Karlee is our 3 legged wonder dog who will be 13 years old when we leave in February.  My parents are the willing and able babysitters for the 12 months that we are travelling.  She will be sadly missed and we dearly hope that she is well in our absence.  Physically she is very well, despite having cancer and her leg amputated at 9 months of age.  I do worry that she will...

Me, pushing 2 empty containers down the hallway to the study.

Five year old Finn, Patrick’s friend, sticks his head out of the room and asks “What are they for?”.

My reply, “Oh, just to pack stuff in”.

Finn turns to Patrick, “What is she packing stuff for?”

Patrick announces matter of factly, “Because we are going round the world”.

Finn declares, “You’re lucky!”

Patrick...

I am sure every person who has every travelled anywhere at all has ummd and aaahd over what they will take with them and what they will carry it all in. As soon as the idea of RTW was tossed around I began googling backpacks etc.  Holy mackerel! A whole new world opened up. All our travel to date had been with suitcases.

In my first overseas journey to the USA as a 17 year...

When searching for RTW family blogs, I happened across the website of the Higham Family – a family of four from San Francisco.  Apart from the great list of books they compiled for their daughter to read; John made their own story of RTW travel into a book titled ‘360 Degrees Longitude’.  The book wasn’t available in Australia when I went searching so during my recent USA...

We finally had the chance to meet with our travel agent and book some flights – hooray. Two hours later we were the proud owners of a basic itinerary. Enough flights to get us out of Australia, into one continent; out of it and into the next.  There are big gaps of time and space in the middle for flexibility and to take advantage of cheap airfares in Asia, in...

I’ve had a few (nearly 10) garage sales in my time and yesterday’s effort rates as mediocre at the very best.  Nevermind. The effort was still worth it because now I have a great number of piles of ‘stuff’ that has been organised and designated to friends and a number of local charities.  Look out – something might be coming your way! 

I can’t believe that was the fourth...

With now less than 3 months until we leave the country, things are hotting up around here.  Second garage sale of the century is booked for Saturday morning with my trusty assistant – Mum. 

Should have a travel itinerary soon and glad to see we have inadvertantly followed the advice of Mummy T:

Invested in a Panasonic Lumix TZ10 in September.  Happy with my purchase after much research. Didn’t want anything too big and fancy; just something that could take a great photo the majority of the time. The camera accompanied me to America for my two weeks away and has performed nicely so far. I am still yet to fully understand how to work the thing!

As previously mentioned, Harris and Patrick were proud and brave recipients of their TB vaccinations a few months ago.  Following my return from the US we had our first travel medicine appointment with a local travel clinic to prepare for our big adventure.  I already knew that we would most likely leave with at least one jab each however Patrick was none the wiser as to...

I have just returned from a 2 week trip to the USA.  Had a great time at the American School Health Association conference in Kansas City, Missouri. If you ever add KC to your itinerary then check out the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum – it was fantastic.  Then I went onto Cincinnati Ohio to catch up with friends. Completed the ‘Scared Stiff’ 5km charity run in the fabulous time...