Today is the Day! - Alrica

I have been up since 6:00 this morning and can't seem to get back to sleep. Today is the day! What a crazy mix of excitement and worry. As the main planner in our family, I feel a lot of pressure to make sure everything goes smoothly and, so far, I'm not nailing it. When I tried to check in to our flights last night, I was told that we can't check in because we don't have seats and there aren't seats to be had. Looks like we need to arrive extra early to the airport today to get that sorted out.

Aside from that though, we will spend this morning making decisions about the last few things that need to get backed. All the travel blogs advise to decide what you need and then cut it in half. Well, we are pretty bare bones, but there are always extras. Do we really need a separate charging cord for each of our ipads? And should I pick up some extra Aleve since it seems to help with the pain most efficiently? Syarra apparently got a tick bite on our journey across the states so we are treating with antibiotics on the assumption that it carries Lyme disease and I need to figure out the best way to carry refrigerated medication across the world.

Healthwise, I'm doing okay. I still have some pain, but I'm sleeping better at night and able to carry things (which was important), and not moving nearly as slowly. It has been nearly two and a half months since the surgery that removed my cancer and part of my right hip bone. I'm glad that we pushed back our start date so that I could heal. During the last month, our family of four has been generously taken in by family and friends all across the country. The kids have played with cousins and friends everywhere as if they saw each other daily and collected email, skype, and facetime addresses along the way. And, once again, we have seen so much of our own country; from hiking down to see the Ancient ruins at Mesa Verde to exploring a destroyed flour mill in Minneapolis to swimming behind a sailboat in Pensacola Bay. I'm reminded how lucky we are to have so much support here in the states. I'm looking forward to making new friends all across the world but I hope all of the friends we got to visit, and the ones we missed this time, know how much we appreciate them.

Flights today leave out of Fort Lauderdale, FL with a short stop in Chicago and a long stop in London before arriving in Johannesburg. A 26-hour sleeper train will then take us to our final destination of Cape Town. We will be off the grid for a while but will have lost of pictures to post when we are settled.