Fistful of Passports

I was blessed to be born into a traveling family - and to marry into one.  

Although I didn't get my first passport until I was eighteen, in anticipation of a college archaeological trip to Honduras, I was no novice when it came to traveling.  Thanks to my Mom's love of exotic beach locales and my Dad's family and old Navy buddies scattered around the country, my sister and I racked up some serious mileage early on.  We became Zen masters of airport gate transfers and entertaining ourselves on long road trips.  

Erica quickly surpassed my measly little summer trips to Honduras and Greece by embarking on back-to-back multi-country tours of Europe when she was 13 and 14, with a few college study-abroad programs thrown in for good measure.  But before she was the travel savant that she is now, she was a little jealous of my Zen-like travel calmness and used to liven things up by stomping me in the face on roadtrips - but that only lasted through puberty.  ;)  Also, I remember when she thought that the mirror in the AAA office was a "hidden" passport camera and stood there for ages stock-still and smiling waiting for the picture to be taken!  And the most important life lesson she learned from her month in the UK during middle school?  Bring your own ketchup! 

Mark's family is even more well-travelled, having lived abroad in Spain and wherever else the Navy sent them.  Although I think they were slightly more infamous than us... That deadly viral outbreak* in Europe during the '70's?  Yeah, that was all Mark.  He had the distinction of having the worst case of Chicken Pox ever seen in modern Spain and may even be featured in one their medical texts!  Mark's dad also had a habit of getting the nearby livestock intoxicated and may have been known to bring home a marine iguana larger than his son as the new "family pet."  

I can't wait until we can have these kind of international travel experiences with our own kids - you know, when they're old enough to buy their own airplane tickets! 

It's hard to tell in this picture but the passport on top has a permant butt curve 

thanks to spending an entire Grecian summer in my back pocket!  

The green ones are old passports from Mark's family's Navy days.

*I'm kidding about the viral outbreak in Europe.  But Mark's Chicken Pox?  Totally true!