Special Thank you Post

We just wanted to send a special thanks to all our family and friends who have helped make this trip possible and more enjoyable.

Janine is awesome! She has helped with packing and cleaning our house before we left. She also provided us with pounds of Dunkin Donuts coffee (for Michele). We have been immensely enjoying her zucchini bread, chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin (especially for Steve) cookies. Janine and Karen also took Michele and mom out to dinner at La Paloma before departing and packed a goodie bag of games, puzzle books and Cadbury bars for our trip. So to both my sisters - we love ya man!

Another most special thanks goes to Domenic. He has been helping Steve get the boat ready all summer. He has also has been available all summer with packing up and maintaining the house. Throughout our travels, he will check on the Jeep and hopefully keep it running. Dom has also been assigned the task of acting financial secretary to the Tori des Pasori. Candace and Domenic also provided a basket full of goodies to take on the trip and an awesome dinner at Gennaro's before we left. Domenic is just always there for us!

I also have to thank my Mom. She has helped stock the boat with plenty of books and sailing paraphernalia. If it wasn't for her, we'd have no sailing dishcloths, napkins, or towels. And what would we do without our sail boat paper weight or out designer sailboat tray? I don't want to even think about it :).

Ray and Cyndi have also deserve a big thanks. They took us out to an awesome breakfast at Newcombs in Milton and gave us our new favorite CD - Kenny Chesney. We are going to have to make a copy of it before we wear this one out!

And what about the Peter Papile family??? How can we ever thank them for fostering Junior for us for the year? They are also going to rent our house and forward our mail for us. Peter also promises to work on our house while we're away. Kathleen bought us a bottle of wine and drove us to the boat on our departure day. (We both teared up when we read her note too!) I know Rachel, Emma and Andrew will give Junior lots of love and attention. We are both so happy that we don't have to worry about the dog, the house or the mail while we're away. Without them this trip would definintely not be possible.

Jessie Porter also gets a gold medal for being the only person on the planet to take Chuey for us. Her and Chris actually love him. Who would have thought that that was possible. For that dog to have more than one person on his side is amazing! We'll see how they are with him after the first month or two. I love Chuey, but his antics do wear on you. I don't know how we put up with him for 11 years now. Thanks Jessie and Chris for taking a turn. There's no way this trip would be enjoyable with him aboard. The poor little guy would be so stressed out. Not to mention the poor big guy - we probably wouldn't make it to our next anniversary.

We also want to thank Robb, Terri and Captain Elijah for the excellent bottle of wine we drank last night and for keeping the pirates off the dock in Hingham last Friday night. We didn't lose any of our booty thanks to Cpt. Eli steering us north ;)!

Thanks also to our friends at NEB that helped us get our sailing career started over the past few years. A special thanks to Pat for always being there for me when I needed her - especially with Chuey support. She has also provided us with an excellent cruising guide book. I know she and my mother will always be checking up on us and worried about our safety and security.