It’s the final day of 2024. (Deep breath!)
Being a Type A planner, I have to give myself a little pat on the back for making it through this year. For our family, the unintentional theme word of the year was unexpected.
UNEXPECTED: blessings, loss, travel, activities, friendships, success, businesses, moves…2024 took us for a ride!
If you’d asked me a year ago how I thought this year would go, never in a million years would I have predicted most of what happened. Admittedly though, I can look back with a lot of gratitude. God had some incredible plans for us!
My biggest regret of the year is how little I updated this website. Writing is a big outlet for me, but it’s also one of the first things to go when I get busy. I’m not under the illusion that anyone is holding their breath waiting for a year end recap. However, since much of this didn’t get documented at the time, I have to do it for my own sanity before I move to 2025.
The Beginning of 2024
We started 2024 where everyone dreams of starting, at the dentist.
I had been in a car accident a few months earlier and I was seeing a dentist in Huntsville. Unfortunately, a very well meaning dental assistant completely numbed my mouth before the dentist could test whether my teeth were dead. So not only was I pretty miserable, but our whole trip to Huntsville was pointless. There wasn’t much we could do except laugh and give a lot of grace to the people involved.
I share this story only to illustrate that, beginning to end, our year took some pretty unexpected twists! We did our best to constantly look for joy in all the unforeseen events, even when it wasn’t easy.
A few other highlights from the beginning of the year include:
- Miller’s 12th birthday- snow tubing and ice skating in Florida!
- Mary Grace joined the High School Sailing Team and VERY unexpectedly loved it and excelled.
- We participated in The AGLCA Winter Rendezvous and even put our boat on the Looper Crawl.
- Mary Grace got contacts, Miller played basketball, and we did quite a bit of college planning.
- Our family traveled to Galena, IL for my beautiful cousin’s wedding, I traveled to Huntsville two more times for the dentist, and Brent traveled A TON for work.
March, April and May 2024
In March we transitioned from boatlife to landlife. This is actually the one topic I’ve written about a few times so I won’t rehash it. I would like to say that this was the most unexpected thing about 2024, but I’m not sure that would be true.
These months are a complete blur in my mind. But based on the pictures on my phone, here are some highlights:
- We moved out of the storage unit in Charlotte. It was amazing to see much of our “stuff.” And equally annoying to see so much stuff (I really enjoyed the minimalist lifestyle!)
- Within days of moving in we hosted Easter for several friends, and then we followed that up by hosting my family for a weekend.
- Our family spent spring break in the Bahamas sailing on one of our best friends’ boats. I really should know by now to expect the unexpected when boating, but hearing a friend call a mayday in a remote area of the Exumas easily tops the list of worst moments of 2024.
- Miller transitioned from basketball to soccer. His soccer team lacked…a lot, but I’ll just say wins.
- Mary Grace entered and won her first sailing regatta. She also won FLVS Latin Student of the Year and was awarded the top merit scholarship for a summer marine biology program. Additionally, she got certified as a Level 1 Sailing instructor.
- We fell in love with a new church, finished our school year and traveled to Norfolk for the AGLCA Spring Rendezvous.
- At some point we had our first visitor to the dock behind our home. “Light & Salty Marina and Resort” was officially named and we have cherished each and every guest!
The Summer 2024
There’s about a 10 week period for our family that could really be written as 4 different stories. In other words, for the most part we all went our own separate ways!
Miller: Traveled with Brent to Omaha to watch the Baseball Vols win the National Championship. Spent a ton of time with friends. Participated in VBS. Went to a week of sleepover camp with our church. Thoroughly enjoyed a week of baseball camp at The University of Tennessee. Spent a few days at “Nana Camp” in Charlotte. And in his spare time, he played Junior PGA and he loved it. He got his first ever birdie, learned a lot, and made several friends.
Mary Grace: Began the summer being gifted her first boat (a Sunfish) by our generous neighbor. Weeks later she would be hired as an ambassador for a similar sailboat company, SOL. So yes, if you’re counting, she has 2 boats on our dock now! She split her summer between working as a sailing instructor at the Edison Sailing Center, and attending a residential marine biology class in Dauphin Island, AL. On the way home she got caught up in the big airline computer shutdown which was not quite the homecoming we expected for her! To conclude the summer, she donated 15 inches of her hair and was in a very traumatic boating accident (unrelated other than the timing) just before her 17th birthday.
Brent: Worked a lot. In addition to celebrating the one year anniversary of his company, Great Loop Yacht Sales (in April) he also launched 2 insurance companies over the summer. Brent has been dreaming of, and planning to open an insurance company for years. However, the timing of this past summer was unexpected when his insurance business partner pushed up the timeline significantly. In true Brent fashion, he’s made running 3 businesses look easy. Great Loop Yacht Sales will always be his day in and day out focus, but at night and in his spare time he’s running the operational side of the insurance businesses. Lest you think his summer was all work and no play, keep in mind that he went to Omaha for the National Championship. He also spent time in Tampa, Knoxville and Charleston for fun.
