Still adjusting??? Summer in Florida

We try to go to the beach every week, reminds us how
lucky we still are.

It’s been awhile since we posted.  Lots of things have happened and lots of stuff still happening…  I’ve changed jobs, Jake has started school, and Andy has started his job search after being a much needed stay at home dad all summer.

Lots of stuff has been wonderful…we see my family relatively often.  I have an iPhone and can text my best friend whenever I want.  I can even push that stupid handset button and hear her voice every once in a while!  I can order a pizza with nothing but an emoji, and believe it or not, I know what an emoji is! 

Blowing out his candles on the specially requested (and
very delicious, strawberry cake made my mother.

Jake just celebrated his 10^th birthday.  I cannot believe he is 10 years old.  We left San Diego when he was 4 ½  and now I have a double digit kid.  Wow.  I don’t know how much of it is because of us, his experience traveling with us, genetics, or just plain luck, but Andy and I have the best kid ever.  As many changes as we’ve gone through in the last six months, that little guy just rolls with the punches.   We try to take his lead even when not all in the 1^st world is what we had hoped for…

Savannah hasn’t sold yet, so there’s that.  We now have bills and lots of “stuff.”  Anyone who’s been to our house will laugh at that as we have one room that is completely empty and with the exception of Jake’s bedroom, all the bedrooms are just that, rooms with beds in them.  Our clothes are in those big tupperware like containers on the floor.  So when I say “lots of stuff,”  that’s by cruiser standards… But repurchasing your entire house…just think that through…

 The psychological part has been harder than I thought.  I feel lost sometimes.  I sit at my desk and think, really?  My days are filled with powerpoints, project plans and conference calls.  Really?  I still get overwhelmed at the store…particularly with fashion.  I don’t know if the fashion trends these days are just really bad or if I was off the grid so long, I just can’t get back in.  I used to like shopping for clothes…now I just get overwhelmed.  I work from home now so I don’t feel quite as lost as I wear my “boat” clothes all day and don’t have to fix my hair or wear makeup.  In that way, my tension is released…I don’t have to figure out what to wear or if I look “cute” today.  Andy doesn’t care and truth be told, is still hanging on to a few of those short/t-shirt combos that probably should have stayed in Malaysia! 

Jake has taken up Taekwondo...like father, like son

I find myself trying not to judge people on their choices, which is very hard.  The things people complain about blow my mind, but at the same time, I find myself falling into old habit as well, always in a rush and trying to do everything myself (The bagel place down the street from us is THE slowest business in the US, and why can’t I just leave the towels folded the way Andy does them?  Nevermind they don’t look pretty in the cabinet and its different with every load.).  Andy’s missing the diving, the boat driving, all the critters and truth be told, all that whining about boats breaking down and pressure with being totally responsible for us… he misses all that and more.   He likes being Captain. Some days I think if we could figure it out, we would be back on the boat quicker than American Airlines could get us there….

I'm not sure how long I'll keep updating the but do know I'm not ready to stop just yet.  If you're still reading, I'll still write...

Another vacation?

Climbing rocks to make his mom
'freak out'

Most people think of our lifestyle as a constant vacation - beaches, cocktails, adventures - and I can see how they think that when our blog is really the only view into our lives they have.  But our blog for us, is like going to a family reunion and telling people about your kids, job, life, etc.  You tell the things they might be interested in and you try to show your family in the best of light.  While I do occasionally tell some embarrassing stories and have been known to go on a rant, most of the time, I'm just trying to keep the family up to date on the fun things we get to do.  Our normal life includes school (complete with the same complaining 'normal' kids do), dishes, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, fixing things, cleaning, exercising, etc.  Normal stuff.  All without air condition, 100 miles away from the equator. When we stay in one place for a while, like we've done in Kuching, these things get to be more mundane than normal.  This explains why the sudden onset of trips for us like the Mulu Caves and Jakarta.

