Trip to the Islands

A little over 9 hours ago, we dropped Amy off at the parking lot of her school to begin a just under four and a half day field trip for the 6th grade. They will be on a 35 foot sailboat wandering around the Northern Puget Sound in the area of the San Juan Islands. Here is the Google Map.

During the day they will be learning how to operate the rigging on the sailboat and other boating skills and they will be doing various scientific activities related to things they can learn on the Sound. At night they will split into groups and half will sleep on the boat and the other half will put ashore to camp on the various islands. They will alternate nights so each group gets to do both. They will do all their own cooking in the ships galley and at the camp sites. Their exact route and which islands they will be visiting was determined by the kids in class over the last couple of weeks as they planned out the whole thing. It will be a very good trip. The kids were all very excited as they gathered and headed off this morning.

Brandy though has been VERY nervous about this trip for months ever since she had a nightmare about Amy on a boat right BEFORE we found out that’s what the field trip was. Plus this will be the first time Amy has been away from Brandy for more than 24 hours except when she was left in the care of either Brandy’s mom or myself. So it is a little traumatic. (For Brandy, not for Amy.) But we’ll all do fine. Amy is going to have a great time and be back late Wednesday.

Also, you may notice Amy has a thing on her hand. Wednesday evening she was on the couch with Brandy, got up to get a drink, but forgot to bring her legs with her and instead just toppled forward onto the floor. All three of us laughed quite a bit. It was funny the way she fell. But she braced herself with her hand when she fell I guess and shortly thereafter it was swelling and hurting. A trip to the Doctor Thursday resulted in the little brace thing as a precaution. (X-Rays didn’t show anything broken, but in the particular area in question sometimes minor things are hard to see apparently.) So she has to wear the brace thing for two weeks, including the field trip. Woo! What fun!