February 10th: Self-Portrait...

I really didn’t stand a chance.  The wanderlust runs deep in my gene pool.  Both sides!  Of course, so does diabetes…but I’m going to choose to focus on the positive.  I haven’t heard of many people who died from travel-related causes.  But if you've gotta go...  :-) 

From childhood, I had reinforced for me the importance of running about, finding new and exciting places to go…things to see…food to taste!  Of course, when I was a kid, I didn’t have any idea how much time and effort my mom put into researching and planning our trips (and without the benefit of the internet!).  I only knew that we always seemed to...

• see the most amazing stuff—like caves in Missouri and The Badlands in South Dakota.
•  find the coolest things to do—like take the cog railway up Pike’s Peak and careen down a 3-story slide at the Magic House in St. Louis.
• eat at some crazy-fun places—like Casa Bonita in Denver and a restaurant where we shelled peanuts and threw the shells on the floor while we waited for our food (decades before such places became a chain).

How serious were my folks about travel?  I grew up with other kids whose parents traveled to some exotic locales…but I was the only kid I knew whose parents both had pilots’ licenses...and their own airplane!

Need more?  Even as we speak, my parents are in New Orleans, seeing the sights and preparing to board a ship for their Western Caribbean cruise tomorrow.

I have a picture of them sitting atop camels in Egypt, with the pyramids in the background.

Not even kidding!

And, as is so often the case, one of the best things they ever taught me about getting-away-from-it-all was something I didn’t appreciate until I reached adulthood:  They took regular vacations without us kids.  For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine how that would be any fun whatsoever!

Now I know!


And I also know how much time and energy goes in behind the scenes before a traveler even hits the road.  (And how all that planning and research are easily half the fun!)

So what does any of this have to do with a self-portrait?  Well, for starters, SJB and I thought that doing a video blog would be the perfect way for me to really capture myself visually.  But also, I feel like it’s hard to get a sense for who someone is based only on how she looks.  Plus, I think you can learn a lot about a person based on the places she longs to see.

So my self-portrait is a peek into my travel bucket list:

Funny thing:  Tomorrow I'll be sharing some pictures of stuff that makes me happy.  I kinda did that today too!


Blessings!
Missy

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made...

Psalm 139:7, 14a

Meet my parents!
(You thought I was kidding, didn't you?)