Well, I kind of fell off the radar. I wrote a whole spring break post two months ago and then it sounded super “look at me”, so I never posted it.

But, I decided I really wanted to keep this up (at least for me), so here’s some backtracking of our adventures and misadventures.

First things first, we came here on 3 years orders. And fortunately but unfortunately, Justin promoted, and that turned the 3 year orders into 2. While this is technically good news, I’m still kind of kicking myself for not doing more.

True to Justin’s nature, though, he doesn’t want to miss anything and he’s now scrambling to fit EVERYTHING in (and MORE). Finding out in mid-March, this quickly turned our one week Italian spring break into a 2 week-8 country-7 hotel-2500 mile European road trip “adventure”.

Spring break adventure

Oh the stares! The giant Ford Expedition…topped with a roof bag…totally jam-packed with 6 people…driving in an ancient Italian city with stone walls that aren’t even one lane wide with people knocking on the window, and driving through downtown Rome and parking(!!!)…definitely an “adventure”.

But if only the “adventure” was just the driving in tight spaces, but there’s always the whole “new country” thing every hundred miles or so. Different gas pumps, different languages, different road signs, random tolls, random vignette stickers that “allow” us to drive on the roads, and also the NOT being in the EU thing (I’m talking to you Switzerland!) so our cell phones don’t work – that was fun while sitting in metered traffic for 6 hours to go through tunnels in the alps (longest tunnel in the world!).

Then there’s the actual traveling with 4 kids. The tight spaces, the cramped hotel rooms, fighting over beds and who-unplugged-who’s kindle. The crying, the hunger, the I-don’t-want-to-eat-that, the souvenirs (I WANT IT ALL!), the sleep deprivation, the my-feet-hurts, and sooooo much more.

Lots of lessons learned again, which makes me wonder – shouldn’t I be better at this by now? But truly, all the stress and frustrations were totally worth the amazing, probably once-in-a-lifetime, sights we saw.

Misadventures: learning some more travel lessons the hard way

After spring break, I really tried to play it low key. Justin and I had a Malta Anniversary trip planned and I have my mission trip to Africa planned, so I was really trying to not overdo it. So we didn’t do much, but we did just enough to learn a hard lesson.

We decided to go to the closest beach in France because we heard the Belgian beach will be very crowded. So, in early May, we made a quick road trip and had a great weekend. Since we drove into another country, I took all the passports with us. When we got home, I gathered all the garbage from the car and apparently the passports (all but mine) and tossed everything in the garbage. Garbage man came next day. I realized 2 days later.

Well after 3 trips to the American Embassy in Brussels and hours of his life he’ll never get back, Justin had an emergency passport so we didn’t miss our Malta trip. Then we got to go back with all 4 kids last week to get them new passports. So, some more hours of life we won’t get back, lots of sweat and $580, kids new passports are being processed and thankfully will be mailed. Lesson: don’t throw away your passports, kids! Silver lining: luckily I didn’t throw mine away and jeopardize MY malta trip (😂😂😂) or my Africa mission trip!

Adventures of Malta 🇲🇹

Malta was awesome. First trip without the kids (hallelujah!) was a major success, even though some of the stuff had us feeling like we were doing a ropes/trust course. Let’s just start with “does couple work well as a team?” Um, no. This is the kind of stuff you learn really early on, but it really never gets better, and you keep being tested😬.

The Maltese drive like the British, on the right side of the car on the right side of the road. We decided to rent a car. Thank goodness I wasn’t the driver, but even more thanks that the rental car company upsold us an automatic. I can’t even imagine how much more difficult all of that would’ve been in a manual. Ever done a roundabout going the wrong direction? How about multi-laned, roundabout-in-a-roundabout with 8 exits? Well Justin has! All while simultaneously complaining about how bad my navigation help is! Man, good times! Then, we decided to do a tandem kayak across the ocean – I’d pay good money for our audio and video if it existed 😂.

And finally, my next big trip

Later this week I head to Rwanda 🇷🇼 on a combined religious/medical mission. While I am extremely nervous because it’s so far out of my comfort zone, I am also very excited for this “adventure”. Please pray for our team and the people we will serve. I hope I’ll have so much to share that it’ll be multiple posts!