HOME TOUR

Earlier this year we found ourselves in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay for February vacation. I hit my 50th country with Brazil. I haven’t had a chance to get those wanderings up on the blog but will, because it was so fun. But it happened to be one of our hardest travel trips. We spent a full 2 days stuck at JFK, at first sleeping in the lobby until a room opened up at the TWA hotel. So when we were thinking about a summertime trip, the one thing that kept coming to mind was…easy. Oh please can we just have an easy trip? Maybe we’re dooming ourselves for even hoping for this. We are very aware that trips are privileges and the Lord shows us his provision and teaches us character even when it is hard but we’re also real humans who really do just want a vacation. What makes a trip easy? In our experience it’s the number of flights you have to take (we always try to book direct whenever possible), number of nights we give ourselves in any given spot (longer the more relaxing), and the location (Europe easy, South America not in our humble experience). When we thought about easy and a destination, Portugal was the first to come to mind. We had the best time in Portugal all those years ago. Look at how cute my babies were in this wanderings post.

TAP airlines flies direct from Boston to Porto. So we’re doing Northern Portugal this time. We rented an AirBNB cottage in the little costal town of Costa Nova and plan on day tripping out from there (if we want to). The point is to stay in one spot for the majority of the trip, not have a strict itinerary (I’m talking to myself here) and slow down our pace. Read books, play board games, fly kites, eat good food and spend time with each other after a hectic school year. We’re so excited. Here’s some items making their way into our carryons (here’s a link to my bag) this trip (we never check bags when we go abroad).

Teal Dress | Boy’s Green Stripe Collar Shirt | Boy’s Blue Shorts | White and Blue Dress | Girl’s Blue Tulip Dress | Hillhouse Stripe Dress | Stripe Bag | Navy Stripe Top | Favorite White Shorts | Woven Bag | The Perfect Tank | Boy’s Blue Tee | Boy’s White Linen Shorts |  Turquoise Earrings | Yellow Stripe Towel | Blue Bathing Suit (bottoms here) | Woven Bucket Hat | Turquoise Necklace | Yellow Stripe Skirt | Flower Hair Clip | Woven Shoes 

Here’s to summer trips no matter how far and wide we may go. May we find lovely even in the hard bits of travel and use them to develop our character and perseverance through this not-so-easy life. And yay for being Portugal-bound and getting a “Packing for Portugal”  post up amidst the crazy packing of 3 kids and trying to get the garden prepped for a week of absence.