We passed our two year anniversary of living aboard our catamaran while anchored in the picturesque Aolean Islands of southern Italy. Looking back, it has been both a long and a short journey to get us to the two year milestone. Long, as in plenty of miles under the keels and plenty of ports visited. We have touched land from Maine to the Caribbean to Europe and through the Med and hundreds of places in between. Short, in that it has been two astonishingly quick years of our daughters growing up and our family gaining confidence in the cruising lifestyle.

We had said from the outset that we were going to "give it a year" and see how we liked it. It was such a radical departure from our land based lifestyle that it seemed prudent to hedge our bet. Now, two years into it, some of our original fears and questions still gnaw at the edges of our consciousness. Is this a viable lifestyle for our family future? Is it good for the kids or is the constant travel and upheaval more of a burden than a benefit? Most days our floating home relies on a single chunk of steel buried (hopefully) in the sand and holding us with a strand of chain against all that the sea can dish up. Is this tenuous connection to the earth a good way to raise a family and live your life? Or is perhaps this fretting just a matter of the grass being greener in the other lifestyle?

Beating the heat in Sevilla, Spain.

There is no doubt that we do love cruising and we have no plans to stop. The good days easily outweigh the bad and even the truly scary days fade from our consciousness quickly.

While musing about our cruising life we've made it a point to think back and remember what life was like before we started cruising. What were our worries and concerns regarding our lifestyle and our family? I can remember wondering whether living in the same non-diverse neighborhood throughout school would be a good thing for the girls. Living in a town with busy streets and all of the other issues of city living was a concern. How about the fact that we spend all day working and have only our nights and weekends for the kids? Wouldn't it be better to travel around so they can see and experience the diversity of the world? Oh yeah, now I remember - we had basically the same number of questions and concerns while we were living on land. Apparently, that's what a parent does by nature, on land or on the water.

I guess for us the grass is definitely still greener on the ocean.