Last week we took a mini-vacation (although Jake would disagree - he had a complete week of school) and left the dock to go to some islands around here to celebrate Jake's birthday.  He was able to run around on the beaches, have bonfires and actually get to swim in waters free of crocodiles!  One of the islands we went to is a marine protected area...specifically protecting turtles.  There are rangers there that patrol the beach every night looking for turtles laying their eggs.  They tag the turtles, then dig up their eggs and move them to a protected hatchery. When the eggs hatch, they release the turtles back into the water.  Jake found a nest full of eggs and ran to get the rangers, thinking they had missed one.  It turns out, this turtle laid its eggs below the high tide mark and they basically drowned.  It also looked like they hadn't been fertilized, according to the experts.  So the rangers let Jake dig them up and get a hands on experience without harming anything.  They said the turtles lay an average of 80 eggs at a time.  This nest had 107!

Birthday dinner - gnocchi with shrimp and blue cheese sauce.

An unexpected trip for me back to the states really paid off
for Jake...birthday loot!

The requested birthday "cake" - homemade pumpkin pie (as
in from a real pumpkin)....I swear I thought I was cooking
for Thanksgiving.

River dolphins!

Jake, trying to chisel out some 'samples' for later research.

Our final 'break' (for a while) from real life comes this week in the form of an Outback Safari in Australia!  We are super excited and a bit nervous if I'm honest.  It's a camping trip in Central Australia.    We've paid thousands of dollars to sleep under the stars (again, no air conditioning...when we will think these things through?)...I'll let you know when we get back if that was a good idea or not.  We're heading out of here with a positive attitude and lots of bug spray.  Jake says the only reason he came sailing with us was to go to Australia and see a kangaroo (yeah, he actually said that)....so, in order to keep the mutiny down, off we go.  Stand by...there's bound to be a good story or two coming out of this.

Watching some longboat races on the Kuching waterfront
with our friends Lee and Richard. 

Splash....she's back in the water.

Savannah is safe and sound back in the water.  What a relief.  We repaired a few spots, put 5 coats of paint on her, and flipped our chain.  She’s mighty pretty!  

For those coming this way that are a little curious as to the details...here they are.  We were charged $500 to go in and out of the water (the prices on their wall say differently, so not sure if we got a deal or if that was old info), $150 for two days hydro-blasting, their guy did the work.  We were there from Tuesday p.m. - Saturday a.m. and were able to do our own work.  They may have been able to do it for us, but we didn't ask.  There are bathroom facilities (i.e. toilet, sink, shower), but only Andy slept on the boat.  Jake and I got a hotel room out in town.  Andy would have come with us, but we thought it best security wise for him to stay as there is no fence or gate.  They do have a security guard but either he was really sneaky or he didn't stick around too much.  We wanted to be dropped in the water on a Saturday and they came in free of charge, even though they don't normally work on Saturday.  They say they have hauled out four monohulls although we didn't see any stands.  I'm not sure how they did it, but according to them, it's possible.  We were the first catamaran and all in all, it was a pretty good experience....better than ok.  Not great because well, it's an old rail and our hearts were beating pretty fast.

We found a one legged grasshopper.

It hasn’t been all work and no play.  Before we hauled her out, we spent some time hiking and celebrating.  There are a few trails around here and we’ve enjoyed trying to make our way through them.  We got lost a few times and survived a few mean dogs (and Andy has some sort of rash, resembling poison ivy) but all in all we had some nice adventures.  There were some traditional stone paths as well as some really nice views.

LOTS of steep stone staircases.

 

We celebrated my birthday with the other boats here as well as our friends on shore.  One of the danish guys on Mie was having a birthday too so we doubled up and had a few parties.  Vincent was able to get the local men’s house here for us to have a barbeque and everyone came to celebrate. 

Andy had some help with the grill.

Casper and Rasmis from Denmark, onboard Mie.

Three different countries represented on that bench!  Yap, Phillipines,
and Denmark.

Trevor and Jake had some deep conversations...

It’s been a nice stay here in Yap, but we’re ready to move on now.  We’ll fuel up with diesel on Monday and try to check out soon.  

All good things must end...

Jake picked Sushi for his birthday lunch.

