Breaking The News, Stateside

SAN DIEGO

Being from two opposite ends of the world we had one more group of close family to tell before our news is put on hold for at least a year. Continuing the theme of memorable locations to meet and divulge our grand plans, we headed out to the US to meet close family from England. Not quite half-way in between homes, but we would otherwise end up in some rather unusual and impractical (if not awesome) places!

So, we ventured out for a 10 day trip to the South-West coast of America. We fondly remember this part of the world as a place we ventured to when we met in 2005. In fact, a re-creation of a photo opportunity presented itself quite by accident during the trip to which we were only too happy to oblige!

This time around we shared a super AirBnB property close to (yep, you guessed it) the ocean. This was going to be a slightly different experience because we were telling a larger number of people all at once, most likely resulting in varying reactions. Again, we planned to allow jet-lag to subside, but also share the news early on in the trip. On one of our first days we were able to visit the beautiful city marina of San Diego, confidently and purposefully showing our lack of boat knowledge! It's quite comical when you are wrapped up in your own story; how much you think people may read into your actions, yet in reality I think most of it is paranoia!

After a super weekend, we sat down for our usual evening after the kids were in bed and decided that it was time to tell everyone. This time especially it would probably come as a larger surprise, as we had never particularly been a boat or nautically orientated family. Coupled with the varying impacts on how much we would see our family in the future, the reactions ranged from mostly silence to extreme shrieking and excitement, adjoined to a smattering of shock and awe! Overall, it was again a fairly predictable array of reactions. It definitely presented lots and lots more questions and tested our ability to explain our plans clearly and concisely. This was lovely and we thoroughly enjoyed explaining our motivations and origins of the grand scheme.

Now that both of our close family groups know, we felt comfortable and even more confident that this adventure is going to happen! We have reached a small but important step in the grand plan.

-Ben