A Truly Difficult Decision

When we decided to make this move, I don’t think that any of realized how many tough decisions we would have to make. Taking the leap and deciding to make the move was perhaps the hardest decision we made. Some decisions seemed small – like where to live in Lisbon – but truly have an incredible impact on our day-to-day life. We know that there will be many more decisions along the way: Should we buy a car even though most of our large Ikea runs are a thing of the past? Will we move when our lease is up because we need more electricity (#lisbonlife)? If we stay here five years, will we pursue citizenship or will permanent residency be enough for our needs?

However, we faced our most difficult decision this past Friday night… Which football club would earn our undying (just kidding, totally fickle) loyalities – Sporting or Benfica?

In all seriousness, this is a super tough decision (and also one that falls wholly within the category of #firstworldproblems). Football here is such an important sport and there are two major teams that play in Lisbon – S.L. Benfica and Sporting CP. We attended our first Benfica late last year with our friends David and Jay, who did a whirlwind tour of western Europe in an attempt to see as many games as possible. We saw Sporting play last Friday, with a 5-1 win over Estoril Praia. We can all agree on one thing: European football is in a league of its own. The games are vibrant, interesting, engaging, and so, so much fun to watch. But we have to make a decision… so here is a side-by-side comparison:

Uniforms (see, we are starting with the important stuff):

  • Sporting wins this hands down. Their home kit includes a green and white striped jersey with green and white striped socks. The Benfica home kit is red. No contest – Sporting just looks better on the field.

Location (and here, I really mean transport to and from the stadium):

  • Both stadiums are located within Lisbon and both are accessible by public transit, which is amazing. For us, at least with regards to getting to the stadium, Sporting is slightly easier because we do not have to change metro lines. But both are still easy to get to.
  • Getting home is another story. The return trip from Benfica was a flipping nightmare. In fact, I swore off attending any more Benfica games because of how difficult it was to get home. I have since calmed down a little but still feel traumatized by that evening. Sporting, on the other hand, is at the end of the green line. There were no crowds at the station and we didn’t have to deal with an already slammed train making our way to us. We were able to get on, sit down, and not feel squished. Sporting again for the win.

Stadium:

  • Benfica wins in this category. Their stadium is much newer*, and much nicer. The Sporting stadium feels like it was built in the 70s and then just left to whittle away. The Benfica stadium is also where the major concerts are held (looking at you T.S. come May!) so maybe that’s why it looks much nicer?

* interesting fact – I was curious about the age of the stadiums. They were both built in 2003. Mind. Blown.

Fans:

  • This is another tough category because the crowds were much different from each other. As a side note, the Benfica game we went to was a championship game so we do recognize that the crowd might have been more riled up than usual. But in general, we preferred the Sporting crowd. The spectators seemed much calmer, more respectful. People weren’t crowding the aisles as they had been at the Benfica game. It just felt like a more mature audience. And at my age, that’s what you are going for.
  • A funny note about security. First, security guards aren’t a thing in Lisbon, at least not outside the electronic and jewelry stores. Except at football games. And given that we live in a city with few security measures, the amount of security guards at football games is comical. At the Sporting stadium, the pitch is surrounded by a moat type gap and you can only access it via a bridge that has a gate on one end. A locked gate at that. But each of the bridges to the pitch were guarded by no less than 4 security guards. And with every goal, all the security guards moved forward to guard the bridge, the gate, and the pitch. For whatever reason, we found it funny.

Overall vibe:

  • Yeah, this wasn’t a contest either. The vibe at the Benfica game was electric. It starts outside the game in the pavillion with loads of food trucks and beer carts (no alcohol is allowed in European football games). The (drunk) crowd spills in to the game and it becomes a carnival. It was so, so loud and there were colored flairs going off in nearly every corner. At times, it felt less like a football game and more like a revolution.

Again, this is a Benfica game. NOT a revolution. Photo credit: Ron Smith

So where did we all land? Here are the final loyalities (subject to change at anyone’s complete whim):

Edie: Sporting (because they sang more songs and there was more action)

Lydia: Sporting (because the jersey is better, they played well together, and there were a lot of assists)

Emily: Sporting

Ron: Sporting

Jaime: Benfica (so this shocked me more than anyone! On paper, Sporting wins hands down in the categories I care about most: uniforms, ease of getting to and from the stadium, mature crowd, etc. But the vibe at Benfica was lightning and just impossible to beat).

