Very soon, we will be leaving on a month-long (for me and the boys, a bit shorter for Dan) vacation to the US.  We will visit 3 states and see our entire immediate family plus as many friends as we can possibly manage.

Over the past week, we’ve been saying temporary goodbyes to our friends and neighbors.  Here, when you tell someone, “Oh, we’re going to be away for a month”, they say, “Oh, are you going on holiday?”  In the US, if you say you’re going away for a month, everyone says, “Wow!  A whole month?!?”  Which, I admit, is very much my own reaction — vacations that last a week seem normal (if uncommon in my own life until very recently), 2 weeks seems decadent, and a month of vacation occupies the same realm of my mind as private jets and summer houses.  Here, a week is oddly short, 2 weeks is minimum, and a month is pretty standard in the summer.

Hmm. I’m not sure they’re supposed to look like this BEFORE we go . . .

That being said, this is going to be a vacation.  A for-real vacation.  I’m sure I will still blog, because I’m sure I’ll still have experiences and observations I want to record.  However . . . since it’s a vacation, I’m not going to promise to write every single day, and what I do write may be brief.  (Besides, I’ll be back in the States, so it’s not really being A Mommy Abroad anyway . . . and A Mommy Back in the US just doesn’t sound the same.)Our bags are packed, we’re ready to go.  I have a few things left to pack before we leave, but we’re pretty much ready.  I’m not stressed or freaking out.  I think we have what we need, and my experience tells me that whatever extraneous energy I put into agonizing over what we’ve forgotten will be wasted.

So, starting now, I’m on vacation.  Ahh . . . .