The Cat's Out of the Bag

We finally told the kids we'll be taking them on our biggest family adventure yet! When I told them we were going to have a family meeting Sydney's first response was "Oh great! Well I'm not coming! Just pretend I'm not part of the family!" I told her to remind me of that AFTER our meeting. When we were finally all together I had each of them choose something from the bag I was holding which included items about our trip (books, maps etc). They were a bit baffled as they were pulling each item out. I didn't leave them in suspense for too long and told them we're going to the Mediterranean and staying 4 nights in Barcelona (2 nts pre-cruise and 2 nts post-cruise) and taking a 10 night Disney Cruise. They were excited beyond words! I thought they would be most excited about the cruise but they were actually very curious about Barcelona and what we would get to see there.


I can already tell there will be some laughable moments with the kids since sometimes what they mean and what comes out of their mouth are two different things. We were talking with them about visiting Herculaneum, a sister city to Pompeii, which was buried under the same eruption but is believed to be better preserved than Pompeii. The kids are very interested about this and looking forward to visiting it. Suddenly Eric asked, "So then we'll get to see alot of ass?" We all stared at him for a minute before we realized he was talking about ash. Cracked us up!


Also getting them prepared to try different types of food. Sydney will be okay with that but Eric is picky picky picky! Might be a bit of a challenge so I have already started giving him my try new foods lecture. I explained if we are in a restaurant or market and you see something you don't like it is considered very rude to say "Ew yuck!". I thought he understood until he informed me that we should probably just bring our own food! I said no.


I gave them both travel journals to write in and they love them! They immediately went to work customizing them. These journals have questions in them to give them ideas what to write about and has an area for trip planning, packing list, destinations etc. It'll be a great keepsake! Every night they want to have a little "study time" learning about where we're going.


We will be taking them out of school for 2 weeks so not sure what their teachers will think of that but I figure this is a huge learning experience. History is alot more interesting when you can actually see it for yourself!