And it begins...

As I sit here suffering from pneumonia, September and the warmth of Scottsdale, AZ seems a million miles (and years) away. I seriously doubt the day will ever arrive when we finally embark on our Grand Adventure. And yet I know that before too long, I'll awake in the middle of the night in sheer, full-blown panic - not enough time! too much to do! where has the time gone! I actually look forward to that day.. anything but the wracking cough of this illness.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Just who are we and what is this Grand Adventure that I speak of? Every story has a start and ours is no exception....

We are Dennis (aka Joe) and Cherie (aka the author of this blog). August 2011 will be our 20th anniversary. We have a grown son (will be 19 May 2011) and are self-employed web developers. Our current residence is in Port Angeles, WA. A smallish town on the Olympic Peninsula, this is a gorgeous place to live. The Olympic mountains come right down to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Victoria, BC is straight across the water. It's amazingly green and pretty temperate here. We both grew up in this area and after living all across the country for the first 16 years of our marriage, we ended up back here and thought this would be it.

Then this year hit. Early February found us sitting around one night, watching House Hunters International. Almost as one, we turned to each other and announced "I want to go abroad for a few years!" This was all we could talk about over the next few days. Where would we go? How long would we stay? What about all our stuff?

But then reality hit. We're nowhere near wealthy and travel like this would require a nice size bank account. Then you have to take into consideration where you'll stay, how long you can legally stay, all kinds of things that make my head hurt