Another Birthday in Paradise!

Saturday we had rented a car from Budget and drove to North Fort Myers on Sunday to visit with Larry's parents and returned late Tuesday night. The weekend was perfect and so was our visit. Larry and Dad played a round of golf and much to Larry's delight he did well even though it's been at least 12 months or more since we last played. Mom and I visited and did a little shopping and then to lunch. It was a much shorter visit than we wanted but with us having jobs we needed to get back to work. It was good to get a visit in, no matter how short.

Wednesday was my Birthday and it was a beautiful day. The weather was very cooperative and gave us warm breezes and sunshine. It was a very busy day for us, Larry worked in the afternoon and I spent most of the day teaching Sharon, another boater, how to do stained glass. I'm finished with all my projects and she will be buying my equipment. I've been enjoying stained glass for the last 15 years but found it very challenging to do now that we live aboard. In the evening Larry and I went down by car to Castaways were I work for dinner. It was a great evening, we both had jumbo shrimp cocktail, then king crab legs, a meal that would have been very expensive but my employee discount came in handy, what a meal. The whole gang came out to sing and bring us a slice of chocolate cake. It's a great place to work and everyone is like a family away from home for me.

We had rented the car for the entire week, so naturally I wanted to take full advantage of it. Two of my friends from in the harbor, Kathy and Julie and I went for a road trip to Islamorada. We had a mission and it was to visit the bead store, in fact we visited two. I also was close to our mail service so I dropped in on Seth and got our mail. We were hungry after all this activity so we went to lunch at my favorite place, Moratta's on the Bay. We made the trip back just in time for me to shower and then off to work.

Friday we took advantage of the car again and made a trip to Publix to provision for the Bahamas. Friends of ours, Rich and Julie, are joining us for a 10 day trip while we are over there so we provisioned for them also. We are told food that has to be shipped in is very expensive so we bought as much as the boat could handle. It's amazing how much one can fit into the cabinets when necessary.

Saturday the harbor was buzzing with activity! At the marina a yard sale started out the day followed by a dinghy race, then the chili cook off. We paticipated in the yard sale to off load the boat of unnecessary items, we needed to make room for all that food. We made a little extra money to boot.

Sunday, today, we caught up on some much needed attention to details on the boat, such as storing all that food. It was windy here today and so the boat was doing a dance around the mooring ball and we had a need to place our feet on the ground so we took a ride on the smorgasboat to shore. It sure was nice to stay dry in spite of the waves.

We are relaxing on the boat this evening, we are both tired from a busy week and are looking forward to our time in the Bahamas. Larry has been spending many of his few free hours adding things like energy efficient convience lights in the cabin, hanging my mirror, and many other details for our trip. Tuesday we plan to look at a watermaker another crusier has for sale. If it will work for us it will allow us to stay out at remote Islands in the Bahamas for longer periods of time. Our goal is to become as self sufficient as possible. It's hard to believe we leave in two weeks.