I’ll explain how we got here and the world trip but the journey begins on a plane, as most overseas vacations do.

Right after labor day weekend we flew to Iceland. It’s an over 7 hour flight from Seattle, the longest we’ve done with our toddler, so I let her watch all the Elmo she wanted on the iPad and hooked her up with all the water she could drink!

No, she didn’t stay in her car seat that whole time (more like 50/50 but that’s 4 ish hours less of me holding her!), but it was nice that they provided me with a seat belt that hooks around her and slips into my seat belt, so when she was on my lap she could be buckled in, whether we were just sitting or even when I was breast feeding her.

When we landed I didn’t care I hadn’t slept much and it was early in the morning. The volcanic tundra was beautiful.

We walked around Reykjavik and went to Hallgrimskirkja (a church).

Icelandic people are primarily of Norwegian descent, of which I am too (and hubby is Polish) so Kaya’s shockingly blonde hair was same ol’ same ol’ there, instead of a photo op as it is in Asia (where we are now).

Inside the church I really liked the simple lines that were still so interesting to look at in the lower portion.

We then took an elevator to the top where there’s a 365 degree overlook.

Iceland was basically planned as a multi day layover a) to see it! b) to break up our flights and c) to adjust to the time zone.

Meaning, yes, I was really excited to travel to Iceland (and wished to go back later when dealing with the heat of Spain and Italy) but also didn’t spend a whole lot of time looking up what to see. That’s where those top 10 lists online come in handy!

When we first drove past the Sun Voyager Sculpture (on one of the lists) I thought okay…looks like a bunch of forks on an arch, wohoo, saw it, check!) but when we walked past and could see it from multiple angles, especially like below with the ship on the ocean).

We also saw Harpa, a really cool modern building that hosts concerts and many other things. It looks like its tilting to the side on the outside and supposed to represent iceland, including the windows on the outside looking like the landscape for instance (this picture really doesn’t do it justice, and I’m not usually a modern building fan!).

Inside is equally cool to look at, especially the ceiling.

This is a better pic of the windows (or was it supposed to look like fish scales? I don’t know…it’s pretty cool).

While we were in the building one expensive American car after another drove into the driveway, so we exited and found ourselves attending a car show.

My favorite was one of only two non-American cars.

For dinner we went to a fun cafe with a simple but good menu and ate on the roof top.

In writing classes I was always told to start with action then go back to the beginning. So here we go.

When we were at the Science Center in Seattle to see the Terracotta Warriors we started talking about a hypothetical trip to China (we meaning my husband, parents, and one or both my brothers and spouses). My parents business has been doing well so they paid for our trip to Norway a year and a half ago and said they would pay for our trip to China!

So of course we got to planning and figuring out how much vacation time we have and timing etc. This snowballed and long story short we kept adding “one more place to go while we’re in the area” and realized that we didn’t have any vacation time anyway (as you may have noticed from my previous blog posts, such as to Maui and California and Utah and Discovery Bay and Alaska etc.) so….

What do you do when a trip of a lifetime comes up but you have obligations like work?

Quit your job may not be the obvious answer when you’re in your late 20s and mid to late 30s, with a young child, versus right after college or midlife crisis but…

I’m all for taking opportunities.

So after discussing our obligations in Seattle, and career goals, and family planning (you can’t be 6 months pregnant or have an under one year old on a lot of cruises that have a day at sea, so having another kid when we’d planned to was nixed), and logistics, we decided to go for it.

We spent the following months planning for the trip, with honestly most of our energy going into planning on the home front. Getting a housemate (a physical therapy student) for nine months to not leave our house vacant and have some side income, discussing with our jobs a return plan (though I’m losing our family health insurance), automating all bills, and many many many random things.

3.5 months traveling around the world. Come along with me (and my husband, child, parents, brother, sister-in-law, nephew (whose going to turn 1 on this trip), and some visitors that come and go. So come along with me on this blog!