hello bahamas!

West Palm is a bit nostalgic for us since Braden and I lived in the area for so long and Emma was born there. We enjoyed being in a city that was so familiar to us while we waited for good weather to get over to the Bahamas. We saw a movie. Went to the farmer's market. Ate at some of our favorite restaurants. Shopped at CityPlace. Visited Santa, and even saw snow.

For weeks we watched the weather. It felt like we would never get good enough weather to be able to cross over to the Bahamas.

Finally it was go time! We made our last minute shopping trips (groceries in the Bahamas are expensive, so we wanted to stock up on as much as we could before we left the US), got all the laundry done (the laundromat in West Palm is by far my favorite of all time) and picked up some last minute Amazon packages.

None of this would have been possible without our friends letting us use their Jeep while we were in town (thank you!). You don't realize what a luxury it is to have a car until you don't have one for a while.

Weather is unpredictable, so you never know if you made the right decision to leave or not. It's always a reassuring feeling to see so many other boats going the same way you are.

It was a bit of a bumpy ride all the way to the Bahamas. But it was go now or wait until after Christmas... and we had been waiting long enough. Emma's poor gingerbread house didn't make the trip.

Our first stop in the Bahamas - West End. Braden and I came here on our other boat for our honeymoon in 2010. The marina is more run down than we remember, but we were excited to be in the Bahamas and had a fun first night dancing up a storm.