You have all been sitting on the edge of your seats, I just know it!  The suspense has been killing you all slowly, making you pull your hair and chew your nails down to the quick.  I am so sorry for putting you all through that!  But I think I am ready to commit our plan to the bloggospere.

The Travelling Awesomes are going international.

Thailand.

In 3 months.

Yep.  You read that right.  Southeast Asia in November!  At least, that’s the plan.  As we all know, nothing is set in stone until it’s done.

Our current location is still Indiana.  I signed up to run a 5 mile obstacles race to benefit the MS Foundation called Muckfest MS.  I’m pretty excited about this one!  The race is this Saturday and I’ll be running with an old high school friend of mine.  She’s the one who took me to my very first football game…but I’ll post on that later!  And we decided to go ahead and stay here for Labor Day weekend….there are a few more special people making an appearance and we didn’t want to miss seeing them!  After that, we’ll head to Ohio to see my Dad and possibly participate in Sorghum Squeezin Day at an old friends family farm in Southern Ohio.  It’s an opportunity to see something people usually don’t get to see, let alone do!

After that we’ll be hightailing it westward.  It’s cheaper to fly from the CA coast than to fly from the East, so we’ll be winding our way out towards San Francisco.  We have tentative plans for our camper and truck…..we already have backpacks, but there is a slew of to-do items on our list.  It’s a little intimidating if I can be so honest.  We have to figure out our curriculum, how to have health insurance, get visas, buy the airline tickets, and create a packing list that allows us to have what we need but be able to pick up and go at a moments notice with no personal vehicle.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that huh?  We’ll be living out of backpacks and using public transportation.

Wow.  Ok, so I guess my original statement should have been more along the lines of ”backpacking through Southeast Asia”.  We plan on taking short trips into other countries, but we’ll be starting in Thailand.  And how long are we going to be gone you ask?  We are thinking a minimum of 6 months, possibly a year….longer if it suits us.

We have been trying to live our lives saying yes more than no.  Which is extremely hard while trying to raise three kids.  There isn’t anything keeping us from making our lives this amazing grand adventure….other than our own fears.  A few people have made it known that they think this is a mistake.  A few others have told us that this is an opportunity to not miss.  When asked why we are doing this our answer is just a general ”why not?”  We can, so we should.  We live this life one time.  There’s no do-overs or second chances.  I don’t want to be an the end of my life and wonder why I didn’t DO more things that I dreamed of doing.  I am hoping to instill that sense of adventure in the kids.  I want them to take risks and have experiences (safely of course).  And if they don’t witness me setting that example, who will show them that it is possible?

I could go on and on but that wasn’t the point of this post.  This post was to share with you the beginning of a new chapter for us.  I will be trying to document and share, a bit more regularly, the path we travel and what we have to do to accomplish this next step.  If any of you readers have suggestions, questions, ideas or any tidbit you’d like to share, I’d LOVE to hear it.  Most of our decisions are based on reading other peoples experiences and trying to not make the same mistake!  No use trying to reinvent the wheel you know!

I hope you all are half as excited as we are….and I really look forward to sharing more of our adventures with you!!