I’ve always loved to travel….
From my family’s camping holidays as a young boy to Wales and France, to a gap year in Brazil at the age of 18, I spent much of my formative years seeing the world.
When I met my wife, she had just landed in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, after backpacking around Europe. She’s from Southern America, so even Scarborough was a bit foreign to her. Come to think of it, as a boy from London, so was it to me.
We spent our dating years traveling back and forth from England to America and back again. And when we were in America, we took road trips from Faith’s native North Carolina to New York and Delaware and Georgia. We both had the travel bug, and we dreamt and planned of all the places we’d see together throughout our lives.
Soon we were married, and then not long after, our boys came on the scene. Our oldest is almost five now, and it’s no coincidence that we haven’t seen much of the world in the past five years. I know people travel with tiny children, but we just haven’t really had it in us, other than a handful of trips to North Carolina to see Faith’s family, and a weekend jaunt to Scotland for a friend’s wedding in that sweet period when our oldest had just gotten big enough to stay with relatives overnight and our youngest was still in utero.
So, when our four-year-old’s best friend moved from England to Finland this past Spring, and he asked when we were going, we decided this was our moment: we’ve been waiting long enough. Our boys are 4.5 and 2.5. They sleep through the night (mostly), can walk by themselves (mostly), and we’re feeling a little overdue for some adventure.
That’s right: we’re headed to Finland. Five years ago, I never would’ve thought of putting it on my list of places to visit. But, as you know, a lot has changed in the last five years.
