We are definitely in a period of stress as the school year comes to a close and we finalize all the details for our Family Gap Year. It feels counter-productive to feel a ton of stress leading up to a grand adventure that’s supposed to bring us a lot of joy. But it is what it is!

Stress-Reducing Strategies

Here’s what I’ll be trying in the next month to stay in a good place:

1. Sleep: This one is huge and so difficult during periods of stress! And yet insufficient sleep does so much to contribute to a cycle of stress. So I’m committing to shutting my computer at 10pm—no

How is it that we are starting our Family Gap Year in basically a month? I’m not quite sure how that happened!

A couple of things are stressful right now: We still haven’t found a renter for our house. Also, we haven’t decided where Henry will go to school when we return. But we are taking actions to check off both items! We are continuing to show the house to prospective renters, and we are touring a variety of schools for Henry.

Oh, we also haven’t finished securing housing for our entire trip. We made a slight change with regard to New Zealand. Originally we were going to spend four … Read More

Our Family Gap Year starts in 42 days! So far, I’ve done a lot of planning for my head and hands. Now it’s time to plan for the heart.

What I mean by that is that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what where we are going to be and what we are going to do. We booked all the AirBnBs for our massive road trip in June: Austin to Bloomington to Madison to Montana to Washington to Vancouver to Eugene to Northern California to Southern California. We’ve booked our AirBnBs for the month of July as we hop from Oahu to Kauai’i to Maui. And we’ve booked … Read More