Sailing

Kevin, the kids and I went out on the Hawaiian Chieftain sailing ship this weekend out of Santa Cruz. The ship (or topsail ketch) is making it's way down the California coast from Washington. It was a beautiful afternoon, seas were calm, and the kids were well-behaved. We watched it rain on land while we sailed in the sunlight; a rainbow formed over Santa Cruz that ended right at the Great Dipper, only the best wooden rollercoaster here in California. I think I enjoyed the sail more than the kids.


It's raining outside... a good rain, finally. And there's a tree limb hanging on a powerline somewhere, causing our power to go on and off. Our other project this weekend was to put our router and UPS system in the attic closet so we don't have to listen to it hummmm all day and night. I haven't lost a connection yet... I think we did good. We lost power for several hours about a month ago, during the day. PG&E arrived at the bottom of my driveway and was working on the transformer there, so of course I had to check it out. And the source of the outage: a squirrel had shorted a fuse. I said, "Oh. The squirrel is no more?" "No, the squirrel survived, but its tail is no more." Oh my! I haven't seen it around... and our power hasn't gone out, until tonight.


I decorated the house for Christmas today while the kids were at school. I put a few lights up on the deck (Kev will help do the house this weekend) and put out the inside decorations. I don't have a whole lot of decorations, just a few things on the mantle and china cabinet, a basket of Christmas books and an advent calendar cabinet. Then I went to get the kids.

Oh

wow!


When we got home, K just stared at the lights on the deck as we drove up the drive. Then she couldn't wait to get out of the car. Hurry hurry! When she got in the house and saw the decorations, she was stunned... delighted... wondrous! What was amazing to me was that my little chatterbox was speechless... she was just breathing heavy from the excitement of seeing Christmas finally happening at our house. C's reaction was equally gratifying. I did good today.

It was magical.


My brother-in-law with my nephew joined us for the sail.


Yesterday I mailed in our BCIS renewal paperwork. My appointments are made for the Home Study update. I can start updating the dossier paperwork now. I hope we can get it done before the end of January.


Okay, something behind the house fell with a thud that sounded like it had a lot of leaves. Ah, rain. We didn't see anything out there in the dark. We'll check it out tomorrow.


Entering the Santa Cruz Harbor at sunset.