Showing posts with label expat mom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label expat mom. Show all posts

"And so this is Christmas...


and what have you done?"  John Lennon asked us this question, and as I was listening to Christmas carols this year I started to think..."what have I done?"

Honestly, I haven't done much!  I give to a regular charity, I donate clothes and toys to local charities, but aside from that I haven't done anything.

We have been given an amazing opportunity to see all of the things we are seeing.  I try to help my expats realize that they are seeing things that people save their whole lives to see, or in some cases may never see at all.  They don't get it, and they probably won't until they are older.  All I can hope is that at some point they will realize how lucky and how blessed that they are.

What can we as parents do to help our kids realize this?  

My kids have more time off of school then you can believe and I have been thinking that we need to do something...something that makes a difference in some one's life, as well as our own!

I had heard about volunteer vacations before, but never thought much about it, until this year.  There were no more excuses, the expats were old enough, we had enough time.  2013 will be the year!  

There are hundreds of websites that can help you decide what volunteer vacation you can take...if nature is your thing, you can help clean up the forests.  You can help the homeless, children in need or animals.  You can make at as easy as taking a Saturday and picking up trash at your local beach or local hiking trail, or you can spend weeks digging water wells in Africa!  

Take a look at the links below and see what you fancy!  We will be making our volunteer vacation decisions over the next few weeks, so tune in to see what our expat family decides to do!






You lose some...



This ranked as one of my not so favorite all time vacations! Barcelona, Spain October~2012!

This had a little to do with Barcelona, a lot to do with circumstance, and a whole lot to do with attitude.

The youngest expat was at the end of being very, very sick, the weather was horrible, and so was my attitude.

I do the family vacation planning and I have to say 98% of the time, I do a pretty good job. Well, this was one of my failures.

Barcelona is ranked as one of the best cities in the world to visit, and even through my negativity, I could see it! It would be an amazing city to visit on a sunny day, or for a long romantic weekend with your spouse, but not with 2 very grumpy kids, a husband who now had the flu and mom who was well...done with sick!

I investigated Barcelona, got advice from friends, heard all of the wonderful stories. Although, I have to admit, when I booked for five days, I did question if it may be a bit too long. It was, by about 3 days.

We visited the Boqueria Market, the Park de Guell and the Sagrada Familia all in the first two days. Great, we had 3 more full days to go. There was no chance of a beach day....it was raining! The kids were sick of looking at "old" things...in the rain, and my husband was getting sicker by the day, how much would it be to change our flights???


La Boqueria Market


Sagrada Familia

Everyone had raved about this vibrant, colorful city and I just kept wondering; "Are we in the same place that they were all talking about?"

The Barcelona that I experienced was FULL of tourists, souvenirs and con-artist street performers. It was so crazy that one night after dinner as I sat reading my book, my husband took the boys "hooker hunting". Apparently the area that we were staying in was known for their evening entertainment~again, great planning on my part! So off they went. They never did see any, but my husband had the oldest expat convinced that the scantly glad lady with the dinner menu was actually handing out menus of her services as opposed to the different paella that her restaurant was serving, and I won't even get into the make-out session my youngest witnessed through the window of our hotel!

When we boarded our flight home, we were all more then ready. All of the illness was over and the sun had begun shining again, but we were beyond ready for our home. Barcelona wasn't all frustration. The food was amazing and the Sagrada Familia blew us all away. I guess if we had to "lose some" this wasn't a bad place to be!


Sagrada Familia

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