- I can not believe my last blog post was way back in March. Hopefully I will get better at this again when we are back to travelling. It’s just so extremely busy around here that I simply haven’t had the time to catch up. If I were to write down all we did since March it would again be an extremely long read so I’m just gonna break it down for you a little. Here’s what we’ve been up to:
- We met up with friends
- went to a “Runaway June” concert
- had board game nights with the whole family
- had a couple of family movie nights when it was rainy outside
- enjoyed cooking together
- celebrated St. Patrick’s day
- Chris worked more on getting his boat licence
- we worked a lot in and on our yard which included painting the fence, starting a barefoot path for the kids, getting an automated watering system and lawn mower, new flower beds, planting new flowers, shrubs and trees, ……
- met up with friends
- celebrated Chris’s birthday
- celebrated Ryan’s birthday
- planned Lillians and Lavinias birthday party (all summer birthdays, so it’s all one big huge planning and celebrating spree)
- did a lot of school and experiments
- had a great easter in Garmisch with friends
- put a huge travel map on our wall
- made candles
- met up with friends
- patricipated in an online baking class
- went on a wellness weekend
- went to the zoo
- had Chris’s parents come to stay with us
- got an amazing massage chair
- spend tons of time outside
- and – not sure if I mentioned it yet – met up with friends.
See how busy it gets around here? Don’t get me wrong, all of it is fun stuff and we enjoy seeing a lot of our friends – after all we are trying to squeeze a year worth of meeting up into a couple of months – but because of that sometimes I just neglect the blog a little.
Again – hopefully this will get better again once we are travelling.
As far as travelling goes we are right in the middle of planning our next trip, this time starting in August and ending in January. So we are up for 5 month of uninterrupted travelling. And this time it’s a big one.
We are taking a transatlantic crossing aboard Cunards Queen Mary 2!
Behind the scenes this one was in the making for a really long time. We actually booked it back in early 2020, getting all excited about it – and then Covid hid.
I don’t need to tell you the rest of the story, you’ve all been there. The world came to a stop and we couldn’t go for the longest time. But now, 3 years later, we finally were able to reserve a spot aboard again and we can not wait to finally go!
Let me tell you a little more about what exactly we are planning.
First, for those of you who don’t know, let me introduce you to the Queen Mary 2:
If you are thinking, “oh, I’ve been on a cruise ship before”, you might want to rethink, because – as we have learned through all of our research – this is not simply a cruise ship, this is a true OCEAN LINER, and apparently they take this term very seriously. I am going to spare you all the details of what the difference is, but feel free to google it, it really does make a huge difference.
So in early August we are going to be making our trip to Southampton to spend a week aboard a huge ocean liner taking us all the way to New York City, like people have done hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I really am quite looking forward to the experience. Getting on a plane (aside from the fact that Chris can’t do it for health reasons and I am just flat out terrified of it) seems so impersonal. You step aboard a machine and 9 hours later you step of it and are supposed to feel like you’ve just travelled halfway around the world. By taking the boat (wich sets the clock back an hour every day so you get to enjoy 25 hour days and don’t end up having a jetleg) you are experiencing more of what it actually means to travel that far. For 7 days we will see absolutely nothing but the Atlantic Ocean all around us.
No cars, no buildings, no other people aside from our fellow travellers, no internet, no phone, nothing manmade aside fromt he vessel we’ll be standing on.
Imagine seeing the first twinkling lights of New York’s Sklyine at around 4 am, firstly maybe mistaken for stars, on the last travel day after that. It’s been known to make grown man cry.
What an out of this world experience!
Plus – and we can’t forget about that – with this being a cunard ship, we get to dress up in formal wear (think long ball gowns and suits) every night for dinner and amazing ball nights. When do you ever still get to do that?!
We’ve been spending a LOT of time since 2020 reseraching the ship and what is going on on a trasatlantic crossing and we are so very excited that it is finally happening.
Once we get to New York, we are going to drive all the way down to the Florida keys, in between making stops at great places, visiting friends and family and doing the touristy thing before spending time till January working and homeschooling in the Sunshine State.
For details on all that you’ll have to wait :p
Early January we are then going to board the Queen Mary 2 once again to take us back to Southampton.
We obviously have some suprises in store during August and January, but many of those are much to secret and in early planning still so there is no way I am going to be giving anything away just yet.
For now just know that we are knee deep in planning one of our biggest, largest, craziest and most exciting trip yet!
The boss, the general, and the brains of the operation. Anya is the mom of this crazy group of misfits. When not traveling the world and teaching her kids to be decent human-beings, she likes to bake, sing, be goofy. Aside from all that she does for Five of a Kind, she is also a short term foster mother for infants in need.
She also enjoys unreasonably spicy foods and is searching for a hot sauce that is spicy enough and yet still has some kind of flavor to it.
