not supposed to get within 100 miles of Tubataha Reef.”   Well, Mr. Non-sailing, Dingleberry, that means every single boat that sails down the east coast of Palawan is breaking the law.  The only way you could conceivably follow that rule (if it even exists) is to sail through the pirate waters south of Mindanao….uh, no thanks.  

All of this publicity has done some good on Savannah.  We’ve always prided ourselves on being as prepared as possible, but it’s easy to become complacent about things the longer you’re out here.  We’re now even more cautious as we make our plans to continue through S.E. Asia and eventually home, to the United States.  We only sail in the day time here in the Philippines so as to gain as many visuals on those nasty reefs and limit our surprises as much as possible (Not to mention the thousands of fish traps, fisherman, pearl farms and seaweed farms to be avoided).  We’re stocking up more than usual (I honestly didn’t think that was possible), so that we’re not dependent on pulling in somewhere for food, gas or diesel.  We’re keeping in touch with friends and other cruisers around the area so we can try to have the most up to date information as possible on the various areas we’re traveling.  And it may sound dramatic, but I’m keeping an eye on my kid more than usual as well, I hear the pale ones go for a fair price.

We are so blessed to have supporting families and friends and not to have to worry about constantly defending ourselves and our way of life.  We’re also blessed to not have had any tragic experiences this far (knocking on wood here in the cabin) keeping us from having to defend ourselves publically. For those not so lucky, we wanted to at least speak out a bit and join the hundreds if not thousands of other folks on your side…  I would hate to think that we had dreams and were so scared of failure that we never tried.  And for all of those out there that think we’re crazy and irresponsible for doing this at all, much less with a kid….think twice about how and when you express your opinions (Remember that whole do unto others thing?).  We’re just ordinary people doing something different.  We get that you don’t understand it.  We honestly don’t understand you either.  That’s why life is so cool….if we were all the same, what would we have to talk about on Facebook?

Here's to Friends, Handy Husbands, and Moving on

So far Puerto Galera has treated us pretty well.  A poem a friend of ours wrote kind of sums it up so far… 

Crossing Paths

It’s a great big world

With so many faces

People cross oru path

In so many places.

Some will walk with us

For many a mile

Others just a moment

Maybe just a smile.

Some people never meet

Never have the chance

I’m glad you crossed my path

Our eyes shared a glance.

As you journey thorugh life

I wish you the best

Know what you want

And don’t settle for less.

We have a picture almost exactly like this from
four years ago.  Vic hasn't changed one bit.

That was written by our friend Vic Desautels.  We met Vic on the docks in La Paz almost four years ago.  He followed us out of Banderas Bay on his own boat wishing us farewell when we left for the Marquesas.  Well, guess who was here to meet us when we arrived in Puerto Galera?  Yep, our good friend Vic.

We spent our first few days hanging out with Vic and getting to know the town.  Where to eat, where to shop, where to have some of those really cheap beers we’ve come to appreciate.  After a few days it was time for Vic to move on and we continued our explorations.

She was absolutely enamored with Jake and I
have to say, the feeling was mutual.  I've
never seen him let someone boss him
around like that :).  Very sweet.

Within the first few days of being here we met another couple traveling with their two kids.  We’ve spent the last week hanging out with them and thoroughly enjoying being with some younger folks with similar likes and wants and no real need to talk about anchors and watermakers!  And Jake has been beside himself having someone else to play with.

We went out for a sail and anchored for lunch on Verde Island.
Nice snorkel for adults and playtime for the kids.

We might have a new captain on board??

Watching "Wreck It Ralph" in our cabin while waiting for dinner.

We’ve hit some beaches, gone diving, snorkeling, sailing and even splurged on a night in a swanky hotel (by Puerto Galera standards, at least).

Jake, enjoying his hotel bed all to himself.  You would have
thought we were taking him to Disney World - he got
so excited.

Jake, cold in the 85 degree weather...the wind was blowing.