In truth, we will continue to go to games for both teams (I mean, we already have all the scarves). As Ron puts it, the games are on different levels. Going to a Sporting game is like going to a neighborhood bar – you do it more regularly, it’s easy, you are comfortable there, it isn’t loud or crowded. Going to a Benfica is like hitting the most popular nightclub in town – it’s loud, crazy, and so much fun… but only every once in a while.

Next up?? A Porto FC game!

Our Terrible, Horrible No Good, Very Bad Mistake

We’ve been quiet for the last few weeks because we have been stressed beyond belief. It has been the most stressful period surrounding this move and the worst part? It was stress of our own making. Now that the issue has been resolved, we can breath. And explain.

First, some SUPER simple procedural and background information. I promise this will be quick.

In order to get a residency visa, which is the document that allows you to remain in Portugal for longer than 90 days (the time that is allowed under a tourist visa), you need to submit an application, in person, at a VFS office. VFS offices are assigned based on your home address so we had to fly to DC, our assigned location, to complete our appointment. Once you submit your application, you have to wait anywhere from 30 days – forever (ok, usually no more than 120 days) to learn whether or not you were approved for the visa. If you are approved, you then send your passports to the Portuguese Embassy in DC, they put the actual paper visa into your passport and return them, and you fly to Portugal and enter the country on this residency visa. Once here, you have another interview with the SEF to continue the process. These appointments are incredibly hard to get but are essential for you to remain in this country for the long-term. That’s the ELI5 version and frankly, all I really understand about the process.

Originally, our appointments at the VFS office were scheduled for late May. We hoped that would provide us enough time to get the visas approved, get the visas in hand, and move to Lisbon prior to the girls starting school. We hit a little snag in May that required us to push our VFS appointments to late July (that had been the most stressful part of this move until this incident. And anyone who spoke with us during that time knew how stressed we were – just imagine it ten-fold). Now, from my aforementioned timeline, you can see that an appointment in late July would not render us our residency visas in time. That meant that we would need to come to Portugal on a tourist visa, make sure not to stay more than 90 days, and deal with the residency visa once it was (hopefully) approved.

We arrived in the middle of August and got the girls settled into school. In the middle of September, we got the notification that our visas had been approved (yay!!). For reasons I don’t understand, the visas had to be mailed to the embassy from within the U.S., meaning we had two options: mail them to my dad to coordinate the shipment to the Portuguese Embassy and then back to us in Lisbon OR have one (or more) of us fly back over to the U.S. and do it ourselves.

I am a bit embarrassed to write about this next part. We consider ourselves relatively intelligent people while being firm believers in Murphy’s Law. And we have traveled quite a bit so we understand some of the nuances that international travel can introduce. But for reasons we still question, we chose the former option – we chose to send our passports to my dad to facilitate their mailing to DC. We’re still not sure why. Maybe it was due to laziness? I mean, it is a minimum of two 7 hours flights there and back. Maybe we just felt that we were in the middle of settling in and didn’t want to disrupt that? Perhaps it would have been too complicated for more than one of us to return but no one wanted to go alone? Who knows.

Y’all…OUR PASSPORTS GOT STUCK IN U.S. CUSTOMS.

WTH? Here are our only offical and accepted indentity documents and they were stuck in Atlanta. There isn’t really a great way to contact U.S. Customs and once something gets stuck in there, there isn’t a way to find out its status. DHL told us that the item had been seized (??) and our relocation specialist, who was working on this with us, had managed to speak with someone who just said that Customs was backed up a couple of weeks. Our passports were in a small envelope with no monetary value and they were NOT on the list of items that couldn’t be shipped into the U.S. Even my dad, with his years and years of international shipping expertise, was befuddled. How does business get done if random documents get stuck?

We were making contingency plans and truthfully, learned a lot of information that could be helpful in the future should, god forbid, we need it. You can get emergency passports through the U.S. Consulate here in Lisbon. These passports are good for three months and will allow you to travel throughout most of the world (interestingly, France will not let you enter on a emergency passport). Sadly, an emergency visa wouldn’t have helped us too much as we needed a full passport to get our visa and we know that the wait times to get a passport are long. We also learned that with enough time, you can get a full passport from the U.S. Consulate, but given that we were bumping up against our 90 day tourist visa deadline, we didn’t have enough time to pursue that option.

