The year of many suitcases

We're back in Croatia after our 5 week trip to the US. As I was sitting in Chicago airport watching kids run around during our mega layover (5 hours), I've realized that this marks a total of 9 weeks of being away from home just this year. I must say, that may have been a bit much. What a fun year but all of the traveling, airports, cars, constant packing and unpacking can wear on a person. After just a couple of days though, we were back in our daily routine as if we haven't left home at all. School started a week ago. It's nice to be home.

Still, many memories were created in the last 9 months. For years, I've hoped that some day we may be able to make certain trips. As if by magic, much of it came true this year. Kids got to enjoy their first trip to Disney World. Even though it was January, weather was just perfect. Though short, it was a wildly successful, memorable and wonderful family trip. Eight of us went together. It'll be close to impossible to manage that again. It was a once in a lifetime thing and I have hundreds of awesome photos to remember it by.

This summer, we went on our first cruise. We've spent 8 days visiting foreign places and enjoying a high life of the cruise ship. We visited Italy (Venice, Bari), Greece (Olympia, where Olympic games started), Turkey (Izmir and Istanbul) and Croatia (Dubrovnik). I snapped away hundreds of photos while enjoying the sights of exotic (to us anyway) locations. More terrific memories. We had a cabin with a balcony and could sit outside and enjoy the beautiful and calm seas of Adriatic. Food was great. Every night we got to see a theater performance. Theater was the kids' favorite part. Even though they weren't too keen on sightseeing, I hope that sights of far away places and different people will stay etched somewhere in their memory.

Then we headed to Alabama to spend an entire August (and then some) there. I worked, kids played. Time simply flew by and now we're back to our every day grind. Well, almost everything was back to normal. Chris stayed in the US for an extra week. We worked out an arrangement so he could attend DragonCon in Atlanta with his best friend. He stayed in Croatia for three and a half weeks after we left. Then joined us for a week and a half and then stayed another week after we returned home. Though it all worked out like a charm I missed him terribly. Probably even more than I did when we were three months apart two and a half years ago. We've been together for 14 years, 12 of those married. You'd think that we'd have enough of each other by now. Still... I was relieved to have been able to pick him up at the airport. The moment he got home, all was well and life returned to normal.

We have no further trips planned at this time. Unless a trip to Slovenia's water park counts. We'll have to do that some time soon. But that's only 30 minutes away.