"Please call." 

My phone was flashing this message when we stepped inside from the deck two weeks ago.  That call set into motion a long road trip to the midwest where we buried my father-in-law's widow and have begun to learn how to disperse an estate.  It's a new season of life, this goodbye-ing.  Honestly my head is too full to put words to it all.

I have to smile now remembering packing up from England and musing about whether these changing seasons meant travel was over for us.  Not so.  We just logged some 45 hrs on the road with three very chill and cooperative passengers.  (while their bigger siblings maintained the intricately pieced carpool routine back home.)

If I were a more ambitious blogger I would insert tips for packing or pacifying children. Truth is we travel pretty gimmick-free unless you count in the promise of a soda from the gas station each day.  Truth is, I don't have tidy definitive lists of how to do all these things we are called to do. Success increasingly seems to me to be less about procedures and perks and more about carrying on in a forward motion.  

Relentlessly. Peacefully. Cheerfully.  

Trusting that everything is unfolding exactly as it should. It's contagious, that sort of trustful stepping out each day. We notice it spreading among us and we notice the rapid breakdown between us when one of us loses it. For the record we do and we did and we  regrouped and gave do overs.  Forward motion, even if its bumbling at times. 

There have been very late nights and early mornings and lots of work in between but also so many surprises, new places, new faces.   Easier to show than tell so here are the highlights from day one on the road…

Ending where we start, really : )