Here we go again

June 7/8, 2018

Well, here goes my fifth run at creating a blog.  Some of you may know that I have kept an online travel account of our family adventures for summers that I deem as blog-worthy.  I love traveling, and as a school teacher, I tend to have more time than money, but I have found creative ways over the years to stretch a dollar and do some pretty amazing trips while sticking to a relatively modest budget. 

This blogging tradition started in 2007 when one of my fellow teachers suggested I keep a blog because I’m pretty sure that she wanted to mock me when I told her that Becky and I were taking our whole family (including at the time an 8, 6 and 1-year old) on a cross-country summer vacation in an old, beat-up motorhome (http://beckyandpete.blogspot.com/ ).  The tradition continued the very next summer on a budget trip to Europe that centered around seeing a family friend get married (http://beckyandpete2.blogspot.com/ ).  Then we skipped a year before embarking on a blog-worthy Western States trip in 2010 where we happened to see Weird Al Yankovic in concert 3 times (http://beckyandpete3.blogspot.com/ ).  After skipping a few years, we did an emotional yet amazing East Coast trip in 2014 with the main goal of taking Becky’s mom’s ashes to rest on top of her husband’s Bob’s casket in Arlington National cemetery (http://beckyandpete4.blogspot.com/). 

Now, after having relatively mundane summers again for the past 3 years, we are embarking upon a revisit to Europe. Our family composition is partially different – for the time being, we have traded Alex in for Aunt Dee, but I will get into details about that later, and the two of them will kind of be tag-teaming the trip.  We intend to see some new sites as well as some of the sites that we saw a decade ago  (I think that Zac and Katie will appreciate them and remember them better than they did at 7 and 2 respectively) 

.

One thing that I particularly enjoy about the blog is that it’s the one time that Becky doesn’t complain about my overuse of detail – after all, I am both a history teacher and someone who loves a good story.  It’s not like a Facebook post that fills up your feed.  If you want to read my long-winded accounts, bookmark the blog.  If not, my feelings won’t be hurt. 

I have more background, but I will get into that in my next post.  Today was spent travelling, resting and getting through jet lag – the real adventure begins tomorrow...