Charm - Day 7 - halfway mark

I always struggle with what number the day is. Today, however, I am certain. We started on a Wednesday and it's Wednesday again. Although I guess it's actually the beginning of Day 8 because I'm writing 6 hours after we started. Oh well - as long as I'm consistent, I think we'll all be OK.

Today we celebrated the halfway point. I think the rhumb line distance is 2100 or thereabouts but we've actually covered more than that because we've wandered around, chasing the wind. So we picked 1,000. Also, we were all awake at that time and therefore, it was more fun than someone cheering alone in the middle of the night.

Our friends from King's Ransom gave us Atlantic crossing gifts and we got to open 2 today - the "halfway" gift and the "one week at sea" gift. You'll see the photo of Tim getting attacked by the kids when he tried to make off with the giant bag of gummy bears they opened. There really is nowhere to run!

We're getting ready for Thanksgiving and making our usual crafts to express thankfulness. I asked Tully what she was thankful for and she said, "If Santa is there, I'll give him his thankful-giving" which made about as much sense to me as it probably does to you.

Somehow, I think I didn't do my best job of communicating what the day will look like or is about. We read a book about Thanksgiving (thanks Mom!) and it talked about all the things that Thanksgiving entails, including visiting relatives and friends. Somehow, Tully seems to think that either we're going somewhere or people are coming to see us. Either way, it seems that if Santa might be there, she wants to be prepared to give him something and she knows it should include the word "thanks."

Even tonight, as she went to bed, she seemed to think there would be a gathering tomorrow. It kind of drives home the realization that our kids (or at least one of them) really are living in a reality very unlike the one I'm experiencing. Has Tully noticed that we haven't seen land in a week?

When I asked Cobin what he was most looking forward to when we reached land, he said "Getting a big bucket of Double Bubble if they have it there." When pressed he said vaguely that he might like to see "other people."

I guess if I think about it, there isn't much that we're missing. At the moment, we have everything we need on the boat (although we've entered fresh fruit and veggie rationing) and there really isn't anything I'm longing for either. I'll spend tomorrow being thankful for that!

The only minor setback for today was that the clever place to store all the flour wasn't entirely moisture-proof. The bottoms of all the bags of flour had a lovely growth of mold. Thankfully, only about one quarter of each bag was ruined. The upside - we can make pumpkin bread. The downside - we're headed to Central America with lots of bags of white powder!