******::::.....Trail of Glitter.....:::::*******

Jakov, one of the tour guides that we traveled with the other day does not have children. He commented on the clean-up required when we left the vehicle in a gentle, teasing way. I thought he meant the cracker crumbs but he clarified that the crumbs were not the issue, it was the sparkles that he found everywhere that were difficult to clean up. So true. So indicative of travel, no, life with our three princess girls. Glitter is everywhere in our lives because of their shoes and other assorted clothing, crafts and toys.

The two older girls, and especially our middle child, love to dress up. We believe it is a sign of creativity and self-expression so we pretty much allow them to choose their own clothing whenever reasonable. Reasonable has been the key word here when we are living in a place with weather so different from home.

That being said, we have found that it has been exceedingly difficult to convince our Canadian prairie girls that it is winter here in Europe. Yes, we have seen snow but it melted within days. Yes, we have seen rain but to us that means spring. And it isn't getting any easier as we start to see the flowers bloom and trees blossom. So sometimes we might seem like lunatics taking our children out in light jackets and dressy shoes while the kids here are in their parkas (even ski pants!) and boots. After a few chilly trips, including the aforementioned tour to Lake Bled and Ljubljana, I think we finally convinced the girls that it is best to dress in layers and be prepared for cold even if it doesn't seem cold. (There were some tears shed from the cold, wet feet that we got on our trip to Slovenia -- see picture below).

Beautiful snowy day at Lake Bled, Slovenia in February 2014. We couldn't get up the hill to visit the castle.

To be honest, we did not come well-prepared for winter either. We decided that boots (rain and snow) were too big for the number of suitcases we wanted to come with. If we needed them, we told ourselves, we'd buy them once we got to Croatia. We have needed them but as non-shoppers, we have not purchased them. We really need to get more realistic with ourselves about what we are actually like!

Travel is a good time to become introspective and self-reflective. We have learned a lot about ourselves during this trip. Sometimes the lesson seems to be that we shouldn't be doing this kind of travelling with 3 little girls -- in many moments that is how it feels. But then when we reflect on it we are continually amazed at what our children are capable of and what they are passively absorbing just by being exposed to different places.

I love watching them learn, grow and develop on their own glitter trails!

Having already left...

I first wrote this post on my phone in a hotel room in, I believe, Waukesha WI. But it got lost before I could post it - that is, everything but the title. I figured I might as well stick with it because now we have really left on the "big trip" and, in fact, we are here...

We are well into our journey now. Phase 1: Preparation and list-making - check. Phase 2: Packing and finishing up - check. Phase 3: Vegan family driving vacation - check. Phase 4: Christmas/New Year holidays at Disney, Disney Cruise, Orlando & Universal Studios - check. Phase 5: Return and prepare to leave - check. Phase 6: Fly to Europe - check. Phase 7: Settle in - in progress. To think that this all took place in the space of a month with three children under 7, well now it just sounds crazy. And to be honest, at times we felt like we were going crazy. There were some tight timelines in there and we really wanted to get through some cool stuff (I'll try to post more on some of the "cool" stuff in separate posts, as I get time to process it myself!) Also, at Phase 2 we started to get sick (cold/flu). It was wicked and even I got very sick (which doesn't usually happen). This hampered packing and ultimately changed our moods substantially - we might not have fully recovered because at about Phase 6 we started to feel it coming on again. The coughing has been pretty persistent for our wee ones. Also, jet lag knocked us back a bit on this trip. More so than ever before and it took us about 3 days to really feel like we were "with it" at all. Thankfully, we had scheduled in about a week of getting to know our surroundings. This mostly constituted getting to know the apartment but, hey, that's cool too. We had been in so many different beds with the driving vacation, and so forth that it was nice to just be still. So, here we are still basically in Phase 7 and starting to plan for Phase 8: Explore and learn.

