Saying goodbye to family

With one week to go before we head off to Europe, we spent last week tripping up to Brisbane and back to say goodbye to the family. Plenty of learning about dinosaurs and the intricacies of getting train tracks and names of trains just right with grandsons.

Whilst the highway to Brisbane is a continuing disgrace, by now we know where some good coffee spots are to be found and so it was a pleasant enough drive with overnight stops at Glenning Valley and Grafton to break the journey.

Now we are looking forward to learning just a little about life in Scandinavia during our month there and then to further develop our francophile tendencies. Whilst you could think that it is getting a bit late in the day to consider having a more permanent base in France to spend at least a good part of each year, this potential project is still on the books. We hope to report any progress in our thinking over September but in the meantime we are increasingly focussed on first exploring Scandinavia with our friends George and Yvonne.

Family matters and family matters

Whilst we still have an urge to move into another way of living and specifically one where we would spend more time out of Australia, the extended family continues to grow behind us. The recent happy arrival of Charlie Lane as a third grandson gives us much pleasure! Rachael, Ashley and Jayden are now happily blending Charlie into their lives and the world moves on.

Just how much family additions will complicate any of our moving considerations remains to be seen. One of us is now becoming more used to the idea of ensuring the family connections continue to grow as the extended family grows whilst the other is still yearning for a change of lifestyle whilst we have the physical and emotional means to make a transition.

In September we will spend yet another month in France refecting on possible options whilst enjoying a bit of late European summer.

And now for phase two of transition

One of my recent observations is that I am becoming increasingly tied to my computer and the internet. As we prepare to head of to Europe in early August, I was thinking that for the touring holdiay part of the trip when we are in Scandinavia, I should perhaps wear a camera on my head and attached to the computer which is itself wirelessed into the web. Readers can follow what we are doing in real time. And then I discover that new grandson Charlie Byron Lane was into that during his first week out of the womb. Or was he born wired up to go into the future?

In any case, I am re-starting this blog after a year or so of marking time in our transition process. We are planned to head off soon with friends George and Yvonne to Scandanavia where we will tour around until the end of August.

The four of us will then slip down to Chamonix, France for a final week together in the Alpes before heading off in different directions.