Ok so I’ve written my first blog post. Here we go!
Mike and I have both always loved to travel. I was fortunate enough to travel a lot with my family when I was growing up as my dad was a journalist who, in addition to loving travel, also accumulated a lot of frequent flyer points. My mom loved to plan trips and she was very good at dreaming up journeys and booking itineraries. We rarely did the all-inclusive type of travel and instead visited destinations that were a little off the beaten path and less frequented by tourists.
Things are gradually reopening where we live. Over the last couple of weeks, we have had the opportunity to meet up with friends and family. Like our children, we have missed our friends and relatives. It got me thinking that we are going to miss a bunch of people when we take off on our trip. But why do we need to miss them? Perhaps some will decide to join us at random points around the world. Wouldn’t that be neat?
Last year we managed to convince my extended family to go on a trip to Iceland with us. Being transparent, we had some concerns that it might be difficult for everyone to “get along”. Over the years Paige and I have adjusted our style to not need everyone to do the same thing and have the same experiences. On the Iceland trip, I think we did our best to give everyone lots of room and let each sub-unit sort of go at their own pace.
The good news is that travelling with that extended family had lots of “halo” benefits. On that trip, family members’ input made us participate in experiences that my wife and I would not have considered on our own. On the financial side, our money went a little bit further as we could share accommodation and some transport costs. On the sanity side, “babysitting” by family members allowed me and my wife some free time that we put to good use. Snorkelling in Iceland would not have been possible if my brother’s family were not watching my kids at the time. On the appreciation side, family members remembered unique aspects of the trip so that when we reminisce we seem to get a more complete recounting of the adventure.
I understand the complexities around co-ordinating things and that sometimes things fall through. Not too long ago, my family went to Jamaica for a winter holiday. Just before arrival, we found out one of my good friends was staying at a resort just a couple kilometres up the beach. For some reason, we just did not end up crossing paths.
In a previous post, I made a tongue in cheek comment about my grandmother coming to visit us for Christmas in Italy. I am not sure she has been on a plane and not having a passport might prove problematic for her. I am not writing it off but I am going to give that one a 10% chance of coming to fruition. For the rest of you, do not hesitate to tell us when and where! We could use a bunch of babysitters.
I am still trying to get my head around how all these interfaces work so bear with me in the short term.
Today I wanted to go ahead and share a rough sketch of our ambition. My wife and I have been thinking about this for the last few years and it will be interesting to see how things will change over time.
In the summer of 2022 we plan to put our careers on hold and take our children on a year long trip around the world. Isabella and Julie will be pulled out of school and we will have to figure out how to school them on the road.
We aim to have 4 major components of our trip that will sort of correspond to the seasons. The first would be a 3 month road trip across Canada. We would follow that with 3 months in Europe along the Mediterranean. We would start 2023 in southeast asia and end the trip with the some islands in the pacific.
We have agreed on one additional caveat. Each member of the family is allowed to pick one destination that we have to see regardless of its impact on the overall trip. So if Paige really wants to see the world cup in Qatar, then we will have to make it work.
I always wanted to start a blog so I am going to learn as I go. First I wanted to come clean and say this was supposed to launch with a nice round countdown (1000 days to go would have been a better initial post). Things do not always go according to plan and the delay happened. In the end if I get 97% of the way there, I will definitely view it as a success.
Over the next 900+ days I hope to share with you our family’s learnings as we plan for a round the world trip in 2022. Yes it is far off in the distance but it has been our dream since our eldest daughter was born. We always get excited when we share this dream with our friends. We hope that by blogging about our preparations it will help make the dream a reality.
We want to encourage others to plan big. We hope to show that traveling with children in the middle of your respective careers is doable. We also want to get feedback and advice that will make our upcoming “sabbatical” memorable for ourselves and our children.
Family Travel Countdown 