Happy Trails

Appa and I love to travel. We're not crazy travelers, by any means, but between having most of our family and friends live on the other side of the country, having a fondness for teal blue water, and having children born in a country across the world, we've developed into a couple who isn't afraid to book a flight and GO somewhere, even just for a weekend.

When Little Bug came home, I wondered how that part of our life would change. Ironically, for all our traveling, we NEVER travel for major holidays. It seems like most families with kid almost exclusively plan travel around those times. We decided that as hard as it would be, we would not limit ourselves to Turkey-Time in Spudland. Both Grandmas probably hate this about us.

And we've done it. Little Bug has dipped his toes in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He's seen mountains and plains. He's been kissed by showgirls and winked at by Lady Liberty. We've continued to spend time with family and friends and enabled our child to develop a healthy love for those people...and for traveling.

I want our children to grow up with an appreciation that memories matter, family matters, friends matter. I want them to see the world, even and including their country, and to be blunt, I want to keep living my life and making my own memories and cultivating my own relationships.

Does it suck teaching them this lesson at such a young age? Heck yes. It's a bitter pill to swallow when you pay full price for things your half-sized human will barely use (hello, second airline seat) and traveling with said half-sized humans is less fun than it is stressful. But it's so worth it when you are finally in the moment.

Today we booked a trip to the happiest place on earth for a couple months from now. It's a trip that is solely for Little Bug, with absolutely zero agenda for Appa and I. It was a spur of the moment thing, but I'm so looking forward to hoofing if around and around and around and around just for my little baby's enjoyment. It will, barring any major life events like weddings or funerals, be our last plane ride before we board the pretty teal one that will take us across the world.

I'm really excited to give this to our son, even if he won't remember much of it.

With that being said, we've been traveling a lot lately. Too much, in my opinion. We already canceled one trip this month and just canceled one for this weekend. Honestly, I am relieved. We need a weekend of pajamas and home-cooked food and lounging. The only traveling we'll be doing is to the video store.

Traveling is good, but home is good, too.