I’m going to try to keep this blog post short and sweet.  The reason I haven’t written is that I’ve been busy.  That sounds like an excuse to even me, so here’s a short list of what we’ve been up to since mid-December.

• I made an engine stand for the new dinghy motor and we ran it for a while one freezing day with Marine fuel stabilizer, then proceeded to change the lower unit gear oil before hanging it up for the season.
• I spent an entire day working on getting our Sail Wandering Toes YouTube Channel tweaked and looking better.  It took time, but I feel better about it now.  What isn’t working is that I have claims against two of my videos based on the music, which I thought I had handled in the credits.  Long story short, I may need to remove and remake them with new music so the videos are in a chaotic state right now and I can’t find time to fix them right away.  Expect changes, hopefully for the better in the not-so-distant future.
• We had the Christmas holidays and I visited my family in the Twin Cities for a couple of days.  It was really good to see everyone and not enough time to really catch up.
• I’ve been busy designing and creating a bunch of new t-shirt designs on the computer.  We ordered the first couple of  Wandering Toes shirts to see what the quality would turn out like and have been having fun with that.  I am still going to test other vendors for the shirts as I’m looking to find something great.  You’ll see more on this when I can get it setup.  And you’ll probably see Marge and I wearing funny looking shirts of our own designs this year.  I’ve had this in my head for a long time and have been making it happen as time permits.
• We had our friends Dave and Leslie Holck to our house for New Year’s Eve.  We even stayed up past midnight watching sailing videos on YouTube!  We blabbed for hours on end about sailing and all of our plans for the future.
• I joined Anytime Fitness and have been working out on my lunch hours.  I’m starting to feel better and am really enjoying that.  I’ve been watching Sailing videos on YouTube while working out.  I am working towards a more fit me in 2016.
• Marge and I both got sick and were out of it for a few days.
• Last week I installed a new solar vent in our center opening hatch.  We then took a ride up to the boat to install it back on the boat only to find the winds blowing about 30 knots.  We decided not to unzip the winter cover in fears of it catching wind and blowing loose.  All of the tie down ropes are holding and in good shape, so I am happy about that.
• We cleaned out the garage shop to get ready to varnish all of our trim work for our house.  The new trim is coming on Wednesday so we’ll have a week or two of varnishing and installing trim and the associated house chaos to move everything around as needed.
• We moved our freezer to the garage finally getting it moved our of our living room.
• Posting and selling a few things on Craigslist to free up space.  Takes time, but we’re making a dent.
• And I have been working on another of my goals which is to get and document better videos in 2016.  I have been researching new video cameras and will be getting a couple of new video cameras this year in the hopes of making better videos.

Today I purchased some new video editing software.  That will mean a whole new learning experience and a bit of a set-back in video editing, but hopefully it will result in better videos going forward.  I have been seeing some really cool sailing videos online and have been thinking about how we can document our adventures.  If you see us running around with a video camera this summer, just be yourself.  I want everyone else to see just how cool all of our friends are.  I expect that most of it will get thrown away anyways.  If you don’t want me to video, just say so.  I’m not going to try to be annoying, just trying to capture all of the awesome things that are always in our daily lives.  It’s new for me too, I’m learning.  You’ll see, it’ll be great!

Next blog post, I’ll try to outline our boat project list for 2016.  We sat down and came up with a project plan for the boat for this year and we will definitely be busy!  I am going to try to turn some of our boat projects into blog articles so others can learn from our triumphs and our mistakes.  That’s on my bucket list for 2016, one of many.  And I really want to spend more time getting this blog on it’s feet and looking better.  I have so many ideas in my head and they just need a home.

Thanks for taking this journey with us!