We started thinking about how we would manage the girls’ school, assuming we could get an emergency passport to return to the U.S. and apply for our new passports. The school here doesn’t allow for remote learning, which is fine although slightly unexpected given that it is an international school. So we were plotting on how we might enroll the girls in a school back in Chicago while we waited on our new passports to be processed – literally the last thing we wanted to do because we didn’t want to cause them more chaos. We also counted the days we had left on our tourist visa. Could we leave and come back on the emergency passport while someone stayed behind in Chicago to wait for our passports? Possibly. But that solution had its own issues. There was no stressless solution.

We resorted to emailing our representatives. Very important information: while both Senator Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Mike Quigley responded to our request for help, Senator Duckworth’s office was FAR more responsive and provided better answers. File that away in the “Information that is nice to have but that I hope I never have to use again” file.

I mentioned at the beginning that this issue has been resolved. Otherwise, I would still be in the corner plotting our end game. After two weeks, the passports were released to my dad who was able to send them to the embassy and then back to us. We haven’t missed our SEF appointments and, fingers crossed, everything is back on track. But this is absolutely an example as do what we say, not as we do. DO NOT MAIL PASSPORTS! We didn’t have any travel plans for this weekend but now that we are once again free to move about the country (meaning we have our passports to use to check into a hotel), we might just find some place to go.

One Month In

Our first month has flown by (as Ron predicated it would). We have very much enjoyed our time so far and thought we would share some of our observations, insights, and other musings from our time here in Lisbon.

We are amazed that everyone stops for pediastrians in the crosswalk. Drivers may come to a screeching halt inches from you, but they will always stop. Coming from Chicago where you have to practically beg drivers to respect crosswalks, it’s a nice change. And what’s more, bikers stop too! Unreal.

The Portuguese are such nice and kind people – except when it comes to getting on and off the metro. It is very much a eat or be eaten situation in the depths of the earth. Allow people off before entering? Hell no, not here. And you can very clearly be exiting the train – you’ll give all the signs, stand right by the door, fidget in anticipation. But people will still push around you to get on and off the train. Yet they do it with a smile and silence.

Our favorite restaurants are these hole in the wall places that have no more than 5 tables. We already have our weekly go-to places. Delicious, fresh food all over the place! The eating out culture here extends late into the evening and it has been so much fun people watching from the sidewalk cafes. Young and old are out until all hours of the night.

Laundry has been a challenge. We ordered a washer on our first day here and the one that was delivered was broken. It took nearly the full month to get a replacement that works. Dryers aren’t really a thing here and clotheslines are used by most of the population. Everyone assured me that hanging the clothes to dry was sufficient and I believed them. We did buy a washer/dryer combo knowing that we wouldn’t use the dryer on a daily basis but would have it in case we need it. Turns out, we aren’t really a clothesline family. Let me rephrase… we aren’t a clothesline family from the 6th floor (especially when the ground floor is level -1). It just seems a little high to be leaning out of the window. And after listening for 20 minutes before the one clothes pin I dropped hit the ground, all the clothes will remain inside to dry…

We have learned a lot about praxe – a tradition in academia where the entering students are welcomed (hazed?) by the upperclassman. We have an engineering university just adjecent to us and there is a large park just across our street. For the past 4 days, we have been watching upperclassmen clad in cassocks and black cloaks take over the park and direct freshman through loud chants, silly games, and have them dress up in distinctive outifts including dunce hats. It was entertaining at first. But by the 4th day, we got slightly annoyed with all the yelling. Speaking of the university, they put on a huge musical festival to start off the school year. On my Lisbon bingo card, I didn’t not have an engineering university as being the loudest thing in our neighborhood.

We haven’t closed all of our windows the entire time we have been here (expect for the aforementioned serenading from the engineering university). We love all the fresh air and the breeze that we are able to get through our unit. We have also discovered that we don’t understand weather. It is a beautiful 74 degrees F outside (still working on those C conversions) but within 4 minutes outside, we are drenched with sweat. Totally confused. We are nearly certain that the sun shines more brightly here than anywhere else.

Kiosks! We love kiosk life. All around the city, usually next to a playground, you will find a kiosk with a number of small tables. Grab a beer, coke, food… and just enjoy the aforementioned beautiful weather.

Emily and I start Portuguese class on Monday! We are incredibly nervous but are looking to maybe, just maybe, being able to understand more of what people are saying to us, as opposed to just nodding along and saying yes or no :).

You Get A Fridge and You Get A Fridge!

We got a fridge! Finally!

