Travel Plans

We LOVE to travel.  I love local day trips.  I love weekend getaways.  I love week-long vacations.  It doesn't matter.  I love everything about traveling--the planning, the packing (although I'm horrible at it), the car/plane rides, and I LOVE the destination.  I love making memories together and I love taking pictures to document it all. 

Last summer David started his new job in Ohio and Anderson and I were still in NY.  So our travel lately has been rather limited.  Now that we're all together again I'm just itching to start planning our next adventure.  We're planning on camping a lot this summer, so we'll be exploring different campgrounds in Ohio and Michigan, plus revisiting old favorites in NY.  We also will be making our annual trip back down to Panama City, FL to stay in our friends' beach house. 

Then, right after Christmas, two other trips were thrown into the mix. 

First, my cousin is going to be studying abroad in Florence, Italy.  My aunt rented an apartment there for a month and asked me, sort of out of the blue, if I wanted to come over and spend a week with her at the end of February.  Um...YES!  So I immediately got online to start checking into airfare to see if this was something we could swing right now--we're still paying rent here in Ohio AND our NY mortgage at the moment.  I was excited to find out that the airfare was relatively inexpensive.  And since housing was pretty much already taken care of, we decided that this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.  My mom is also going and we can't wait!  We're going to Rome, Venice, and Florence.  David and Anderson will be staying home this trip.  I will miss them terribly, but I am very excited to get another stamp in my passport.  David has been given privileges that will allow him to work from home as needed, so he can coordinate dropping off/picking up Anderson at school without using any vacation time. 

Then, a little after my Italy trip was booked, David suggested that we go to Disney World over Anderson's spring break in March.  David and I used to go to Disney a lot when we lived in FL, even before we had Anderson, and since having Anderson we've taken him four times already.  As a child I wasn't much of a Disney fan, but I think it's because we always went when it was super hot and crowded.  We've found that going at off peak times is quite a lot of fun.  Anderson, of course, just LOVES it.  And I know it's super commercialized and all that, but our Disney trips are some of the BEST vacations we've taken.  We all have such a great time and have such fond memories.  Disney offers some pretty significant discounts and deals to members of the military so that's very helpful when we're planning our trips.  We're planning on surprising Anderson so shhhhhh!  He has no idea!

All this trip planning is making my head spin!  But...I LOVE IT!!  I can't wait to see what other places 2011 has in store for us.