Toronto - The more things change, the more they stay the same!

We enjoyed four quick days in Toronto, as a waypoint before heading to the ship in Halifax.   The boys finally got to spend some time with their cousins from Toronto, up at their cottage on Lake Muskoka.  We had a great couple of days on the lake!

Monday and the days following saw us venturing down to Toronto for a visit with Jay’s grandfather John and Mom and Spencer.  Luke got the chance to visit on his own with Nana D and explore her art work.

In just a few days, we managed to hit many highlights – at least for Jay – visits with family, a Swiss Chalet dinner, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Granite Club, lunch and beers with friends and the chance to buy Canadian junk food – a quick trip back in his childhood!

And....so it begins!

7AM this morning - here's what an early departure to Toronto looks like.  Not tooooo much stuff for four months of travel!  One entire suitcase of kid school books!

Now we have 4 days in Toronto before an early flight to Halifax to meet our fellow voyagers and board the ship!

6 days until we fly - 11 days until we sail!

Well, here we are again.  Following on our wonderful voyage in the Fall of 2009, we will soon be setting out for our second Semester at Sea experience (third for Christy).  This time, instead of circling the globe from Halifax to San Diego, the route will take us around the Atlantic from Halifax to Europe, the West Coast of Africa and the East Coast of South America, before heading through the Caribbean on our way to Fort Lauderdale.

We will post after each port and maybe even between ports - Halifax, Ireland, England, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Ghana, South Africa, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Dominica and Fort Lauderdale.  So follow us here or on Facebook - I think they are linked and we will hope to give you a flavor of where we are and what we are experiencing.  As you can imagine, email is the best way to get hold of us if you have advice or questions.

We are looking forward to experiencing new adventures and making new friends, all while staying connected to our current friends.  Please enjoy sharing our adventure with us!

Thanks to Jonathan Galos (F12) for creating the template above!

Approaching departure day!!!!

The calm before the storm has descended upon our house. We have renewed our passports, received the critical visas, been punctured multiple times to prevent disease, filled prescriptions for huge quantities of malaria medication, sent boxes ahead to the ship, discussed the boys' curriculum with their teachers, arranged for house and pet sitting, put most of our bills on auto-pay, upgraded our electronics, said goodbye to many friends, packed three bags (two more to go), selected DVD's for the trip, bought gifts, picked our seats on the plane and planned our carry-ons - what more is there to do? For now the boys are in bed, and I am beginning the critical task of chronicling our adventures. Tomorrow should be a relaxed day finalizing the packing (hard to believe that this will cover the kids for 108 days!), downloading e-books and loading up the car for our morning departure to the airport.

The storm before the calm - Hurricane Bill - appears to be wandering his merry way into the North Atlantic and shouldn't have any impact on our trip. For those new to our plans, Christy, Luke, Ryan and I are leaving Boulder on Monday (August 24th) for Toronto to visit family and friends - and pick up Grandpa Milton - on our way to Halifax. In Halifax, we will board the MV Explorer and travel around the world as part of the Fall 2009 Semester at Sea voyage. We depart Halifax on August 28th and visit Spain, Morocco, Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Vietnam, China, Japan and Hawaii before returning to the US Mainland at San Diego on December 14th. For more information on Semester at Sea go to http://www.semesteratsea.org/.

Part of the fun of this endeavor so far are the conversations we have had in the last few months. First, people wonder why we are going; then they find out more and wonder why we are going with two 5 and 6 year old boys; then they find out more and wonder why we are going on a ship with 700 college students....and finally they ask how they can go along! Well, we fall into the lifelong learner (LL) category (despite Christy not quite meeting the age requirement of 40). While there are LL's on every voyage, we are among the first to be bringing along young kids.

As for why we are going, there are too many good reasons to list them all but here are five....1) we really do believe in lifelong learning and a semester in an academic environment is a good way to foster that; 2) while the boys are pretty young, they are never too young to see the world and begin to understand how privileged a life we live in North America - life is not all about LEGOs; 3) having a floating hotel as a home base for an around the world trip seems much more manageable than moving everything from country to country; 4) Christy did this as an undergrad and it literally changed her life and perspective; 5) most importantly, for 108 days we will connect as a family and focus on one another in ways that are tough to do in day-to-day life.

So, we will be using this platform to communicate our experiences back to our friends, family and classmates. You can expect to see relatively frequent updates, depending on how interesting our days are and how good the internet connection is where we happen to find ourselves. Photos and maybe the occasional video will be part of the package. Keep in mind a pre-school and a 1st grade class will be tuning in part of the time, as I am sure some of you out there will have comments (you know who you are!). We look forward to sharing our adventures with you!!!