But first… we rounded out our first two weeks here is Lisbon the same way we started them – with dinner at our favorite pizza place, Tozzi’s. As a family, we had several meal traditions back in Chicago. On Wednesdays we would go to Pizzeria Serio and Scooter’s and we would always have Monti’s on the way home from a trip. We wanted to make sure that we found fun traditions like those, so that the girls would be excited. We opted for Tozzi Tuesdays as a first one so now, every Tuesday, you will find us at Tozzi’s, having a Pumpqueen pizza and a strawberry nutella pizza for dessert.

Our second week was much along the same lines as our first. We continue to get the house set up and thankfully, it is feeling more like home. We have continued to explore new areas of Lisbon and are loving the cooler weather. I keep trying to think of how I would describe the weather here and the best way I can think to do so is to describe it as curveous. The mornings are generally pretty cool and while the midday temperatures aren’t necessarily that high, you will feel scorched thanks to the immensely bright sun baring down on you. Then the evenings cool to a temperature that requires jackets and pants. Let’s just say that when we pack for this move (because we did leave some things back in Chicago), we didn’t do a great job.

Our win this week was defintely getting the fridge. On the day that we arrived, before we headed to Tozzi’s, we headed to Worten’s and ordered a fridge, dishwasher, washing machine, A/C unit, and TV. Worten’s is a huge chain here is Portugal and the place most recommended when you ask where to buy appliances. Our TV and washing machine showed up but nothing else ever did. We went down there twice to ask about the deliveries and spent a total of 18 hours waiting. While the people in the store were nice, they never could give us a straight answer about where our delivery was, rather saying that they would schedule another delivery window. Needless to say, after the third time, we politely but forcefully, rejected their offer and requested a refund. The next day we went to a local store and had everything delivered the following day. Oh yeah, our washing machine from Worten’s arrived broken so we are still fighting that battle. But we have a fridge!!

Our “American” event from this week was finally ordering from Amazon. Here in Portugal, you need to use Amazon Spain for the best chance to avoid custom charges. I really, really wanted to avoid using Amazon at all because we wanted to spend our money locally. But after failing time and time again to find sheet fasteners, I had to pull the plug and order. Luckily the process was pretty seamless.

Until next week…

Week One Musings

We survived our first week! I’m not going to lie – it was questionable at times. We managed to land in Europe right when the contintent was going through a major heat wave. And we don’t have air conditioning. Needless to say, it was hot, hot, hot.

One of the choices we had to make when we decided to make this journey was whether or not we wanted to ship our personal items and furniture from Chicago or if we wanted to just buy everything once we got to Lisbon. We didn’t have much furniture in Chicago that meant a lot to us. Plus, given that we had not yet seen our Portuguese apartment in person yet, we didn’t know what would work and what wouldn’t. And the expense of shipping was daunting. Instead, we packed all our personal belongings into 7 large checked bags and planned to make a number of large purchases once we arrived.

I don’t know about you, but it has been a LONG time since I have had to set up an entire house. It seems so basic when you first think about it – bed, sheets, dresser, couch, and table. But then you step into an IKEA and within the first 30 seconds, you are immediately overwhelmed with the enormity of all the things, big and small, that you need to make a place feel like home. Towels, bathmats, mattress pads, pots, pans, silverware, pillows, decorations, chairs, plugs, storage. Ugh. Just thinking about it again sends me into a panic.

After a minor freakout (who are we kidding? It was pretty major), we realized that we had to accept that there would be multiple IKEA visits and that we needed to do this in stages. We thought about what we wanted and needed first – a place to sleep and a place so sit. So we started there. Luckily, we had a guy who would pick up our treasures from IKEA and deliver them to our 6th floor apartment – which is really the 8th floor because you enter the building on floor -1. Elevator you ask? Yes! We wouldn’t rent a place on the 6th floor without an elevator! But because this building is so old, the elevator is a tiny rectangle that only fits three people. In otherwords, no furniture was coming up that way. God bless our guy.

So after week one, we are halfway set up. We are missing big items like a couch but at least we all have a place to sleep. Once we get everything set up, we will show some before and after pictures.

Wins this week? I managed to order (and have delivered) 4 mattresses from a woman who spoke no English. Obviously, my Portuguese is pretty nonexsistent. But thanks to my years of Duolingo Spanish and Google translate, we were able to make it work!!

