So it has been a very long, busy week of hard work.  Just a little idea of our daily routine the past 5 days: get up early and go to the boat yard by 8:30 am; clean and clean and scrub inside the boat (Monday and Tues), unpack and organize (Wed), clean and scrub and wax and buff and paint the outside of the boat (Thurs and Friday), take a quick lunch break in the afternoon and run errands-go buy equipment, supplies, snacks, water; go back to the boat and work until 7-8 pm; go back to the hotel and swim for an hour, eat snacks and relax and fall asleep exhausted.  Pretty glamorous week huh? It has been really hard work, but it has gone well and we had lots to do to get ready to put the boat in the water.  Now we just have a few more little projects to work on this weekend and the plan is to put it in the water and take it to a marina on Monday morning. It feels so good to have lots of the big hard stuff done.  I better be getting some strong muscles for all this.  Another thing we have been working on this week is learning boat lingo, so I occasionally quiz the kids and I try to only use forward, aft, port, starboard for directions as well as calling the rooms by the terms - galley, cockpit, salon, cabin, head, etc.  We are getting the hang of it and are learning new things about this boat every day.

We made it!

We have made it!  Another few days of tons of driving with some random stops (Graceland, the Loraine Motel where Martin Luther King was killed) and lots more states and we are in Forida.  We got to St. Augustine Sunday afternoon and even though it was raining a ton we had to go introduce the kids to the new boat.  They are pretty excited!
It has been raining almost nonstop since we hit Florida, so we decided to work on cleaning the inside of the boat today.  There is plenty of cleaning and other projects to work on this next few days.

 
Looks like Noah is ready to learn how to drive this thing.

It all begins

Tuesday, June 19 was a big day.  We were busy moving all the furniture, loading the trailer, and cleaning. We were pretty thrashed but still found a little time for fun.  the kids discovered that a twin mattress fits perfectly for sliding down to the basement.

Then, we were a little worried that all of the stuff we want to take for our boating adventure would not fit in this little trailer, but we were very pleasantly surprised that it did fit and we had lots of room to spare.  I am so proud of us.

So the day arrived.  We left EARLY  on Wednesday, June 20 and drove and drove.  The kids did so well that we just kept going.  We made it all the way to Des Moines, Iowa.  15 hours of driving and we were already half way across the country!

We took it a little easier the next day and drove a few hours to Nauvoo and spent the afternoon checking out the church sites.  It was pretty there.

Today we went to Carthage Jail, and then headed on our way.  Then we came across Hannibal, Missouri (the home of Mark Twain, who knew?)  so we stopped to visit some Mark Twain sites. That was a fun little town too.  Then on our way for more and more driving. Now we have made it to Memphis and who knows, maybe we will check out Graceland tomorrow.

Getting Ready for an adventure

So, after trying and trying to think of a clever name for a new blog to journal our upcoming family boating adventure, I have decided to use this family blog I started a few years ago when Paul went to Afghanistan. I created it for family and Paul to be able to keep up with each other.  I ( as you can tell) did not keep it going because he wasn't able to view it from where he was stationed, so I kind of gave up.  So here we go again.  If I think of a cool name I might start a new one, but as of right now, I can only think of dorky names like "Cruising with the Coltons" or "The Colton Catamaran" and those are just too cheesy.  So here goes. We don't have very many pictures of our boat yet, but this was taken when we went out for the inspection in April.

They hauled out the boat for the inspection and we decided to keep it out in dry storage until we get there, so we can do a little work on it when we arrive.  We are leaving very soon and are getting very excited for our adventure to begin.