flights | Trips Take People

It’s here…..<drum roll>… Our official, confirmed, flight reservation to Nepal!

We leave from the U.S. on September 17 and fly to Hong Kong. We will spend the night and in the the morning, much to our son’s delight we fly on ‘Dragon Air’ to arrive in Nepal.

I have that excited yet slightly nauseous feeling, like when you drop the wedding invitations in the mail box or when you are sitting on the table looking at the ultrasound picture. It is the ‘I guess this is really going to happen’ moment.

I’ve been feeling that excited/sick feeling more recently as we have just come back from a week of family vacation with my father’s side of the family. It was the first of our many goodbyes to family and friends. It was a great time, but it really hit home with me that I won’t see these folks for two years and a lot can happen in two years. To stave off my impending doom about missing a whole two years of everyone’s lives I gave my family assignments for the next two years; “Don’t have babies” to my sister, “Don’t get married” to my cousin, and “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do” to my other cousin. Despite my threats to put their lives on hold while I’m away, they will keep on living and I will miss it.

Two years is a long time in the lives of our children as well. For our daughter, two years is 2/3s of her life. She will have no memory of life here in the states and unless we create them for her, she will have no memories of the folks that love her here. She will learn to walk, learn to speak (both English and Nepalese hopefully) and develop more of her own little (or big) personality. For our son, a five minute time out feels like a week to him so two whole years will be like basically forever. He will lose his first tooth, start school and grow another foot and six shoe sizes. Pictures and Skype conversations just don’t do that kind of thing justice.

Another Post-Resident couple gave us the advice to really make sure we say ‘goodbyes’ and not just ‘see you laters’. It acknowledges two years is a long time and things will happen and we won’t be there. It lets our family and friends know that though we won’t be part of the moments of their everyday living, we wish we were. Though they won’t be there for every milestone moment for our children they are the ones we wish we could share it with. In the mean time we will do our best with photos and Skype, because even though two years is a long time, it will go by in no time at all.

Here’s some vacation photos of our crazy family. We will miss you guys.