Author: Caroline

Be back soon…

Posted on by Caroline
We haven’t had power for two days and our phones and computers have been limping along on our teeny little external battery. So we’ve been falling behind on posts. (But not falling behind on fun…) Today we woke up in Madraki, near the town of Hydra, and we’re on our way now back to port in Athens. We’ll stay on the boat for one last night tonight and tomorrow we’ll have a recovery day before exploring Athens. We’ll catch up soon!

Epidavros

Posted on by Caroline
The sun’s rising now on our second morning on the boat. We decided to spend a full day in Epidavros yesterday. Epidavros is a harbor town on the Peloponnesian penisula. We walked to an ancient amphitheater, ate some gelato, went swimming on the beach, and ate some more gelato. The kids have been making friends with all the cats wandering around town. And I do mean all of the cats! It’s been hot, and I’ve been honestly missing air conditioning… But as long as we can get in the water and sleep on the deck, it’s been manageable. And well worth it. Today we’re heading out to the island of Paros. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to open up the...Read More

The travel bug

Posted on by Caroline
Two years ago today, Tim sat down at his first day of training at United. The culmination of years of hard work. And on Sunday, we’ll celebrate 17 years since we got married. I’d like to think that we’ve learned a few things along the way. Since we’re currently on another airplane flight, I’m inclined to think of those lessons as a traveling analogy. Tim and I met when we were both living in England, and by the time we’d been dating a few months we’d traveled all across Europe together. So you could say that traveling is hardwired into our relationship. We strive to be adaptable and curious. To plan when we can, and change course if opportunity knocks....Read More
Planning for Adventure

Parts unknown…

Posted on by Caroline
And… we’re off. After getting temporarily sidelined, we’re finally starting to live the vision we had when we uprooted ourselves and moved to Guam. Tim got the month of August off and so we’re setting out for parts unknown. Okay, maybe parts only hazily known. We’ll be in Denver for a few days before we set off toward Europe. Specifically, Greece. We spent most of this school year learning about ancient history. And Amelia’s taken a few sailing classes lately, so Greece seemed to be the perfect fit. Or maybe we’re just working our way through our “G” geography. We originally chose Europe so that we could meet up with cousins that we’ve dearly missed. But it turns out that...Read More

Lair o’ the Bear

Posted on by Caroline
It’s been a year since we upended our lives. In this season of reflection, I’ve been thinking about that anniversary. Our life was good in Davis. I loved my job - who I worked with, what we were doing, the values we embodied in the projects we built. And Davis is a community straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. We were exceptionally lucky in our friends and our schools. But… we were so busy with our daily lives that we barely saw each other. I didn't want to miss any more of Amelia and Duke's childhood. So when we decided to re-think everything, it wasn’t because we were unhappy with any one aspect of our life. We decided to...Read More

Lessons

Posted on by Caroline
I sat down at the kitchen table to draft a post about how I’m striving to learn the lessons of patience and grace that this year seems to demand of me. And Duke decided to try out all the different alarm tones available on his iPad. All of them: foghorn, klaxon, old fashioned telephone ringtone. And then listen to all of them all over and over again. Usually the result of this kind of experiment is a top volume alarm going off at 1:30 A.M. But I am learning patience. I am learning to live with the vast universe of things that I can’t control. I am learning to truly treasure the seemingly small list of things that I can...Read More

Map of My Day

Posted on by Caroline
Last week I pulled out some old books and articles about maps for an informal lesson. We read about the history of maps, going all the way back to a stone map made in Babylon in 600 BC. We talked about why we use maps and some of the quirks of maps. Why do we draw north up? What do our choices about what we include and exclude say about us? How do we draw a round Earth on a flat piece of paper? Next, we drew our own maps inspired by Sara Fanelli’s Map of My Day. We had fun drawing, and I was impressed with the kids' level of detail. The kids drew maps of our house and...Read More

High Winds

Posted on by Caroline
I don't think I'm giving out any trade secrets if I share that the airlines are going through a rough time in the wake of the coronavirus. As a family, we don't have any way of knowing exactly what will happen in the upcoming year. But we do know that the forecast is exceptionally cloudy, and we're getting out our proverbial umbrellas. Tim and I have been cycling through every possible emotional reaction to everything that's been going on. That will probably continue until we know how everything will ultimately shake out. But we've weathered storms before, and made it through hard times. We're lucky enough that we have many layers of security net. So even in the worst-case scenarios,...Read More

Abnormal Normal

Posted on by Caroline
When I wrote the tagline for our new blog, "Adventures in Our New Life", these were not the adventures I was planning on. Soon we'll pass the break-even point, when we'll have spent more time in quarantine in our new house then we've spent not in quarantine. And so it shouldn't be a surprise that our new abnormal reality is starting to feel startlingly…. normal. We’re settling in. Of course, we get stir crazy. But oddly, life within these walls feels so routine, even as life outside them is less and less recognizable. But within these walls, we’re doing our best to continue to find adventure and moments of happiness. A week ago the kids found a caterpillar and put...Read More

In My Head

Posted on by Caroline
I had been doing really well about keeping my equanimity. Keeping informed. Worried but not anxious. Until a couple days ago. For whatever reason, all of my mental stability stopped feeling... stable. Suddenly. I started imaging all the worst outcomes and they kept swirling in an endless loop. I just couldn't get out of my head. I couldn't sleep. Even though we've been spending every-single-second-of-every-single-day together as a family, I wasn't present for my kids and Tim. I was too absorbed in all the dire future possibilities that I just wasn't present in the now. The thing is, I think it finally hit me that when life resumes after the coronavirus, the world will be a changed place. I'd like...Read More