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You only have 18 summers with your children before they leave you!

personal, travel

the blog:

That says it all for how I’m feeling right now.

My kids are growing up so fast and it is making me realize more and more how fleeting our time is together before they head off to college. Eighteen summers with each. Oh my. But this forced time together ok, call it travel habit that we have embraced in our little family unit will hopefully stick with both girls as time marches on.

Will they want to vacation with us once they are older? We are betting on yes! Well maybe I’m delusional or maybe the hope that we will not be complete empty nesters when they leave the nest is what I’m hoping for.

So it’s that time of year again. We are off on our annual adventure – our family’s partial-summer sabbatical.  My subtle brainwashing to make our kids want to spend quality time with us.

I find it easier and easier to rationalize this trip every year.  The absolute benefit of Phoenix being a thousand degrees in the summer is that we really don’t feel bad at all about packing our bags and heading out of town.

We want something that allows us to explore and experience – ideally a new location every summer.  We love the kids input – they have their own bucket lists with their ideas so we do our best to include all suggestions. We agreed on Europe (even though Morocco was a very close second).  Everyone had a suggestion, Keith wanted to spend the entire month is Lisbon, Isabella is currently obsessed with Copenhagen, Gabby wanted Paris and I really really wanted to go to the Greek Islands. So we all did a little research, fine tuned the locations, the plans were made over the last several months and now off we go.

Heading to Lisbon from Phoenix we opted to stop in NYC (an engagement session for a very lovely couple – getting married in PHX in September), a few days in Providence (central to visit friends, family and a few college tours for Bella (that’s a whole other story!!!!) and then the itinerary is as follows: Lisbon, 3 Greek islands, Athens, Copenhagen and ending in Paris.

Lots of adventure and great travel photos to follow!