Almost time to leave

 We are now down to our last week before we leave.  I finally have most of the projects done we wanted to complete prior to leaving.  Then the scary discussion came up of should we delay.  Amy had been working on a lot of projects around the house and was no where near where she wanted to be & Annabelle still has not been placed with a host family in Sweden.  To me this was my worst nightmare.  We had been planning to leave in mid August back in April/May when we were doing our initial planning then in June Amy & I agreed to push it back until Annabelle was placed and Amy wanted to be around to help get her program started at the ice rink.  At this point we have two problems.  1.  I have heard you want to be off Lake Michigan by September if you can as the lake starts to become less predictable and one will have to stay in port for more weather days.  2.  We had signed up for the Great Loop Association meet up in Alabama on October 18th.  This meant we were now on a timeline to get the boat somewhere which is never good!  I have to admit I was terrified of this discussion and my initial reaction was no way can we move the date.  We needed to get the boat moving one way or another.  We had several discussions about Max and I possibly heading out and the girls meeting us somewhere along the way but ultimately decided the logistics of that would be painful and to just stick with our original date.  We decided so what if some stuff did not get done and told ourselves once again there is never a perfect time to go and we just needed to get out the door to start this adventure we had talked about for so long!.

We really didn't have time for a trip to Chicago the two days before we left but we did it anyway at the Exchange agencies urging to get Annabelle a visa.  I had filled out the form and read what was on the website but unfortunately did not pay enough attention and it turned out we needed a lot more paperwork then what we had and stuff like proof of insurance, where she was going to say, and a indentation letter to the country would all need to be supplied by the agency.  So we waisted a full day in the car about 10+ hours and $250 for a trip to Chicago only to be denied a Visa.  Hopefully we can try this again on our way around in the boat.  Oh well back to boat prep.

We invited family over to see the boat and wish us goodby.  None of our extended family had yet to see the boat.  Some were surprised how small it was but all were excited for us and wished us well for the journey ahead.