Why and where?

It's just under 2 weeks til we set off, I can't actually believe it's going to really happen! J and I have talked about visiting/moving to Australia since we met over 17 years ago...we even went to Waterstones back in 1998 and a bought a book on it, that now sits very dusty on the bookshelf with all the other travel books we used to buy. They are probably massively out of date, but something has stopped us from ever throwing them away through many many spring cleans...

Our plans are Thailand, East Coast of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji (for Christmas) and Hawaii (for new year) before coming home via LA. We will be travelling on any kind of transport we can find to get us where we need to go, and staying in anything from motorhomes, cabins, youth hostels and cattle stations. We are petrified, sleepless with equal measures of fear and excitement! What if the kids don't find anything they will eat? What stuff to take? What if we can't cope with all the jet lag/heat/flights? I am sure all this worrying will come to nothing once we get going...hoping, at least!

So, the most asked question, (aside from "how did you get school to agree it?") is how and why now? Freya will go to secondary school in less than a year, and at the other end of the scale Liss is long out of nappies, buggies and all the other paraphernalia that goes with the baby bit. Now is our time to do this...it's that's simple!

The winks are like sponges, soaking in everything and still (for the most part!) wanting to spend time with us and we, having lost J' s amazingly eccentric Nan last year, have the funds to do it. We've no interest in buying a new bus (sorry, car, J!) or buying fancier stuff we won't remember in 20 years, we want to make memories with these 3 amazing small people in the places we always dreamt of together, because, in both private and work life, we have seen that life really is just too too short.

We spent hours and hours choosing our locations to go to, wanting to fit in as much as we possibly can in the very limited time we have but, knowing that Liss is still only going to be 5...it's a very tricky balance. Australia was the absolute definite, but while we'd made all that effort to get round that side of the world, we might as well stop off and see some of the other locations nearby! And Hawaii, well that one is on J's bucket list for sure, a geologists dream, but it also very conveniently happens to be halfway back...kind of!

We could easily have used our flights over 6 months, or even a year, and still only scratch the surface of these places in that time but life, school,and mostly work, get in the way of that, so we will take our 6 precious, and probably absolutely crazy exhausting, weeks and squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of each place we get to visit, we really do know how lucky we are to have the chance to do this!

This blog is primarily intended to be our journal for us to print off and keep at the end, and also for school to see what the kids have been learning, but if you want to keep in touch with us or are interested in seeing what we're up to then please read on and send us your comments and/or suggestions of places to go...we'd love you to talk us...we'll probably be sick of each other in a few weeks ;-)