After a million years of being single, I woke up one morning and found myself happily married with three kids. No more denial, I was a full fledged grown up. A lot has changed. In a instant, my days of trampsing around the developing world, peacefully shopping for crafts and existential breath work retreats were replaced with practical vacations, dinners on plates (as opposed to Burrito wrappers) and more laundry than I'd wish on anyone.
I don't miss single life, but do miss my adventurous alter ego. Aside from our honeymoon in Peru, all our vacations over the past three years have involved taking three kids to practical destinations (a cruise, Rosarita Beach, MX, D.C., Austin). Ron is an easy traveler and one of the most low maintenance people I've ever met. Our kids mostly aren't... 90+ temps, snow, too much walking or a bad sunburn will prompt enough wining that you wish someone would bring in a chalk board and start scratching.
I sometimes dream of packing up the crew and taking them somewhere really cool like Vietnam, Bhutan or Morocco or for a few weeks of humanitarian work vacation to somewhere like Rwanda. But, I wake up to the shear cost of traveling with five and visions of complaining children and risks of illness.
For now, I'll choose to be satisfied with annual trips to sort of interesting, reasonable places and enjoy our much loved new home... while Ron and I work on our exit plan to sell our dream house and retire in Europe in about 10 years. Ron has just about collected all the papers needed for him and the kids to qualify for joint US/German citizenship, which means we could eventually work and live anywhere in the EU. I'm cool with that.
Pictured above: Skiing in Lake Tahoe just before my ACL injury ' 05, Rosarita Beach '06, NYC '06, Dubrovnik, Croatia, '03, Skydiving over Monterey Bay '02, French Rivera '94, Annapurna Trek, Nepal '99, Mt. Sinai, Egypt '00, Osaka, Japan '87.
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