Transitioning from Hawaii to Winter

Honey, we're not in Hawaii anymore

While formulating some thoughts for this post, I'm looking into the gray Washington sky and having a hard time reconnecting with my Hawaii experience. Was I really just uncomfortably hot a few short weeks ago? Two days ago a 30 minute bike ride brought both of us a little too close to frostbite for comfort. In the painful but glorious moments that thawing brought I had the thought, a little too hot sounds really good right now.

OK, that's a tad dramatic. And although a true story, that's not the whole story of our transition from Hawaii to the mainland.  The real fun started before we left Hawaii when we discovered that the boat that was transporting our winter clothes from Kodiak to Seattle was late due to weather and that would put it behind a week. So after a delightful Thanksgiving Day with family in Montana, we headed back to Seattle only to be told that it was yet another week behind. All told, we have been without our winter duds for over three weeks...and counting. Thank Jesus for thrift stores!






It turns out the delay was really a blessing in disguise, which is how God does things so I'm not surprised. On the way back from Montana we picked up our new-to-us RV (Class C '92 Fleetwood Jamboree shorty). The good news: we got a great deal on a well-made rig. The bad news: the 20 year old roof needed replaced, setting us back on time and making out "great" deal a "good" deal. So, even though we will be two weeks behind schedule, we thankfully had Jay's dad to stay with during the repair and even an RV sized garage to do some final repairs and updates before we hit the road (thank you, Miss Pauline!).

Flexibility is the name of the game when traveling in general, so although we are getting stir crazy, we are so so thankful that things are working out and that we will have a good-to-go RV for our trip-yay! Plus we had more time to spend with good friends and our wonderful family. Now for our next challenge-fitting everything in our limited space... It's all part of the adventure.