Now don’t get me wrong, I love traveling and Derek and I had always mused of living overseas, but we got busy with little babies, life was pretty great right here and we just didn’t get around to it. So late last year when we started talking about Derek’s long service leave, I was dreaming of a sweet 10 week OS trip filled with bikinis, cocktails and fabulous food. My darling husband however (always there to drag me out of my comfort zone in the most loving way) had other ideas. The word sabbatical started getting thrown around. Insert panic, torn emotions and many many questions popping into my head. 

Apart from the obvious, “what will I wear,” I wondered how could we logistically do this? What would the kids do for school, There is NO WAY I can home-school them. I can barely cope with 30 minutes of homework and I have to get Pearl to explain to Miles his homework. No, No, NO WAY!! What would we do with our darling fur-baby, Arty? No, I could not put tenants in my newly renovated house and finally, what would happen to my beautiful home business, I had put my heart and soul into building for a year? So in this state, I spent weeks being a brat. Cranky at my husband for dragging me along on his dream and crying every time we talked about it, to the point where Derek said; “ok, we won’t do it. Just please stop crying.” This was clearly what I needed because it was the first positive feeling I had about the trip and it was telling me that was not what I wanted either. I knew in my heart that this could be amazing and how lucky we were to have the opportunity.

So, I let go of the fear and started thinking WHAT IF? I started to do some research and found some good solutions. I took on the mindset that if we are meant to go, it will all fall into place. I was going to follow my gut, on all decisions and by golly, did it fall into place. 

I began to believe that this crazy idea could be possible. I became completely consumed with nutting out and planning the trip. It was easy to know where to go (anywhere and everywhere), but making sure we didn’t overstretch ourselves and the kids was a challenge. We needed to say NO to FOMO and keep our country count reasonable. Its quite liberating to have so much choice and time will tell if we have chosen wisely. We are very excited to be heading to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Switzerland, Greece, France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, the UK and the USA from March 2016 to Jan 2017. 

The puppy is now happy (even though our heart is heavy). The house is packed into storage and we have started living out of a suitcase (more to come on how I packed for the trip later). We are in beautiful Bundeena (aka grandma’s house) for a week while we catch our breath. We are all feeling equally excited and nervous of what is to come, mostly I feel very blessed and lucky to have this incredible opportunity and time with my little family. I’m making a promise to myself to be patient, especially with the kids and to be open to the adventure, even the challenging times. 

I’m am no author and actually the thought of writing a journal fills me with terror (I am an English teacher’s nightmare), but I have had so many questions regarding how we are doing this, that I just felt I had to blog, even just for my own record. I will share where we are and what we are doing. How we are traveling with kids. The things that are working for us and things that are not. I will share what living out of a suitcase is like for me. It is my hope that you feel inspired by our journey, that it is possible and achievable. 

Enjoy this account of a little family throwing our rule book out the window, because… why not?