Lets start at the very beginning...

Welcome to our blog.  Thanks for dropping by!

Today, our big adventure official gets underway.  But let's start by going back to the very beginning.

Three years ago (September 2012), I left my last permanent job and became self-employed.  The idea going forward was that for every day I worked, I wanted to take a day off - so, work for 6 months, then take 6 months off.  At the same time, we decided to sell our childcare business so that Caroline could "retire" and we could take advantage of all this time off work to do stuff together.

We've always taken a lot of long haul vacation trips as a family - Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, Dubai, Canada and numerous trips to the USA. But in 2012, we decided that we ultimately wanted to take on a much longer and larger trip and our Family Gap Year idea was born.

It took us almost three years to save enough money & to sell the business but in June 2015, all the pieces fell into place and we were ready to commit to the trip of a lifetime. We met with the deputy head teacher at Josh's school to make sure we knew what we needed to be teaching him during the year away so he wouldn't fall behind on his schoolwork. Josh finished his school year at the end of June 2015 and said goodbye to his classmates.  Caroline & I will be "Road-schooling" Josh for the duration of our trip.

We invited two friends who were living at home with their parents to rent out our house for a nominal rent in order that it didn't stand empty.  They said yes and are moving in soon.

We had long family discussions about where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see and eventually settled on a broad route that circumnavigated the southern hemisphere.

Then I got an assignment to Sydney, Australia from Summer 2015 until the end of that year. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss, so we adjusted our plan a bit to incorporate an extended stay in Sydney to enable me to complete the assignment and for Caroline & Josh to spend some time exploring Sydney.  It also meant we could be there for New Year 2015/16 and also spend Christmas with family from the UK who will be in Sydney too at that time.

We all had to get new passports (not enough blank pages left in our old ones to sustain our mega-trip) and Caroline & Josh had a whole series of inoculations.  I've still not yet organised mine!  And we sorted out ESTA and Visas for the first two stops on the trip.

Last piece of explanation is that we had previously arranged to take a family holiday in Orlando, Florida with some friends - Andy & Kris & their two children - in September 2015, so that had to be baked into the schedule too.

Which brings us to today.  I'm posting this from a hotel room in Sydney.  Caroline & Josh have just left home (Scotland) today to head to Devon (England) to meet up with Andy & Kris.  They will be staying with them for a week before they all fly to Orlando, Florida (USA). I am leaving here in 2 days time to fly to Buenos Aries (Argentina) for a few days before flying on to Florida and meeting up with the rest of them.  After that, we've got two full-on weeks of Florida Theme Parks before Caroline, Josh & I fly back to Sydney.  And that's all we've got booked so far!  We'll plan the next step of our trip once we're all in Sydney.

OK.  So you're pretty much up-to-date now.  Check back in a week or so for the next instalment !