New Updates for a New Year

My family (sister, mom and dad) on the way home from the hospital!

We arrived back in La Paz last night from a two week stint up in the states, celebrating Christmas and my Dad's successful heart valve replacement at University of Washington Hospital. We stayed with my grandparents in Mill Creek, WA, just north of Seattle, all five of us. With lots of home cooked meals, Christmas cookies, presents and new hand-sewn stockings (which Clif and I helped complete) we had a very traditional, heart-warming Christmas. I had the pleasure of watching my Dad heal and get better day-by-day, taking him on walks and watching movies while he recovered from his surgery. Clif and I managed to squeeze in a good ice skating session (very festive), and several coffee dates down at the local Starbucks with my grandparents' friends. We came back with more than we left with, which was expected, but the greatest gift of all was getting to take my Dad home from the hospital and celebrate Christmas with him, even in his ox-induced state. ;)

We had a couple hour lay-over on the way back down to Los Cabos in San Diego. We walked over to the closest West Marine and purchased a brand new fridge. For those of you who didn't know, our fridge quit on us somewhere after Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, BC... so it's been a while. We have managed to keep the fridge functional by purchasing ice whenever with purchase groceries, but it has greatly impacted what we cook, when we cook it and what we buy. We had to pay an import fee for the parts, even though we checked it through to Cabo, which halted us for a couple minutes at customs, but besides that, our commute went very smoothly.

New Vinyl Lettering I put on this morning!

Besides the fridge, we got several new exciting additions to the boat. I ordered vinyl lettering for the bow of the boat from Alaska Litho, so we now have our proud name printed on the bow of the boat! We also had some fun little boat cards made up for us to be able to pass out to other crusiers. Boat cards are most definitely "a thing" down here. Clif got a set of boat cards under the Christmas tree last week, so now we can be cool, "official" Mexican cruisers.

Plan for the week...

We're off again to Loreto tomorrow, trying to milk the time we paid for at Marina Palmira in La Paz, where we can leave the boat without worries. Clif's parents are going to be flying down tomorrow and will hopefully get some good weather while we play in the sun and on the water. No boat coming up with us to Loreto yet, it's a bit of a trek, so we are going to save that for later this spring.

After our Loreto vacation, we might spend a little more time in La Paz installing the new fridge and re-provisioning the boat. From there... it's totally open! We might spend some time over on Espiritu Santo, and then possibly cross over on a couple nice days to the mainland, for a different scene.

I'll let you know how our La Paz New Year's celebrations turns out, as well as the exploration on in the Loreto area.

Giselle

Boat cards... for fun.