Sarah: Loved supporting the other 3 members of her family in all their summer adventures. But equally enjoyed getting away for a lake trip with her high school friends. And especially loved the weekend in Charleston with one of her best friends. She also got a Jeep, read a ton of books, and finished unpacking and moving into the house. (I’m going to switch back to 1st person now…I know this paragraph probably bugged my grammar friends.)
Hurricane Season 2024
Here’s where life took a really, really unexpected twist. Tropical Storm Debby flooded our yard in August. Hurricane Helene flooded our house with 4 inches of water in September. And Hurricane Milton packed the final punch of the season with 11 inches in our home in October. I documented this well so I don’t really need to revisit the heartache.
Here are a few of the other “highlights” I’ll remember from this time in our lives:
- Our friends showed up. Over and over and over again. We would never have gotten through all of the crazy without their love, prayers and physical support.
- Just before Helene we found 2 empty days on our calendar and took the kids to Universal Studios. It had been a long-promised trip that had gotten postponed several times based on the craziness of the year. Thank goodness we squeezed it in when we did because little did we know what was coming!
- Miller made the middle school golf team. Mary Grace was named team captain for the sailing team. Then Miller made the middle school soccer team. And I lost my mind and signed him up for fall baseball. So yes, that’s 4 sports we were juggling.
- We attended another Lighthouse Family Retreat, serving families who’d lost a child to cancer. This week was an exercise in flexibility starting with a destination change and ending with being shut down a day early due to Hurricane Helene.
- We lost a dear friend, very unexpectedly. He was a fellow Looper, the co-founder of a men’s bible study with Brent, and one of our kiddos favorite people. Brent traveled to Texas for Dave’s funeral as I attempted to hold together a flooded home. Did I mention 2024 was crazy?
- Mary Grace entered a 2-day regatta that involved camping. In the most UNEXPECTED twist of the whole year, I actually loved camping. And Mary Grace and her sailing partner Bennett won the regatta. She also participated in a regatta in Miami with her SOL. That one she didn’t win. But she sailed in terrible conditions so it was quite memorable!
- After Milton our family moved back on our boat. I cannot stress enough how much that was NOT the plan. And yet, in the midst of a really bad situation, we ended up having a lot of fun. We felt beyond grateful to have a convenient, safe place to live while the house was being repaired.
Sailing To Antigua 2024
In a way, time literally stood still during this 3-week block of time. Mary Grace flew to Norfolk, trained with a group of sailors, and then departed for Antigua. They made an unexpected stop in Bermuda due to weather. They finally arrived in Antigua, 14 days after departing Norfolk. It felt like the journey lasted forever.
Fortunately, Miller kept me so busy with his 3 sports, 2 youth groups, and multiple other commitments! It left with very little time to worry about Mary Grace in the middle of the ocean.
Holiday Season 2024
We moved back into our home the Friday night before Thanksgiving and decorated for Christmas before we made the beds. It might have been a little crazy, but it was very necessary for all of us. We needed to have those magical moments of childhood Christmas at home that we’d desperately missed while we lived on the boat.
The time between moving back into our house, and the new year feels like it happened in the blink of an eye. We packed a lot in, and ironically didn’t end up sleeping in our house much at all! Here are some of the highlights:
- Thanksgiving in Valdosta with Sarah’s family
- The Perch arriving at Light & Salty Resort and Marina (We buddy boated with The Perch for 18 months and love being back together!)
- Traveling to Italy and Switzerland for 10 days in December- much more on this to come!
- Squeezing in a lot of Christmas traditions into a very small amount of time. We decorated gingerbread houses, baked lots of Christmas cookies, and hosted a party for some of our close friends. Did we want to do more? Yes. But was I absolutely at my max? Also, yes. After church on Christmas Eve we did our traditional Hibachi. And then we did a quite Christmas at home.
- Traveling to Walnut Cove and Knoxville to see family after Christmas.
Cheers to 2025
2024 set the crazy bar high. But something tells me that I should just go ahead and expect that 2025 will be equally as wild. I can honestly say that we love the season we’re in. The quiet family moments are few and far between, but it makes them that much more precious. We love seeing the kids thriving in their “new” land life! We have grateful hearts for everyone involved in helping make Brent’s businesses so successful. Landlife gives us the opportunity to travel more (other than by boat!) and we took full advantage in 2024.
Despite the challenges, we recognize how richly God blessed our lives this past year!
I really like to under promise and over deliver, but I’m not sure the updates here could get any less frequent. So I’ll take a risk and say that I have BIG goals to restore the frequency that I’m posting. Can everyone please hold me to it????
Happy New Year, and as always, thank you for keeping up with our adventures and misadventures! I’m always a little baffled by the most popular posts on this site each month. Here are a few recent (but random) top posts that you may enjoy reading:
Renting a Car for Travel: The Pros, Cons and Worst Case Scenario
The One About East Coast Boating
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