"Then one foggy Christmas eve..."

What a day! After heading out for one last trip to the post office (where I got berated by the not-so-helpful clerk), a bag of ice, a horn, and some lattes, we were off! Destination--Blake Island State Park, which is just south of west of Seattle.

The first big excitement was that I drove us away from the dock! I'm usually the line handler, but today I took to the wheel and surprisingly got us underway without any problem. I drove us out of the marina before handing it back over to Frank. Then after a quick check on the kids, I headed to the bow to be a lookout as it was CRAZY foggy out. We were even compelled to use our fog signals. The real joy was hearing a large vessel report its underway from Everett, SOA 17kts, heading the same direction we were. We heard him, once very close, and could not see him at all! Then there was there were the ferries...we decided to go close to their piers at Clinton to try to minimize how many times we'd run across them. Well, just as we got there we heard the loud blast of their horn--close! And I couldn't see a damn thing. Frank saw the ferry briefly, but then nothing but white. I won't lie, it was scary! We could only see the coast off our starboard beam when we were like 200yds away from it. We decided to drop the anchor before getting to Possession Point and assess the situation...

After the kids got lunch and were down for naps, we decided we should go out a bit and see if it improved. I also installed the AIS app on my iPhone and we got a glimpse of the big traffic out in the sound. Seeing it was pretty light for traffic we headed out and I'm glad we did! Shortly after passing Possession Point we were out of the fog bank and were treated to a beautiful day! We could clearly see Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier, the Olympics, the Cascades, Seattle...a truly glorious day!

Frank quickly got us moving and we had a great afternoon cruise. After the kids got up we made some cookies for Santa and watched Polar Express. We moored to a mooring ball for the first time ever, which I can say wasn't bad, but wasn't wicked easy either. Whatever, it was sunset on a beautiful night and we were one of 2 boats moored on that side of Blake Island.

Our home for Christmas Eve.

We made a call to the family in IL and got to hear some of the excitement there as our nieces and nephew opened their gifts. After dinner we let the kids open one present from us and exchange their presents from each other. Trent was very happy with his singing Thomas train car and Katreina loved her Silvermist doll! Then we lowered the table to make a fun place for Christmas morning, wrote a note to Santa, and left him some treats!

"We're ready for Santa and the reindeer!"

With the kids all snug in their beds we had a new challenge...how to get all this stuff "under" the tree without waking them up! Somehow we pulled it off!

Our bathroom became the hiding spot for all the gifts!