I naively didn't expect the language barrier to be as significant a factor as it is. We had read that about 50% of the population of the city speak English and that seemed like enough. At the airport I realized that in my busy-ness I had not even learned to most basic phrases - "hello", "thank you", etc. We actually made a conscious choice yesterday to go through the till at the grocery store of the guy who we knew spoke English. The first time we went through his till, the conversation with him was the first time we had heard English outside of our family that day. The learning curve is so steep that I don't even feel like I am in the foothills of it yet. Which is cool. I'm excited for it.

The beauty and contrasts here are also something I hadn't prepared for. A modern dwelling built next to an ancient structure. Wood-smoke fog. Sun. Rain. Wind. Birds chirping, dogs barking,bells ringing, a mountain in the distance with a castle on it that I can see from my balcony. Buses, trams, trains, funicular, taxis, scooters, bicycles and a hill so steep I wasn't sure I could actually walk all the way up it with our groceries on the first day. (I kept thinking "the kids need food, the kids need food").

Although I said it was the first day I braved the hill to feed my kids it was actually the second. We were sick - dad and the kids - and didn't have the local currency (Euros are not accepted here yet) so couldn't order take-out or take the bus. The apartment we rented had some food items, such as flour, salt and oil so we made fresh pasta with oil for supper and finished up some of our plane snacks on the first night. I made roti for breakfast on our second day and we ate a few more plane snacks. Only I was well enough to make the journey for groceries on the second day and, by the time I had steeled my will to do so, it was afternoon. I ended up taking a few wrong turns and not going to the "right" grocery store but I returned (after a longer-than-expected time) with provisions and local currency. You can't imagine the sense of relief and accomplishment buying food had for me in that moment. I edged closer to the foothills of the learning curve I am about to embark upon on that day!

We have since found the "right" grocery store - a much larger version than its little cousin I visited on my first foray into shopping here, bought our bus passes (and figured out how to use them) and looked around the city a bit. Today was dad's first day at his practicum and so it begins...Phase 8...

The getting ready part...

A well-stocked pantry is an ideal that has been hard-wired into us, as children of children of the depression. As we get ready to leave our lives here for almost 5 months, we have been trying to pare down and let go so we don't have to store cupboards full of dry goods. It is the strangest feeling to feel good about depleting our stores. I recycled our cornstarch box yesterday. This is a staple in our home because we are vegans and make a delicious spreadable/sliceable cheese substitute called Lessarella on an almost weekly basis. I would never have anticipated the mixed emotions that would come from being "out" of things - on the one hand feeling that edginess that is in my wiring (must go buy cornstarch), and on the other feeling the lightness and freedom of letting go, of getting ready for this adventure. I think, in its own way, this experience is an analogy for the overall process. We live in abundance here and are blessed with so many amazing supports and resources (you know who you are) and this journey is about intentionally walking away. It isn't about loss though; it's about growth. It's about using what we have - things that maybe have been there all along - that we were never called upon to access. In the case of the cornstarch, we are going to be using a long-neglected bag of rice starch as a substitute. I'm guessing, as we move forward in preparing for and leaving on our journey, other so-called substitutions might require some deeper self-reflection to implement. Timelines are getting short now and the excitement is building. What will we learn about ourselves?

Beginnings

Of course, we aren't really at the beginning...but this is the point at which we have started to document our journey. Many people in our circle(s) have asked to have access to this story as we go forward so we thought that we would put it out there and see where it went.

So starting here, where we are, there should really be a bit of background for those who haven't been on the train with us to this point.

Background
We are a family of five. Our three bright shining stars are all under 10 - we share the parenting and have intermittently home-schooled. Travel, learning and compassion are central aspects of our lives. In pursuit of furthering career and education, dad has been going to school and he will be doing an international practicum starting in January. We are all going to travel with him. As preparation, we have already downsized our lifestyle (put much of our stuff in storage and moved into smaller - *free* - space). Mum has taken a leave of absence from her job. It has already been an adventure.

Purpose
This blog is mostly for friends and family to see some of the sights and challenges we face in our vegan travels with our 3 young children.