Challenges? Half of our appliances are missing in action! The first thing we did when we got here was head to Worten’s to purchase a fridge, dishwasher, washing machine, TV, and A/C unit (appliances do not normally come with the units here unless you are renting them fully furnished). Delivery was set for the following Friday but all that showed up was the TV and the washing machine. We did learn that we got a tiny bit scammed… the delivery person refused to walk up the stairs with the washing machine without being paid. When we mentioned this to Worten’s, they said that was absolutely unacceptable and the delivery person shouldn’t have asked for money (and, since they did, we should have asked for a receipt. Oops). Anyway, the rest of our items were nowhere to be found and after eventually heading back to the store, we found out that they were picked up and just never delivered. Hmmm… they are supposed to be here today but I am sure you can understand that we are not holding out breath.

True American moment? I hunted down and bought a portable ice maker. Had to do it. And we are so in love with it that it’s literally the first thing we turn on in the morning. Highly recommend in this heat!

On To Our Next Adventure!

From the beginning on our relationship, Ron and I have talked about moving abroad some day. We figured that we would talk about it more seriously once the girls were older and off to college, once we were ready to retire. Then COVID hit, and like many people, we began to reevaluate our priorities. We discovered we liked the freedom that went with not having to be in a particular place at a particular time. We enjoyed spending all that time with our family (even if it did become a bit much every once in a while). We then turned our conversations to retiring early, thinking we maybe we could get the life we wanted just a little bit sooner. Could we actually make it happen? We figured the least we could do was try. So, we made some changes in our financial planning, selling personal property, buying rental units, budgeting (although now it’s called a spending plan, apparently, because no one likes the B word). It seemed possible!

Once life began to return to normal, we discovered that we now didn’t love our normal and that there were a lot of things we weren’t happy with. We were frustrated with the girls’ schooling and had begun to apply to private schools in Chicago. Then Uvalde crushed our hearts and the Roe decision had us concerned about raising girls in a country where their healthcare decisions were political fodder. We went to Portugal for spring break in 2022 and started to wonder if we couldn’t make our dream to move abroad happen now.

It suddenly all made sense. The girls could get an amazing education both in and out of the classroom. We could offer them some freedom that we were scared to allow them in the US. And maybe, just maybe, we could live a life where we didn’t automatically scour a room for the closest exit in case a gunman decided to appear.

This last year and a half has been full of so many things. There were big feelings and lots of tears (from everyone). There was more stress than we’ve ever felt. There were lots of trips as we tried to cram in all our favorite things before we left. We spent much of the year collecting necessary documents, mentally preparing for the move, and trying to convince L what an exciting adventure this will be (we’re still working on this last one). We also spent some time convincing Emily to join us in this new phase (spoiler alert – she said yes!!). Are we nervous? Scared? Excited? Unsure? Absolutely yes to everything. But at no point in this whole process have we thought to ourselves, “this is a bad idea.” We feel fortunate in our confidence that this is the right decision for us as a family, at this time.

Will we come crawling back in 3 months? Totally a possibility. Will we call it after a year? Perhaps. Will the move be permanent? Who knows. But we are so excited to jump in with both feet – to spend time together as a family, traveling and being immersed in new cultures. Here’s to our new adventure in Lisbon, Portugal. Nos deseje sorte!

COVID Strikes Again (in a way)

One of the trips that we booked WAY back when (at least the end of last year) was a cruise to the Caribbean. We love cruises for what they are, how easy they are, and were really looking forward to enjoying some relaxing time on the water.

But here is the issue with great deals and Thanksgiving travel. Sure, they sometimes go hand in hand but othertimes, well… just yikes! We got a great deal on the cruise – $500 per adult for a 7 day cruise in a stateroom with a balcony. Kids were free. AH-MAZ-ING. But then we go to book the airfare to Florida. $650 per person for the times that we need. We even toyed with the idea of not going nonstop (yes, I know. It’s a bit bougie to only want nonstop but it is just so much easier!) but even those tickets were over $600 per person. Yikes!

Then, there is COVID. We were so optimistic that by Thanksgiving of 2021, everything would be back to normal. We even had hopes that our kids would be vaccinated by then, based on some information we received from our pediatrician. But this is an ever changing situation (which, you would have thought that I would have learned by now) and with the new CDC news that looks like the vaccine won’t be available for kids until midwinter, it just all seems too much.

So we made the decision to cancel. Luckily, we have free cancellation until August 1st. One of the rules we set for ourselves for any travel booked until the whole WORLD got the all clear was that it had to be refundable or without change fees. In this case, that was one of the smarter things we have done.

