Have we ever mentioned how awesome our parents are? Well, it’s true. And we wanted to take this Father’s Day to bring honor to both sets of our parents—fathers and mothers. They have done so much to empower and encourage us in our entire lives, but especially as we have embarked on this journey.
Let’s start by talking about before we even left. First of all, they didn’t freak out. That’s HUGE. Really. People ask us all the time (after we’ve explained that we are riding our bikes around the world for two years)… “How do your parents feel about this?” And we’re grateful that we can always respond positively. “Actually, they’ve handled it great!” And they have! I mean, who gets excited about their grown kids (who were living in driving distance) packing up their lives and becoming nomads for two years? Who is glad that their kids resigned from their stable jobs in a rough economy? And who doesn’t object to their kids riding their bike through somewhat unknown regions in the world, usually sleeping in their tent off the side of the road? But our parents have done these things! They have been excited and showed support for us. If they had objections, they kept them at bay. And though occasionally they have thrown out the idea of us coming home early, they never tried to “talk us out of it.”
Then there was the leaving preparation process. Both sets of parents helped us renovate our house, which helped make it rentable when the time came for us to leave. Then there’s all our stuff. We did a lot of purging before we left, but there were plenty of things we had received as wedding gifts that were too nice to part with, so we needed a place to store them. We researched storage units and found out just how expensive it is to have your stuff sit in a tiny box of a room for two years. So our parents (especially Dave’s) offered the space they had.
And this is just all kitchen stuff… we had loads of boxes!
We loaded up our stuff and drove most of it to Nashville, where it now sits in the Garth attic. But even better, Dave’s parents also let us store our bedroom furniture in their spare room—so it wouldn’t have to sit in a hot attic or a stuffy storage unit. But let’s not forget the other heaping pile of stuff we also dropped off in Abbeville. We made sure a considerable truckload also got dropped in the Kirby basement. Both of our parents let us do this, which freed up significant funds for us to use in our trip. No small thing!
We actually have so much stuff stored in Nashville that we had to rent a moving truck to get it all there! We borrowed a pickup for the load to Abbeville.
And of course, we would be remiss to not mention that BOTH of our parents have taken expensive overseas vacations to come visit. In September, my parents met us in Ireland… and treated us to a much better tour of the country than we could have afforded ourselves!
We had beautiful weather and scenery for our whole week in Ireland!
We stayed in Bed and Breakfasts every night, and to be honest, we felt spoiled for a solid week. We were grateful not only to tour this beautiful country, but to have quality time with family.
Darden and Priscilla with what might be the most expensive bear in the world–35,000 euros, if I recall correctly. Don’t break it!
Dave’s parents met us in Venice, and we took a tour of Italy, also visiting Florence and Rome. Once again, there’s no way we could have seen and done as much if we had been on our own there.
On our “Best of Tuscany” tour… a day full of delicious food, amazing wine and stunning scenery. And like any good day in Italy, some gelatto.
We spent our days touring museums and galleries and ruins, and our evenings talking over wine and long dinners. We wouldn’t trade those 12 days in Italy for anything!
Bob and Shirley–ready for the good stuff on the winery tour.
And what else can we say? Besides all these things, our parents have been our support system. They have encouraged us in our steps of faith, cheering us along every mile of the way. They’ve taken hours out of their schedules to make Skype calls work with strange time differences. They’ve kept us connected to our families and the people we care about at home. Basically, they’re awesome, and we want to thank them and honor them today as we celebrate Father’s Day.
(PS–Mad props to Dave for the awesome graphic for this post’s featured image in the slideshow!)
