We arrived in Seattle on the weekend and spent our first day in an early Christmas celebration with David’s family . The remainder of the week was busy with seeing David’s sisters more and visiting with friends. It’s always a bit rough for me when we are back in Seattle while working since it means working EST hours from PST – very early mornings! It was quite a busy week in the pre-holiday season, but we neglected to take any pictures!!
The following weekend, we drove out to Big Sky with Eric and his puppy Barli. He had invited us to stay with him at his house on the mountain, which is amazingly beautiful. My parents also joined us there and we had a wonderful and relaxing week skiing and enjoying company. We were later joined by Brent and Mary, their 6mo old daughter Ember, and two huskies, Si and Troy.
We had organized flights back to Florida from Bozeman on Christmas Day. However, due to all the staff shortages from Covid, we found out before we boarded our first flight that our connecting flight from Atlanta to Sarasota had been cancelled. We managed to get on standby for a flight from Atlanta to Tampa, which wasn’t far from Sarasota and would still be uberable back to the boat.
When we landed in Atlanta, I saw a text from Matthew that his flight to Ushuaia had been delayed and he was still in the Atlanta airport! Due to various scheduling constraints, we had not been able to see him while we were in Seattle, and he was heading out on a month long adventure to sail to Antartica on a 100 year old tall ship (https://www.barkeuropa.com/follow-the-ship).
We hopped on the airport train to his gate and were able to say a quick hello before he started boarding. A lovely treat for me!!
Since it was Christmas, all but one of the restaurants in the airport were closed, so we waited in a huuuuuuge line in time to get the dregs of what they had left for our dinner. We waited patiently at the gate and managed to get seats on the flight. With the flight delays and such, we arrived back to the boat at 2am. The yard had told us not to liveaboard the boat, but at 2am we weren’t gonna move, so we just left in the morning.
It was a little bit of a different Christmas than we usually have, but it was wonderful to see family and get a little skiing in after none last season.