Change is sometimes unsettling. Sometimes its good and sometimes its bad. We have had a bit of both lately. We had the sad experience of saying goodbye to an old, dear friend. Rick has been in my life ever since I met my wife; she introduced us. He was a paraplegic, and when he died at 74 he was one of the longest lived paraplegics ever. Thankfully God took him quickly, he did not linger long, but he did leave quite a void in our lives. We will miss him greatly.

Then there’s the sad goodbyes related to leaving our home of 5 years and changing tacks in life to become live-aboard sailors. We had a huge garage sale last week and made ourselves a bit of cash. What didn’t go we donated to a children’s cancer charity – it all HAD to go regardless. So our past week was spent packing, packing and packing. Going back and forth to the storage unit and filling it to the rim with the things we want to keep. As much as we have gotten rid of, there’s still enough to cozily fill a 1 car garage. Its amazing how much we are keeping and how much we got rid of!

Wednesday we went to our final church group and was touched by the well wishes and prayers they said for us when we left. We loaded up the car – FULL – and headed up to the boat where we proceeded to unload and start filling every nook and cranny with stuff. Amazingly enough we got it all packed away, so we turned around and headed home to get load number 2.

Another trip up to the storage container to try and smash some more stuff into it and then we collapse into bed exhausted, only to get up the next day and start all over again. Saturday we got everything packed and were done with the storage unit! We decided to go to our favorite watering hole and say goodbye. But – no clean clothes as we had left all our clothes up on the boat. All we had were the clothes we were working in and our Sunday best for church.

We stopped by the Dollar store and purchased a cheap outfit for each of us, then headed home, showered and went out to dinner. We said our goodbyes to friends and then headed home where we collapsed into bed. Sunday we woke up and with great joy took our horrible mattress down to the car – we dumped it. Got dressed and went to church where we taught our final Sunday school lesson and I did my final security duty. Then we said our goodbyes to church family and went to see my son, daughter-in-law and their new baby. They now have 3 kids.

What a precious beautiful baby! We spent time there and then after eating , came home where we packed the car and then left. One more time to the storage unit – we weren’t done – and then we drove up to the boat. We arrived around 12:30 and collapsed into bed once again, only this time we knew when we woke up that our backs wouldn’t hurt as much since our bed up on the boat is MUCH better than the one we were sleeping on at home.

We are now live-aboards. The next part of our adventure has begun.