on seeing new places. . .

Three years ago we realized that this era of our lives, with all of us under one roof, is coming to an end, and we plotted to see the world – then the world shut down for a bit, and our adventures stayed much much closer to home.

In November, we decided to see if we could see somewhere new with the girls and we searched for the cheapest tickets to Europe from Nairobi we could find – and by a wide margin, we landed on Rome, Italy. . . David had saved some dream AirBnb’s years ago that happened to be available, and we booked our tickets.

This was actually the first time we had travelled as just the 4 of us ever outside of home assignment and weddings just for fun, and we wondered how it would be – how we would interact in the stress of travel for travel’s sake, explore new foods, and balance each other’s interests.

For 10 days in April, we wandered through Rome, Herculaneum, Florence, and Lerici with side trips and lots of grocery store trips and debates about gelato. We got caught in a hailstorm, went to every shoe store we could find, and explored together. We loved watching our girls explore, seeing what invoked wonder and what seemed normal to them (with the Sistine Chapel among them). We learned that they love sleeping in, even when in a new city, and that they are not afraid of stairs. . .that they are as happy with bread and cheese and gelato as we are instead of a fancy meal, and that we are all calm in an unexpected way when we are on the water. We confirmed that David is the best airBnb finder on the planet, and went to church in Italian on Easter in a 500 year old chapel for St. Francis of Assisi.

Mostly though, I just tried to absorb moments with these precious moments with these amazing girls for the days and weeks and years they remain under our roof –