Oh my goodness, in 52 days we will be at the Orlando airport and be leaving on our 2015 adventure!
So, the biggest question (after "holy cow, how are you going that?") is why are we doing this. There are several reasons:
First...Why not?!?! We have always enjoyed traveling and have wanted to see new places. Every time I read one of those, "1,000 Things to See Before You Die" lists makes me want to go on vacation immediately. We are very much an "experience over things" family...although you wouldn't know if by looking at the toys in Hayden's room.
Second, Hayden will be 8 years old. We decided that this is a great time for him to see the world; he is old enough to remember the experiences, young enough to still want to hang out with us, and we are very much hoping that this experience of seeing the world will influence the way he views the world. We want him to appreciate the advantages that we have in our lives and for him to understand how lucky we are in all that we have; hopefully this will lead him to be a compassionate person. In terms of school, he will be homeschooled during this time and will not miss a beat jumping back into 4th Grade when we get home.
Third, although we are by no means rich, we are able to swing the financially at this time through lots of saving, being very thrifty and by doing the trip on a very tight budget. While we were deployed to Iraq (during our time in the Army), we saved as much money as possible knowing that someday we wanted to use that money for something really cool...what could be more cool than traveling the world?! We do appreciate that we are very lucky to be able to take this opportunity together as a family and will certainly enjoy this time.
Last, but certainly not least, when Hayden was 4 years old, he was diagnosed with a Brain Tumor. We have been extremely lucky that the tumor was benign and the Neurosurgeon was able to remove the majority of it. For the past 3 years, he has 2-4 MRIs each year along with Oncology and Neurosurgery appointments. He is such a trooper and has never complained about anything (except getting an IV...which he hates) through the entire ordeal. This year, he has been cleared to reduce his MRIs to once per year...we decided to jump on the opportunity and get out into the world!!
So with that, we have planned/booked just about everything and I think that we are almost ready to go!!
