Homebody

Less than one year until we go on our 5 night Disney cruise.

The best thing about booking a cruise 18 months in advance? The months of delicious anticipation. The bad thing about booking a cruise 18 months in advance? Well, there are many things.

As a result of our less than one year away journey to decadent eating, and the fact that my dear sister is getting married toward the end this year (in Germany) we don't have any elaborate vacation plans for this summer. We need to save our pennies.

I keep thinking that we need to find a way to take some short trips, as our weekends are currently regimented to the point of ridiculousness and involve cleaning, grocery shopping, church, and hanging out with the family. If we're really feeling wild, we'll watch a movie on iTunes and make popcorn.

The problem is, we have become creatures of habit. Maybe I should be more concerned that the children never travel further than a 5 mile radius from home, but you know, I'm really not.

It's all almost too easy in the United States. In Romania, grocery shopping for the week meant going to the grocery store, the vegetable market, the other vegetable market near our apartment to get the things that the first market didn't have, and then a trip to the other grocery store to get the things we forgot. It was a foraging adventure that took at least a couple hours every Saturday. (If we had learned to cook Romanian cuisine, our lives would have been much simpler.) Whereas here, I can do all my shopping in less than an hour.

In Romania, going outside to play meant schlepping to the park (which was beautiful, and nearby) but here in the United States, it means stepping out the door. I arrived home from grocery shopping this afternoon to find Cheeks and Bee busily playing cars with the little boy next door. My husband and the neighbors were standing around chatting. To anyone else passing by, this little scene would have seemed perfectly ordinary. But to me, seeing my family, in our own place, living in the United States after so many years away--it's the embodiment of a dream.

You know, I think I will be happy to not travel for a while.