In 1995, Katie spent 8 months living in London and travelling Europe.  She went back to visit Italy twice before I met her.  I went to Ireland in 2000.  We went together in 2005 to England and Wales (otherwise known as the, “if I’m not sick of her after 12 days of being together 24 hours a day, I guess I better finally get around to proposing to her” test – which she passed).  The next year we were married and went to the Caribbean for 2 weeks on our Honeymoon.  The next year we spent a month in Europe, taking a Rick Steve’s tour from Amsterdam, down the Rhine, through Austria, into Italy, up to Switzerland, before ending in Paris.  In 2008, we went to Hawaii.  This year, we drove to Lake Wenatchee.  Oh, and Federal Way.

<sigh>

Just as I was starting to catch the travel bug, we got innoculated.  Twin boys.  No travel for you.  Well, maybe some travel, but for the next few years that’s just going to be camping within a couple of hours radius, or going to Michigan.  Maybe in another 4 or 5 years we’ll have the first big Disney World vacation.  It’s certainly a change of pace.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth it, but it is something we miss.  Someday…

In the meantime, we have friends, and we expect them to travel widely, and return and tell us, “no, it really isn’t all that much fun – I’d rather just watch TV” so we don’t feel like we’re really missing anything.  This last weekend, we finally convinced our two favorite Canadians to come down and visit us.  We met John and Linda on the Rick Steve’s tour, and enjoyed the trip getting to know them and laughing at John’s antics, and were in awe of Linda for having the strength of character to endure so many years of marriage to a MAC user.  It was getting to know them and Shae that made the trip really enjoyable.  Here they are drinking wine in Bacharach, Germany:

And here’s John being John, at a metro entrance in Paris:

We went up to visit them in Vancouver, but that was before the boys.  We’ve tried to get together a number of other times, but John travels for work a lot, so it’s hard to find weekends that work.  This weekend we lucked out, and they drove down to see us and meet the boys.  The boys flirted outrageously (Nicholas could barely be pulled away from John) and had a grand time.  We took a walk to the French bakery to remember old times, and fed the boys a croissant.

Hopefully they’ll steal away again sometime before long, and hopefully we’ll grow more confident and drag the boys Northward to visit them.  The boys are much, much to old to not have a passport.