I’m 41 years old and am finally getting started on international adventures.  Finally.  I’ve been off continent, to Hawaii, and I’ve been out of the country, to Cancun, Mexico and Toronto, Canada.  I’ve decided that while all of those are good examples of travel, they’re really only baby steps.  I’m not even convinced they count.  Cancun is so westernized that it could almost be Texas or Southern California.  Toronto was cool, but I was only there for a grand total of 23 hours.

I live in Minnesota and I love it here.  Even the winters that everyone loves to complain about.  In the fall the trees turn all the right colors with just enough evergreen to balance all the oranges, reds and yellows out.  Spring has become my least favorite time of year.  It just takes too long to get here.  It’s muddy, rainy and cloudy too.  February is miserable – I really should consider just working from Colorado or New Mexico in February.  But that’s not especially practical.

I have a wonderful daughter, Holly.  She’ll be 12 in October.  She’s got a mind for math and science and a love of astronomy and cheerleading.   She’s a year ahead in school – sort of.  She’s one of the youngest in her grade – most of her classmates are turning 13 this year.  I think there are many days when she wishes we hadn’t put her into kindergarten five weeks before her 5th birthday, but she’s certainly never bored!

My husband Ryan keeps everything here running on an even keel.  In spite of all my mom’s work to make sure I could keep house for myself, I’m dismal at it.  I know how to do it all and am good at it when I do.  It’s the when I do part that catches us all up.  If it weren’t for Ryan, we’d live in a cluttered mess all the time and eat off of paper plates so I wouldn’t have to wash dishes.  I think he’d prefer to live somewhere other than Minnesota, but he’s a good sport and never broaches the subject.

I have two dogs, two cats and a rat.  Although the rat really belongs to Holly.  I’ve never really been a rodent fan.  We had fish too, but we forgot to feed them so they all died.  We will probably get a blue lobster when we get everything running again.  The dogs and cats keep us busy on the pet front though.  Demanding attention and leaving fur all over the place, they really do run the house.

Of course, before I’ll likely be allowed to do much more international travel, I’ll need to get Ryan and Holly all passported up so they can come along.  There are several places on the list below that I think would make both of them very unhappy if I went without then.  I guess we’ll see.  Habitat builds are a great way to see the world, so I’ll continue to do those.

Places I want to visit now that I’m all set for international travel are in no particular order:

• Scotland
• England
• France
• Greece
• Chile
• Brazil
• Australia
• Egypt
• China
• Russia
• Madagascar
• Ireland
• Italy
• India