As we’re wrapping up our stay, I thought I would do a little recap of our prolonged visit here in the states.  We’ve actually been here almost 5 months!  That seems crazy to me.  Here are the stats…

• 4 States, 10 cities
• Approximately 46 hours of flight (56 for me) – after we arrive back in Pohnpei, you can bump that up to about 80.
• 26 hours of car travel (not including regular every day driving) in 4 different rental cars.
• 1 wreck (oops)
• 2 Aquariums
• 5 nautical museums to include 3 warships
• 6 “other” museums
• 4 Imax movies
• 1 Amusement Park
• Hours and hours of swimming

Highlights include:

• Seeing the actual space shuttle in Washington DC.
• Actually seeing the Pegasus rocket like the one we found in Rongelap.
• Lego Land!!!!
• Crawling inside a dinosaur and watching its poop jiggle through its body.
• Playing with my (Jake’s) cousins and other kids everywhere we went.
• Seeing most of our family - all across the country.
• Getting to see actual dinosaur bones in the Natural History Museum.

(NOTE:  Jake is having a very hard time contributing as he says, “they were all good”)

• Downloading the new iPad games we didn’t know anything about.
• Buying new toys!!
• And finally….Jake turned 7 years old!

Yeah, we’ve had a really good time here.  But it is beyond time to go.  Andy has been back on the boat now for almost a month and it’s making me crazy knowing we’re just sitting here waiting to see him.  Not to mention, we’ve spent a ton of money.  Enough said about that…

I think we are fully recharged and ready to take on the rest of Micronesia.  I’m looking forward to downsizing again (gotta make room for all this crap we’re bringing back!) and getting reacquainted with our space.  I’ve found that I absolutely hate blow-drying my hair everyday, putting on make up and worrying about what I’m going to wear.  I don’t care for the enormous fees charged for everything from parking to checking a bag at the airport.  I cringed when I paid $10 to get Jake’s haircut and let’s not even talk about what I paid to get mine cut.  I am fully caught up on the current Presidential election and am scared out of my mind for our country – I think I was better in the dark.  I’m sure I can’t say what I really want to say without offending everyone, so I’ll say this…the pace of life here is crazy and the amount of things we try to squeeze into a day is mind blowing.  I know, I used to be that person, but now that I’ve seen the other side and experienced the joy that comes with just being with each other, well…I think we’re ready to go back. 

This will probably be my last post before we head out next Wednesday.  I’ll leave you with a few pictures of Jake’s birthday.  Notice, my cake decorating skills are getting better every year….yeah, right.  No, that’s not a pregnant lizard…it’s a dinosaur.  Jake insisted I make his cake instead of buying it.  

Against my better judgment, I’m putting up a picture of us sporting our dinosaur noses that Jake picked out.  It’s mid week…everyone needs a little laugh today, I’m sure.

I can't figure out of Papa is not happy or if he's really into his
dinosaur role and trying to look menacing...

Slippery Rock, American Samoa

I'm not sure who thought sliding on a big hard rock would be fun, but apparently, it's a popular place here in American Samoa.  Another family here (with older kids) invited us to go exploring with them on Saturday to this infamous "slippery rock."  After a long discussion with the bus driver and an even longer ride, he dropped us off by some water with a lot of rocks (very pretty water, very pretty rocks).  We had six kids and 5 adults and off we went in search of the slippery rock.  Well, they were all pretty slippery at first, seeing as it was raining and the tide was going out, but then we hit the mother load.  Every kid that stepped foot on it, fell.  Then the older kids got pretty good at running and sliding.  My worry wort of a self had stomach aches the entire time and lucky for me, my kid fell early and didn't think it was all that much fun.  We found a tide pool instead and eventually all the kids came to the tide pool to play.   They put on their masks and explored every crevice.  Rhett on s/v Solara found a few baby eels that occupied their time for a while.

That's Jake flat on his back on "Slippery Rock".  Looks fun, huh?
The big kids loved it, but I'm pretty sure this place would be
roped off in the States.

See the little guy jumping?  Imagine him
in that same pose  with a butcher knife.
Unfortunately, I missed the photo op.

