Sarah fills our family’s life with adventure. It was true long before we had kids, even before
we were married. If you’re like me, you
approach travel, challenge, and maybe just the world at large with a one day attitude. One day
I’ll leave the continent. One day I’ll
reconnect with that friend I haven’t seen in years. One day I’ll break this routine and do
something really different. With Sarah, the speed between idea and action
is staggering. Casting my mind back to
1,000 years ago when we first got engaged, she imagined a more amazing
honeymoon then I would ever dare consider, and then it was planned and booked
in days – long before I could think of a decent (fear-based) objection. And if you get her in a room with her dad, brain-storming
vacations, she’s ten times as dangerous. Nearly every amazing vacation we’ve had has
started with idle conversation over dinner at her parents’ place, then the meal
is barely over before the two of them are in research mode. At the very least, Sarah has the lot of us verbally
committed to the next big trip – and booking typically occurs within the next
24 hours.
It’s been a little while since we’ve had a really big trip,
and not for one second do I want to imply that it was easy for her back then,
but it was certainly easier. We’ve been on one income for a while now,
first when Sarah took extra time off in addition to her mat leave for Veronica, and then because I left my job to start an entirely income-deficient
business. Even at our most flush, Sarah
is a money-conscious travel planner, so I don’t want to imply that we were throwing
money around then, but we certainly had a lot more disposable income. We don’t now and haven’t for a while, but
despite this we’ve had a really great, incredibly fun summer. All thanks to her.
I have relatively few talents, but one of my more valuable
skills is the ability to endure. (Don’t
mistake this for athletic endurance. I
can run upwards of, maybe, seven minutes at a time.) No, what I can endure is driving for a really
long time. I can endure repetitive kid
games (like: let’s climb Dave all day, or let’s play tag for four years). I can endure epic amounts of sitting in one
place. I can endure boring routine like
nobody’s business. I can maintain… but Sarah
makes it interesting. I get bored and grimly carry forward; Sarah gets bored
and makes everyone’s life more fun. I
think about what might entertain us five minutes from now; Sarah thinks about
what will thrill us five months from now.
Despite all the austerity going on up in here, Sarah has
given our kids an awesome summer. Our
biggest trip was to Lancaster, Pennsylvania – where our kids rode, bought,
played with, ate, fought over, slept on, or dreamt of trains. Lancaster also had Dutch Wonderland, a theme
park practically made for our kids –
and a place they ask to go back to on a weekly basis. We also visited African Lion Safari, which I
hadn’t been to for about three decades.
Only a stone’s throw from the city where my parents live, it’s a place
that wouldn’t even have occurred to me to visit (and the kids loved it). Sarah also purchased an insanely affordable
membership to the Cumberland Museum, an old-timey farm museum that’s minutes
away from home – which we’ve been to nearly a dozen times now (and which,
again, the kids adore). We also went
apple-picking at Orleans Fruit Farm, strolling the boardwalk at Mer Bleue, to
Georgetown, to Almonte, to Kingston, to all the local museums we have a membership
to, to other museums Sarah gets passes to through the library…
It’s been a big, exciting, memorable summer that I wouldn’t have
thought possible. But someone much
smarter than me knew better. Which has been the case for nearly half my life now. And I love it and I love her.
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Nonna