Not the greatest picture of the pool, but it was the best I
could do without getting out of my chair!

This is a decent town, but not one we want to hang out in too long…it’s very touristy, filled with a lot of ex-pats (not necessarily the ones we have anything in common with), and well, just not necessarily our style.  Given all that, it’s very disappointing that we’ve had nothing but issues since we got here…mostly self-inflicted.

First, we ran out of water.  I know.  How do you do that?  Well, 2 years of torrential downpours every few days kind of makes you complacent about keeping up with what’s in the tanks.  Our water maker has been pickled (for those non boaters, it’s treated with a solution and basically unusable until you decide to “un-pickle” it) since Pohnpei.  We’ve been weary (down right chicken) about un-pickling it because we’re afraid we’re going to find that our membrane has gone bad and well, that would be bad AND expensive.  So, Andy bought some water jugs (yep, we didn’t even have them…have never hauled water in our four years of cruising) and filled them up a couple of times so we had at least 20 gallons.  It only took three days and some extra people on board to dwindle it down so today we fired the old Spectra up.  You know what happened?  We made water!  Nothing broke (yet) and we’re making 8 gallons an hour (for once the noisy drone of the damn thing is music to our ears).

Next, our dinghy engine died.  It’s had some issues (that’s what happens when you hit a few too many rocks) and we tried to find the parts when I was in the states.  It turns out it’s a European model and no one can look up the part number (the Yamaha shop in Palau couldn’t look it up either).  We were planning on trying to find it here in the Philippines, but had not yet started the search as it still worked, just didn’t go very fast.  Anyone that has cruised with us in the last few years is probably laughing right now because they’ve seen our oars.  They’re not really oars, they’re sticks.  Through the years they’ve broken here and there and well, like everything else, we put that off too.  So to give you a bigger giggle, we moved anchor closer to the beach and we’re using our paddles from the paddle board to row, Andy with one, me with the other…it’s quite a show.  To get to the beach won’t be that bad, it’s getting back that will be comical (against the consistent 20 knot wind blowing here in the anchorage).  We received an email back today from a supplier in Boracay and apparently they can get the part but it will take two to three weeks…ouch.  But Boracay is not such a bad place to wait it out (did I mention our new friends are there now?).  In the meantime, my super Handy Andy got our old Tuhatsu engine up and running AND we moved back on a mooring so we can use the yacht club service boat.  It’s not as private as the anchorage and much noisier but it’s much more convenient and a shorter paddle in case this one goes out on us.

Do you see the shrimp?

Tiny pigmy seahorse less than a cm. long.

There are some other small things giving us fits (cabinet doors breaking, running out of stuff we can’t replace here, and generators acting up) but they’re all workable.  I think we’re going to provision up and depending on the info we get from Borocay, head on out soon.  In the meantime, we’re keeping our head up and are thankful that these are the only problems…in the whole scheme of things, they’re quite small.   We’re thankful to still be unemployed with the risk of sunburn every day.  Not a bad way to work through our issues.

The Great Dismal Swamp

Years ago, when I first started dating Andy, he took me on a kayaking trip to the Great Dismal Swamp here in Virginia.  We paddled the 3 miles or so back to Lake Drummond and had a little picnic.  It was absolutely beautiful as very few people ever go back there.  Large motor boats aren’t allowed and it’s not all that easy to get to, so the traffic is pretty sparse.  (Incidentally, the Dismal Swamp Canal can be used by shallow draft sailboats to transit he ICW, so this post isn’t totally disconnected to sailing).

