"No one is home -- we have all gone to France."

In the flurry of packing up Saturday morning, Katie came to me with an urgent look on her face. "Mama, " she said. "We need to leave a note on our door. We need to say 'No one is home -- we have all gone to France' so people will know where we are!" I said that we a good idea, but that it might confuse friends of our housesitters who come to visit her. And I reassured Kate that we were letting everyone know "we have all gone to France" through the blog and letters and calls.

It's interesting for me and John to try to figure out what the kids think of all of this travel. So far (knock wood, fingers crossed, etc.) they have proven to be amazing travelers and they have done so well preparing for this trip. They do a great job everytime we cross the Alberta/Montana border (keeping quiet in the car but answering questions asked to them directly); they usually do just what is asked of them at airport security (although sometimes Katie wishes I could carry her through); they carry their own backpacks, pull their own small luggage carryons, and generally do just what we need them to do. There is a part of me that worries we are asking too much of people who are 7.5, 4.5, and 4.5 -- Jack, especially, will need to do some actual heavy lifting during parts of this trip -- and a small part of me wonders if a therapist years down the road will be listening to one, two, or three of them of saying "you won't BELIEVE what my parents made me do when I was a kid."

What we hope, I guess, is that instead of it being a tale of woe and hardship, the tone changes -- that instead of it being a story of being dragged to all ends of the world, they instead tell their friends and family what great adventures we had, how they learned foreign languages and experienced other cultures and saw a bit more of the world outside of their own wonderful small city. We'll see. I'll report back in 20+ years and let you know!

A few logistical updates. We are safely in Colorado and had a good flight from Helena. It was SO good to see my parents at the Denver airport and we are having a full family reunion with my brother, sister-in-law, and their kids at my parents' home in Woodland Park. I am trying to ignore the fact that everyone here seems to be reading Sarah Palin's Going Rogue (clearly I didn't get the memo) -- there just is not enough time on this trip to get into political debates!

Internet access here is a bit sketchy (I'm sitting awkwardly near a window, picking up the signal of a neighbor that only seems to be on in the early morning), so I don't know when I'll post again. But thanks for any and all good wishes on Jan. 13 and 14. We'll need everything we can get!