Memories

I thought it would be fun to start doing some writing about some of our travel experiences from our last trip. Now that we are home, I hope to have more time. You might think I would have had time while traveling. That would be one reason why to write more about what our days looked like. I now can write at leisure in my kitchen instead of in an Internet café or perched on our hostel balcony trying to get some free WIFI.

The next few blogs may come very randomly and not at all in the order that they happened and I will try to at least give the approximate time of the month and the place we were at the time.

Many of the stories may be just remembrances of our time as we hang out at home and now that we aren’t taking in so many new things and places will have time to rehash them and write them down.

Our regular routine

I don’t think that I am suffering from nostalgia for the road- o.k. maybe a little. The thing that I really miss is the time we spent together as a family. I miss spending all day with Dean and the kids. It wasn’t always perfect; there were times when I longed to have a minute to myself. But it was so real. We learned to communicate with each other through crazy problems, stress and just the logistics of traveling through so many countries. People have asked us how we coped with the logistics of traveling together for so long. The truth is that logistics is what we do at home. When we are at home we typically spend so much time managing mealtimes, schoolwork, extra curricular activities, mowing lawn, friends and just telling the kids what to do. During our travels we spent so much time exploring together, learning about places that none of us knew about. We had time to talk through problems and disagreements. We had time to just hang out and enjoy each others company and learn a little bit more about each other as people. These are things that cannot survive at home in their entirety. There is too much competition. There is too much to do like school, work, and friends.

But since returning home I have noticed a few changes. With the memory of our trip, a living example, we can reach for each other more easily, we have developed a better way to live our regular life. A way that has more time to sit down and talk, more time to laugh, more time to be a family. It doesn’t really matter where we are. The spirit of the trip will never be far from our hearts.

As I sit here in remembrance of our trip. I still amaze at the strength of our kids. They seemed to be the same kids from home, but as we were hiking for 5 hours up and down mountains in 35 degree heat or traveling for 12 hours in a day carrying our heavy backpacks, they took it all in stride. When I would have expected Miranda to say her legs were tired from walking she kept up. Which if you have ever walked beside Dean you would know that that is not an easy feat. When I expected Colton to be bored he picked up a book and read. When I expected them to say they wouldn’t try a particular type of food. They tried it and thought it was their favorite. We knew Colton and Miranda have always been unique and amazing and once again this proved true.

"home" again

We are back in town- so to speak. Back to routine-though we don't know what that means right now. Back to the grind- I love Canadian coffee. Back to school- next week. Back to the real world- I think we get that here and also in the rest of the real world. Back to fishing season- tomorrow. Back- we are glad to be home.

Because we sold our house before we left we are now officially homeless. You might think that would be a bad thing, but we are very excited to continue our adventure by living in town which we haven't done in 15 years. Also at having the experience of living in someone else's house. We will be housesitting for a family while they are at IHOP till December. So till then we will be town folk.

We are not building a new house right now. Many people have asked us when we will start. We don't know, we have some more travel to do first. Which was the point of selling.

As of now, we are just trying to unpack, get in some fishing, get together the school supplies, go for as many suppers to visit people as possible and to get over jet lag. So far it seems to be going fairly well other than the waking up at 4 am and feeling very tired by 7pm. It has been good.