Life back in the Pacific North West

It has been quite a while since previous posts, I keep telling myself that I am going to work on it.  And I truly hope to.

Sparing everyone the back-story, I will just start with this week.  We are in the middle of purchasing a 42ft Catalina tri-cabin - woohoo!  It is all but finished, just crossing 't's' and dotting 'i's' on the final documentation and on Saturday we will do the official handing over of the keys and can commence transforming it into our new home.

Yes, you heard that right, we are planning on moving back aboard.  Not sure where we are going to have it moored, somewhere in the Puget Sound should hopefully work, not planning on venturing out to the Pacific and beyond just yet.  :-)  

This is a pretty good reflection of what we have been doing so far.  Re-grouping and enjoying our time back as a family while planning for the next adventure.  Putting all the moving pieces back together while building a new picture of how we want our lives to look going forward. 

Getting ready to move aboard

It is Monday evening - in about a week we should have our new home in the water here and getting ready to move aboard.  It is exciting and scary all at the same time.  I keep thinking about the 1 million things that need to be done first.

Today I went into the iMac store at the mall and had a long conversation with one of the sales people about how we can change our 'electronic' life so that it will mesh well with living on a boat.  I feel like technology has gone through about 30 generations since the last time I put any real thought or effort into how I was going to communicate with the world.  I think, maybe, just maybe, in a few weeks we are going to own a smart phone (or two), have a data plan, drop the land line, and go flying into the future.  It is really scary.  I am sure a number of you reading this post are thinking 'about time already'.  I know the kids are excited, they are already begging for an iPad after being in the store for the 20 minutes it took for the guy to try and explain how a phone can power the internet for a laptop to me.

I have also been working on downsizing the various components of our lives.  Today a friend came over and got some of the homeschooling items that I am no longer using.  It feels really freeing to know that the 'things' in my life are going to people who will be able to use them and gain enjoyment out of them.

The living room furniture is also gone.  The kids were playing several board games on the floor and using up all of the available space.  It was sweet to see how they just adopted to not having a sofa in the space and are totally cool with it.  They almost seemed to like it better.  I can't wait to see the changes in adopting to having very little space.  I am hoping it will help to make them more mindful of how their actions affect other people.

Signing off to go de-clutter.

Signed up for marina waiting list today

Today the first step was taken - we put our name and paid the deposit to get on the waiting list for a live aboard slot at the local marina.  No, we don't own a boat that we could actually live on, yet.  But have been looking.  They told us that the expected wait was anywhere for a few months to a year or so.  Not exactly the time frame we were hoping for, but I guess it will do.

Yesterday we went and looked at several local marina's and the one we liked best of course has the longest waiting list.  At the moment we have just decided to put our name on one list, we might talk it over and decide later to do something different.

Our 4 year old is very interested and wants to know exactly: when are we going to move onto a boat?  It is pretty cute, he is trying so hard to get us to say "in X days Sweetheart we will move onto a boat".  I am so sorry, I don't have a good answer for him.

The lease on our house is up in mid-October, and our dream is to move directly onto the currently theoretical sailboat at that time.  We will just keep praying and if this is what is supposed to happen, I am sure it will.