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This will be our fourth family Easter spent overseas, our third in a Buddhist country. Our two trips taking the girls to Japan while my brother and his family lived there both coincided with the spring festivities. Last year we were in Geneva, the Europe part of our trip around the world. We even dyed [...]  Our wandering brings some interesting juxtapositions, showing us the full story by coincidence. Driving out of Baviaanskloof into the Gamtoos Valley of South Africa, we were surrounded by citrus orchards. Looking for a place to spend the night, we happened upon a sweet little guest house overlooking rows of lemon trees. We watched the tractor [...] “I want to hold a baby cheetah!” Hannah was almost beside herself with excitement when she found information about the Cango Wildlife Ranch in Oudtshoorn. The movie Duma has long been a favorite of both girls, and the idea that we might get to interact with these impressive cats was a big draw. We were [...]
Doing the tourist thing at Cape Agulhas, standing on the southernmost tip of Africa, where oceans meet. We’ve added another night to our stay in Hermanus. We just don’t really want to leave, and our days here were spent with too much driving around and not enough putting ourselves in the picture as we looked [...] There are parking are parking attendants everywhere. We never end up with much change in our pockets at the end of the day. In some countries, every few days we have to back up a check stand line to sort through and spend the coins that come back to us in change. Here, we are [...]
White Christmas Dreams, or fun on the beach. It is not that we’ve spent every winter holiday season at home. We even spent another white sand Christmas under the sun in Mexico. But, even in those years where we left home, we first had our own tree and our own decorations pulled out of [...] Some things are better left unknown beforehand. I had little idea how painful Marlie’s leg surgery would be. What we’d imagined to be an outpatient morning experience turned into two full days and two difficult nights in the hospital. It is alarming to see your child screaming in pain and not be able to do [...]
Marlie taking a little break on Honey earlier this fall. I’ve recently been reading a book by John Higham called 360 Degrees Longitude. I ‘met’ John on Facebook via another blogger. He and his wife made a trip around the world with their children a few years ago; their older child was the [...] A Gap Year Redux We are making our plans to head back out: South Africa in November. It has been nice sitting here for a time, surrounded by friends and family. Slowly, more things have been sifted out of storage, and we’ve been shopping, as well. Coming is the process of paring back down to the [...] We go by our house from time to time, picking up things and dropping off others. Mostly in the extra garage that is not attached to the house, but sometimes inside as well. We make arrangements with our tenants to let us in. We’ve left quite a lot of our things inside, hastily packed in [...] John’s dad passed away on the international day of peace, at least according to my pocket calendar. We were blessed to spend the last three weeks with him, staying in his home and focusing on his wants and needs for those few precious days. He departed this life surrounded by his four children, here in [...] Early morning light on the walls of Dubrovnik, Croatia and its small harbor. Things we have learned along the way As we are taking time out of our world tour to spend time with a family member who is approaching the end of his life, we also have time to reflect on the things we have [...]
Crossing the bridge in the tourist zone, looking at Big Ben. It is a world of reminding. Those who live with a child with ADHD understand the repetition that goes into daily life. Put on your socks. Brush your teeth. The mundane cannot be remembered, and needs to be told and spelled out daily. Those [...]
Andorra’s flag, in the village of Anyos. We arrived in Andorra with a vague idea of a place in the mountains. What we found was stunning beauty, pride in place, and something we cannot put our finger on that makes us not want to leave. There is a feel to a place that springs almost [...]
The sisters sharing a view of Andorra Sometimes it feels like living under a microscope, being in such close proximity to the family at all times. There is no independent life, when we explore it is together, everyone wants to go along to the grocery store, taking the car alone means someone else is left [...] |
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