One Year Ago Today

We are sitting at home today in our nice little house in the hills of Mono, our minds filled with what we were thinking and doing a year ago today. The frenzied emotional time of preparing and then finally casting off the lines for our big journey, wondering what adventures lay ahead. Christopher, Shirley and I waving our last goodbyes to family on the dock. Wow.

Now it is memories, reflections, stories and living some of the lessons we learned along the way. Never does a day pass that Shirley or I don't bring something up about our trip. To our delight Christopher loves talking about our "family adventure" and beams with pride as he recalls many of the events along the way. The local newspapers saw our adventure as a worthy story and came out to interview us. You can see them at the links

http://www.citizen.on.ca/news/2009/0813/local_news/009.html and http://www.orangevillebanner.com/lifestyle/article/74601

These articles have really turned out to be fun because we have had strangers approach us at the store to say hi and ask about our trip. Not everyone we know knew we went away and so now some of Christopher's school mates have read the article and it has made for lively conversation when he sees these friends.

We were excited a little while ago to have Sharon and Richard from SV Lucky come over and visit. We met them by chance in Miami and found out that Richard's land home is only 15 minutes from our place. We continued to meet up numurous times along the way and have been friends ever since. That's what the cruising community is all about!

We have started to settle into routines here, especially since Christopher is back in school. He is enjoying that a lot and it is good for him to be with so many other people each day again - instead of just mom and dad everyday!

Waiting for the school bus. (Our house in background)

Shirley and I have started back at our work as well. I work with a great team of folks at InCourage helping organizations with leadership and teambuilding issues. You can check it out at http://www.incourage.com/

Shirley creates resources to make life easier for teachers of the core French curriculum. Her business is at http://www.learningspirit.ca/

As good as it is to be back with friends and family and to have the opportunity to start right back at work, the feeling of wanting to be back on the water is a bit relentless. Who knows where these emotions will draw us??

We have to look to the fall fairs for our thrills now!