When trying to think of something fun and unusual to do with my friend while I’m here, I thought it would be really cool to go back there on our stand up paddle boards (well, HER paddleboards).  She loves to paddle and has never seen Lake Drummond, so why not?  I tried to down play my reasons for buying the super duper Deep Woods bug spray.  There was no need for her to worry about the bird size biting flies we might encounter.  I tried to sound confident when I told her where we needed to park and put our boards in.  I didn’t think it was necessary for her to know that all of my intel was gleemed from google earth and not any actual experience.  I tried to be nonchalant when I asked her to text her boyfriend and tell him what time we got started and how long we thought we would be gone.  No need for her to worry about things she hadn’t thought about yet (like getting lost or abducted or whatever).  Because the chances were so remote that we would ever see one, I didn’t think twice to tell her that there were black bears back there.  When it looked like she might panic, I reassured her that Andy said that at the rate we talk, anything of any interest would be scared away before we even knew it existed. 

So off we went with our backpacks packed, complete with lunch, drinks, and bug spray.  As soon as we put the boards in the water, it started sprinkling.  Lucky for us, it was short lived and didn’t really bother us that much as it was a beautiful day.  We were really into the scenery and my friend was starting to relax and enjoy our little adventure.  We took a leisurely approach and decided to paddle on our rear ends/knees.  I’m not sure if this was for any other reason than we were being lazy, but it was working for us.  After about 30 minutes or so, I saw something about 100 yards in front of us swim across the canal.  I was excited that we were actually going to see something bigger than a turtle so I said “oooohhhh…look at that!”

Then we watched this creature swim across the canal.  It was fast.  It was HUGE.  It was black.

“What was that!?” she asked me.

“I have no idea”

“It was HUGE!”

“I know.”

“I’m a little freaked out!”

(laugh, laugh, laugh)…that’s me laughing at my friend.

“I think I’m going to vomit”

(laugh, laugh, laugh)  “It was pretty freakin big!  Come on, we’ll just be loud and it will go away”

“I don’t think I can go any further”

“I’ll go check it out…I’ll be right back”  I was really, really curious.

So I paddled a few strokes then I stopped cold…I heard a loud growl or roar or whatever you want to call it.  “ooo!!!”

“What?  What did you see?”

“Nothing” I lied.

“What?  What was it?”

“Nothing.  Let’s just hang out and have a beer and give it time to go away.”

So we do.  At this point we’re both thinking we saw a bear.  So we’re freaking out a little bit but I’m still trying to convince her to keep going.  I’m hoping the beer will do the trick.  And I tell her how skittish bears are and we have surely scared it off now.  I remind her that some people come back here in the hopes of seeing a bear (Andy being one of those people).  Then I look back and I see the darn thing swimming back across the canal again, only a little closer to us. 

“ooo!”

“What?”

“Nothing” I lied again.

“You’d better tell me”

“I saw it again” (me starting to paddling) “Let’s go”

“Where was it?” (paddling really really fast) “How far back?”

“Oh, way back there” I lied one more time.

So we hauled butt out of there all the time convincing ourselves that the bear was stalking us.  We decided it was a mama bear with cubs and she wanted us to go away.  We kicked ourselves for not studying up on how to survive a bear attack in the water on a paddle board and vowed to do this as soon as we got home.  At one point, we were both hungry so we thought about taking our sandwiches out.  Then I remembered that Yogi bear always loved a good picnic so we thought better of it and just paddled faster (but now we had a plan…we would just throw the sandwiches to the bear!).  I turned around again and we saw a large figure in the middle of the canal about where the bear was.  We convinced ourselves it was just standing there watching us making sure we got the message. When we got back out to the main canal, we stopped and had our lunch (and another beer) while recapping the whole thing.

Pretty soon, we saw a couple in a canoe coming from the same direction (hindsight, this was probably the figure we saw in the water…not a bear wagging his finger at us) and I paddled over to ask them if they saw anything.  They were trying not to laugh at our story, as they politely informed us that they thought we might have seen a large beaver.  “They can get to be 40-50 lbs.  Bears are 200 lbs and almost 4 ½ feet long”

“Thank you…yes, yes, maybe that was it.  Thank you”

They paddled off.  We looked at each other and at the same time we said “That was a freakin bear!”  I know they were probably thinking we should just take our “city-girl” selves back to the mall and leave the nature loving to people who knew what they were looking at!

