Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
11 years ago, I had a dream. I had a dream to someday live abroad(most likely Europe) with my family. That someday is coming in less than 2 weeks! 2 weeks!
Although this has been a dream for so long, I wondered if it would really happen. We could try hard, but that doesn’t mean it actually would, right?
About a year ago, we started exploring this dream and what it would take to really make it happen. We met up for dinner one night with the Marshes, good family friends from our Holladay ward. They traveled Europe for 6 months with their family and we wanted to hear the ins and outs of what it was like. As we ate our delicious Pizzeria Limone pizza and heard how much they loved their experience, the excitement only grew! I came home that night and immersed myself in research for living in England. (We settled on England for its language, because Brandon has always wanted to go, and there would be lots of small villages that our family could roam. We love visiting big cities, but living in a big city is not our forte.)
I continued to add pins to our Google Map and looked at apartment after apartment.
As time went on, our desire to really do this didn’t dwindle. However, as we narrowed down timing (how long and when), it began to look like maybe England wasn’t the best option. Leaving winter here in Utah for a cold winter in England didn’t sound so appealing.
And then one night, I caught a huge sale for tickets to New Zealand and within a few days, our tickets were booked (after getting approval from work, of course.) Thank you awesome bosses and awesome husband!
We decided to add a long stop in Australia-the Sunshine Coast to be exact (while Brandon does most of his work) before traveling New Zealand for the last month. We’re trading the snow for sunshine and I couldn’t be more excited. Have I ever told you that I deal with seasonal depression? I could use a healthy dose of Vitamin D just about now. 🙂
That isn’t to say that our adventure is going to be all bliss. I’m sure there will be tantrums and tiredness, frustrations and family disagreements, but man alive are we super excited to step out of our comfort zone of reality and experience a different corner of the world together.
That’s just the beginning of our adventure and I can’t wait to write more of this chapter soon.
