Coming home!

And now for the part that Elle has been most excited about from day one, coming home. Our next destination is the best place on Earth, no matter where that may be, HOME.

We are in the final hours of our journey and I have a mixture of feelings. We are exhausted, mentally and physically worn down. I am beginning to look and feel like the bedraggled European backpacker I was 16 years ago, with a few greys added to the mix. (First stop, hair salon!) Justin's worn out, Elle misses friends and school terribly and poor Liam just needs his own bed. We need to get home for so many reasons. But, I feel a tremendous sadness that our adventure is over. We have all come together in so many ways. Travel does that to you. The trials, the stress, the adventure, the excitement, the new-ness, the closeness, the foreign-ness ensure that you must come together. We four share these last four months in a way that no one outside our small group ever really can. And that's something special. That's what a family is, no matter whether they are traveling or just doing the normal things of daily life. We are creating a shared experience, a shared life.

Justin and I feel so fortunate that we have been able to make this trip and include our children. They have enriched our trip tremendously. Seeing things through Elle's eyes has enabled us to feel like kids again and see things as she must. Having Liam along broke down many walls with people and opened up conversations in every country. Of course we had our frustrations, but we would have had those at home too. Traveling with kids is an entirely different kind of travel, and we had to adapt to that. We didn't get to see or do everything that we wanted to, but it is astonishing how much we WERE able to do. As a result, Elle has seen things that she will remember for the rest of her life, we all have. And Liam has become the most easily adapatable baby I've yet seen.

Being away for so long has also made us remember how great home is, our home and the US in general. For all it's faults, the US is pretty amazing. We are undeniably fortunate to have clean air to breathe (relatively), blue skies to see, clean drinking water, free speech, and choice in all matters important and trivial, amongst many other advantages. Add to that, we personally live in a gorgeous locale, where it's almost always sunny and 70. Coming home is a good thing indeed.

We are sitting in our Tokyo hotel room just killing the last few hours before we leave for the airport. We have time to go out into Tokyo, but frankly, we are just done. We are watching movies and pondering the Japanese obsession with space age toilets. (in our hotel toilet stall the light turns on as you approach, the seat lid lifts, the seat is warm, it senses when and how much to flush and then you can choose from numerous bidet options, including "massage") This, in stark contrast to the majority of the countries public toilets being squat style. Try that with a 5 year old. Not fun.

We and our 11 bags are ready to come home. We bought a bag in Hong Kong to hold our overflow and somehow managed to lose it between Kyoto and Tokyo. Someone found ALL of our shoes and our dirty clothes, I think they will be disappointed. Now, the only shoes we have left are the ones on our feet. Another casualty of our travels.

Elle just yelled "mommy!! Liam said Kon ban wah!!" (means Good Evening in Japanese) It sure sounded like he did anyway;) The funny things she has said along the way could make for a whole other blog. Like the time she reprimanded me in China because I told her that it was cold and she should put her coat on. She turned to me and said very, very sternly "We have different color hair, we like to eat different things, we're different mom!" That's it. And she turned to run off. I was to gather from that the fact that she was not cold and did not need to put her coat on, after all we're different. Well said Elle. Or the time she screeched in the shower in New Zealand..., actually, I think I'll keep that one to ourselves;)

We won't ever forget this amazing trip and the experiences we have shared. We will never forget the people we have met along the way, each one of them enhanced our experience in their own special way. I started this blog as a record for ourselves and to keep family and friends apprised of our whereabouts. I know now that we four will forever treasure it and I hope from time to time, along the way, I have entertained some of you as well.

In 24 hours we will be home, and the trip will be just memories. We will certainly feel wonderment that we went anywhere at all.