By the time this posts, the boys and I will either be in Seattle or meeting my parents north of there in Bellingham to climb aboard and spend several days sailing in the San Juan Islands with them. That is how my parents spent their honeymoon 45 years ago. This back of this picture reads 1963, two years after their wedding.
Growing up, each year my dad would take about 4 weeks off in the summer go sailing with us up the coast of British Columbia. It's one of those things that you so take for granted as a child. We had no idea how lucky we were. I remember bringing nothing much more than our clothes and a pack of markers and paper, a coffee can of legos, and a few books for the rainy days, as well as a few rolls of duct tape to make boats out of Olympia beer cans and driftwood for towing behind the boat. We would get to pick out an ice cream bar a new comic book each time we stopped for food and gas. Sometimes we got lucky and found Asterix and Obelix or Tin Tin ones.
Now, I'd like our boys to have some of those same experiences, if only for a few days, and I know it means so much to my parents to have them there. They still go every year, my mom usually for about 3 weeks but my dad stays out for up to 6 weeks now, returning sometime in early to mid September.
Be back in early August!
And thank you for all the great comments. I know I rarely get a chance to respond to them, but I do read and think about each one. There's also the matter of over a thousand unread posts in my bloglines feeds. I wish I could just sit down with all of you and talk, unbroken. It would be a long time before we ran out of things to say.
Here's what we're bringing along for rainy days(that's my new Trek Along sock, rpm from the new Knitty. Great pattern, although I've adapted it. It's going to fit perfectly):