We paddled back to the dock we had lowered the boards in on and a ranger on a four wheeler with a big gun on the back hollered across the canal at us, “You girls almost got yourself in a predicament.  I was just about to lock that gate.  There’s a boat launch down the way.  You should use that.” 

“OK, we’re sorry.  Thank you” blah blah blah

Then we go to put the boards on her car and I see not one, but two no trespassing signs that I swear were not there when we arrived earlier that morning.

I don’t think we thought that whole thing through.  My idea is to go back with more people so we lower the odds of getting eaten by a bear (my friend Ray politely told me that he didn’t think bears were actually known for eating people – but he didn’t volunteer to go either).  But sadly, I don’t think I have any takers.  If they only knew how pretty it was back there…

I later told Andy this story and he said he saw a bear just about every time he went back there…I think I’ll keep that to myself.

Life around the world

I know I’ve been neglectful of the blog lately, but honestly, it’s really hard to come up with anything interesting and relevant when we’re all three in different areas.  So, I thought I would just give a little update on how we’re all handling things and show a few pictures from Jake’s time on the farm.

 I get a lot of comments from other mothers along the lines of “I could never leave my kids that long,” “I don’t know how you’re doing this” or “I can’t even imagine being away from my little ones.”  While I certainly miss Jake with all of my being, I had a conversation with my mother-in-law yesterday that confirmed my suspicions…Jake is thriving being away from us for a little while.  He’s becoming comfortable with his surroundings and all parts of the family – aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunts, 2^nd-3^rd cousins, papas, grandmas, great grand-dads…you name it.  He’s becoming more independent, learning conflict resolution skills, learning how to communicate to people that don’t read his mind (mommy had gotten pretty good at that)…I couldn’t be more proud.  So, while I may be a bit uncomfortable with the distance, I truly believe this is turning out to be a wonderful experience for him while developing a bond with the family he wouldn’t get otherwise.

I think his goal is to get to the top of this huge stump. 

Luke and Jake

Ice Cream!

Keeping cool and helping water something??

The reason I ran 9:31 min/mile...running with
my good friend Ray (he slacked off for me).
Thanks to my other good friend, Glenda for sending
me the pic.

As for mommy, I finally started my job.  I wasn’t sure that was ever going to happen…  I’m enjoying going into the office every day, getting a little socialization of my own, dressing up (except for the heels), and using my brain in a way that hasn’t happened in quite some time (I forgot how large my co-worker’s vocabulary actually was!).  On the after hours side, well, I’m going to start being a grown up next week.  I think without Jake and Andy and any real responsibilities, I forgot I was pushing 40 and not 25.  Aside from my extensive time with friends, I’ve really gotten into my running (I completed a 5K this weekend and actually ran a 9:31 min mile….I’m a slow poke and normally can’t break 10 min.) and I joined a Crossfit Gym.  I’m hoping to dazzle Andy when I get back with my transformation J.

How is Andy handling his newfound freedom?  He’s been to the Rock Islands a couple of times, hanging out with the other bachelor in the anchorage.  He’s done some diving/picture taking, of course.  But I think mostly he’s been working on the boat.  He’s repainted our deck, refinished our countertops, and fixed numerous mechanical issues that have popped up recently.  Oh yea, the list wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t tell you he flooded the water tanks again and has spent a fair amount of time cleaning up (not sure when he’ll learn that lesson!).  Overall, I think he’s doing fine.  He’s kind of the loner in the group so all in all, he might be getting some peace he didn’t know he was craving (or maybe he did?).  He’ll head out in another 3 weeks or so and pick Jake up from OK and bring him back to Palau.

So there you have it, the latest update.  Apologies for the lack of pictures…if I ever get paid, I plan on buying another camera complete with ability to upload pictures.  In the meantime, thanks to my mother-in-law for keeping us posted with pictures of Jake!