Happy Mothers Day! Late.. SSB wasn't working Sunday.. sorry!

Hello Everyone,

A Special Happy Mother's day to my mom, Oma, Kristi, Julia, Veronica, Morgan, Shannon, Heidi and all my best friends at home..

I hope all of you mothers out there had a very fantastic Mother's Day. This is the first year in 7 years that I haven't gone with all my besties down to Solvang California to run the Mother's Day Half Marathon. We usually go down the night before and have a nice dinner and then run that morning, go to Santa Barbara for a wonderful stay on the beach and another nice dinner and then leave early in the morning to come home and spend the rest of the day with the family.... So I woke up this morning thinking... I should go running... just kidding... I don't think I could run 20 yards let alone 13 miles right now. But I did spend a lot of time thinking about all the fun I always had this weekend and how spoiled I felt being able to spend it with my sisters and friends and my family... I miss you guys tons and it was an emotional morning for me. I realized on these special days when we are usually with family that is it hard to be so isolated. Sometimes you really do feel like you are stranded on an island... and I just want to go home and give everyone a big hug. I am really really looking forward to seeing everyone.

Today was very special though... the kids and Chris spoiled me rotten by letting me be pirate queen for the day.... Chris started by making breakfast for everyone and then each of the kids gave me really special cards they had made. I love their little drawings and sayings, like your the bestest mom I could ever ask for.. I am thankful for all the cooking you do for me... Really cute.

We decided to start moving the boat up shore so when you sail in the Tuamotus you need to move between the hours of 10 and 2 when the sun is at its highest so you can see all the coral reefs that pop out of nowhere... and they aren't joking when they say to make sure to be on the look out... so I was again Pirate queen for the day and got to have the look out post in the main sail bag with a bean bag chair. These coral reefs are amazing and they are scattered throughout the lagoon... we got really close to a couple and almost hit a sneaker one that we didn't see until it was already beside the boat. We anchored and spent the day on the beach catching baseball size hermit crabs, knocking coconuts out of the trees and eating and drinking the water out of them... and then Mykaela decided to climb a coconut tree... pretty funny watching her do this in her tiny bathing suit... lets just say that next time she will wear more clothing so that she doesn't get so scratched up.... lesson learned but had fun climbing up there. As we were watching her climb Tristan looked over at the water and saw a small black tip reef shark.... what we realized was that that was the baby because a minute longer and this 5 foot shark swam by us about 6 feet from the shore... Um okay... that was our first shark seeing it swim by in the water we are snorkeling in... kind of exciting until I look up and see that it is swimming toward Chris, Amaia and Alina who are out playing around snorkeling around the reefs about 20 feet from shore... it was uneventful and the shark must have just left but still a little unnerving.

We got back to the boat and we hear Amaia saying, "Look it is a sea lion. Wait, no that is another shark... She is getting really good at identifying them now and it was fun to watch it swim around the boat and check things out for awhile... We are excited about a beach bonfire for tomorrow but for tonight Tristan is making his special Pizza Dinner from scratch for me. He has become quite good at making the dough, sauce and then putting everything together that we are proud to say it is our favorite pizza since we left the states... Yum.

We will be staying here for another night or so and then heading over to our next Atoll called Tahanea. This Atoll is now a natural reserve park, and completely deserted.... should be fun and it is suppose to be absolutely beautiful. Getting in and out of the atolls are quite challenging and you always seem to relax once you have made it through... they need to be done again between the hours of 10 - 2 so that you can see the reefs. So eventhough the next destination is only 50 miles we will need to time it so that we leave here at noon and enter the next atoll around the same time... we also have to go through them when it is slack tide. Some of the atolls have a passage that have a 10knt current to either fight against or go with... either way you don't want to be in that river with your boat... so there is a lot of waiting.. Wish us luck :@)

Hugs and love to everyone...

Heather

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