There were some locals a ways away that were fishing and their kids were playing in a much smaller tide pool.  You could see them slowly inching their way closer, curious about our kids.  Eventually, they were right there and the kids invited them in to play.  At first it was kind of cool until we moms looked up and saw a little guy, about 4, on top of a big rock about to jump into the tide pool, that was all of 2 feet deep.  As if that wasn't enough to give us a heart attack, he was holding a foot long butcher knife!  No, I'm not making this up.  And away he went off about a 5-6 foot drop with all the gusto you would think a 4 year old would have, butcher knife and all.  I'm guessing he had the knife because his parents were fishing and someone was going to use it to clean the fish, but they had about 8 kids and apparently, it's easy to lose track of where the knife goes.  After a few jumps and hearing the crazy white people yelling "Knife!," the sister or mother or someone came over and took the knife away.  All was fun again and the kids played for another hour or so.  They jumped, they played 'Marco, Polo,' and basically had a great time.  Once the sun proved to get the best of us, we decided to head on back to Pago Pago for some ice cream.

All in all, it was a wonderful day and I'm so thankful there are other kids here and other people who like to explore.  Today is Jake's actual birthday so after chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and time to play with his new toys, we're going to head into McDonald's for lunch and a nice swim in the local hotel pool (for $5/person they let you use the pool) with Dharma and Rhett.

Daddy and Jake putting together his new Hero Factory character this morning.

Jake with "Meltdown."

A few of the parts we had shipped in didn't quite work out for various reasons so we'll be here another week waiting on some mail.  I can think of far worse places to be :).

9/13/2010 - Jake turns 5 in Refugio!

We’ve been up in Refugio again for a few days and the big event was Jake turning 5!  Another birthday in Mexico, another party without kids.  Oh well.  I actually think he likes it better since he doesn’t have to compete with anyone for attention.  The benefit to us is that his expectations get lower every year.

This birthday started with chocolate chip pancakes and Gatorade.  After breakfast, Jake helped me mix and bake his birthday cake and make the icing.  He then proceeded to design his cake.  It was pretty extravagant.  He wanted a submarine shooting torpedos at an angler fish with a mini submarine escaping out the back.  Here’s what we ended up with…given my lack of talent for cake making and the materials we had to work with, I think it turned out ok (I know my friend Hunter is dying as she's looking at this.  She makes beautiful cakes...wish you were here!).

 For lunch he was treated to a bottomless plate of pb&j and cheesy poofs.  At 2:00 Mr. Scott and Ms. Terri came over for the showing of Return of the Jedi (I know, he’s only 5, but once you start them on Star Wars you can’t go back).  This was a special showing because it’s a movie bought in Mexico and only works on our computer as opposed to our dvd player (i.e. a whole different set of cables running to the tv).  Since mom and dad are lazy, we rarely watch it.

Following the movie, Jake was treated to his favorite meal of spaghetti and meatballs, complete with the meatballs!  The night ended with chocolate cake and presents, of which Jake was completely surprised since he thought he got all of his presents at Gigi’s house.

So here we sit the day after, trying to decide where to go next.  Andy hurt his back a few days ago so we’re in no hurry…I want to make sure he has enough time to really get better. 

It’s getting that time where we need to start thinking about heading south and making our way out of Mexico.  This is where it gets scary for me.  I’ve gotten quite comfortable here in the Sea of Cortez.  I won’t say I love it (It’s very dry…. all of my east coast buddies will understand when I say I need to see something GREEN), but I’m comfortable.  Once we start heading south, we have to step into the unknown again.  New cultures, new anchorages, new boats, new rules.  It’s exciting and intimidating all at the same time.  Someone called me brave a few weeks ago and said I must not be scared of anything.  I laughed at that.  I’m scared of EVERYTHING….I just do it anyway.

In a few more days we’ll take the long way back around Isla Angel de la Guardia to Bahia LA to check email one more time and get more food (we eat a lot, huh?).  Then I think we’re off to the mainland.  Anyone heading to Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, etc over the winter?  Drop us a line, maybe we’ll meet you there.