Now we look to planning our alternate trip. We already have the time off and we certainly don’t want to let good vacation days go to waste. We have done several road trips in the US this year and have had such a great time. We have also discovered a new love for National Parks. I recently learned about the White Sands National Park and I am obsessed with seeing it. So in the end, we might be spending Thanksgiving in New Mexico!

We’re Back!

We are back in action! With proper precautions, of course.

This year has certainly been interesting and it has been a little challenging for travelers like us. In the end, we ended up cancelling 4 trips over the first few months of quarantine, and then a couple more that we booked in that brief period when things were looking better. But we did manage to find a new travel stride and, in the end, we had so much fun family time!

Our children’s school announced early on that the would start remote. My job is already remote-based and while I travel a lot in the fall in a normal year, that just wasn’t the case in 2020. My husband has a CEO who hates germs just slightly more than he hates remote work, so that meant that my husband too was home for the long haul. Armed with this knowledge, we quickly realized that we had nothing keeping us, at least for temporary periods, in our hometown. So we did what we do best – we planned another trip.

We opted for the beach – 5 weeks on a beach in South Carolina, spending our weekdays working or in school, and our weekends exploring the area (and eating amazing seafood!). It was such a welcome change of pace from the monotony that life has become during the beginning of the pandemic. We had such a great time, that we came home for two weeks and did it again, this time heading to New Orleans for three weeks. I love New Orleans but three weeks is plenty of time to explore the city.

I recognize that we are incredibly lucky in so many ways. We were happy to find a way to try new things, even if we were limited in many ways.

Now that things are returning to normal (fingers crossed!), we are back in full planning mode. Stayed tuned for our next adventure!

Now What?

Like the vast majority of the world, our family is currently in quarantine. And it has been interesting, to say the least. We have three adults working from home (my sister is temporarily living with us) and two kids home full time. Wowzas. We have our good days and our bad days. We’ve laughed more than is probably legal, watched plenty of terrible television, and had some stress-related breakdowns.

We are doing our part for so many important reasons – we don’t want to get sick ourselves (and thus far, knock on wood, everything is A-ok here!) and, perhaps more importantly, we don’t want to be asymptomatic and accidentally spread the virus to others. So at home we stay.

We also have a selfish reason for staying home and doing our part – we want to get back out and travel as soon as possible! We have already had to cancel two trips and are holding our breath for a trip currently scheduled at the end of June. Quarantine is bad enough but the idea of quarantine without a trip planned sounds even worse.

We are working with our children (in the 5 minutes a week we actually manage to do any kind of schooling) to keep them engaged with this part of life that is so important to us. We have spent some time researching each of the states and our newest project is more worldly. Basically, we are asking our oldest daughter to select our next trip. She is doing research on all the U.S. states and as much of the world as she wants. Based on her research, she will determine where we go next. Assuming, of course, we can find cheap airfare.

Once in a Lifetime!

Here is the deal – I hate this phrase, especially when it comes to travel. And it is a phrase that we don’t use in our household. Sure, we might have trips that we will only be able to take once. Maybe there are opportunities that won’t exist again for some reason (a country collapses, monuments are destroyed, the distance is just too much). Or, as is the most likely scenario, money becomes limited and time quickly disappears.

But what we have discovered, when we think that there is a chance we will return, it makes our trips less stressful and it gives us something to look forward it. Here is what I mean by that: let’s take Australia for instance. We had a list of 50 – 60 things that we wanted to see and do during our time there. We had one week – not nearly enough time to explore an entire continent. We were so fortunate to see some amazing things! We got to spend time on the Great Barrier Reef and spend some time roaming through Sydney. But we didn’t get to go to Melbourne, see the Three Sisters or Uluru, or spend enough time snorkeling on the Reef.

That’s ok. Because, in our family, we say we will do it the next time around.  Even if we never make it back there, having the mindset that this isn’t a once in a lifetime trip gives us the freedom to enjoy what we can see in the time that we have and not stress about what we are missing. Because, let’s face it, traveling with kids means that things don’t always go according to plan. We have had to skip things that were on our list – the girls were too young or weren’t feeling well. Or, on the very rare occasion, us parents just need a break so we found a park to let the kids run off some energy.

So, here is my tip. Travel safe, travel often, and travel with the mindset that any one trip isn’t THE trip. I mean, you never know when that amazingly cheap airfare will mean that you get to head back to your dream location for a second time.