Saturday Evening Post — We Made This Ourselves

Olivia Leigh Photographie

Olivia Leigh Photographie

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We document our family's working sabbaticals as well as adventures a tad closer to home.

Aug 1

Aug 1 Saturday Evening Post

Julie Schumacher

A few photos from our week.

New Regent Street, Christchurch

New Regent Street, Christchurch

Wallaby, Hanmer Springs Animal Farm

Wallaby, Hanmer Springs Animal Farm

Tram Ride, Christchurch

Tram Ride, Christchurch

New Brighton Pier

New Brighton Pier

Cardboard Cathedral, Christchurch

Cardboard Cathedral, Christchurch

Wacky Stays, Kaikoura

Wacky Stays, Kaikoura

Wacky Stays, Kaikoura

Wacky Stays, Kaikoura

Napier

Redwood Memorial Grove, Rotorua

Redwood Memorial Grove, Rotorua

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Featured

Jul 21, 2017 Vienna Julie Schumacher 1 Comment

Jul 21, 2017 Vienna Julie Schumacher 1 Comment

Week in Review

Jul 21, 2017 Vienna Julie Schumacher 1 Comment

Jul 21, 2017 Vienna Julie Schumacher 1 Comment

Jul 21, 2017 Vienna Julie Schumacher 1 Comment

Jul 21, 2017 Vienna Julie Schumacher 1 Comment

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@w ellturnedwords

"Mama. I’m sad and happy to be heading home. At the exact same time." Me too, kid, me too.

A last picture from our last night. Five weeks. Five countries. Hours in the car, endless new places. Adventures I didn’t even think to plan for. Things I’m glad we planned to do. Big expansive nature and tiny ancient allies. And tomorrow we will lug our bags and our bods back in the car to Vienna. Through Heathrow. To home.
On this trip Loie became a traveler. Asking good and hard questions. Trying new things. Bearing with inconvenience and changed plans and big asks from us to her. Staking claims and expressing preferences in a respectful and thoughtful way. Dealing with languages and cultures new to her with grace. And she talked more about who she wants to be when she’s an adult and where she wants to go and how she wants to live than she has before.
Every place we got to became the place she wants to live someday and, at the same time, had to withstand a critique to home. Because as much as we take her places we want there to know the power of community, neighbors and belonging.

Our last week in review is up on the blog! Link in my bio.

I can name all the ways traveling with a six year old for five weeks can be exhausting. You know, the questions (you go into enough churches with a kid, and you’ll come out questioning everything you believe too), the puking, the limited eating options, the questions, the extra expense, the limitations, time spent looking at pigeons and for playgrounds, the scheduling challenges and the endless questions.
But. I can also say I’d never get up early enough to be one of the first dozen people at San Marco when just a few hours later it would be teeming. I’d never sit on steps playing Uno and drinking Prosecco. I’d probably have skipped the gondola. Too clichéd!
But when you are with a kid, cliché can become magic. Early mornings can become magic. Well, more magic than sleeping...but just by a hair. Yes, she sat there singing Moana. But I'll take a sense of exploration and possibility. And I was there too with the gondolas still at rest and the city still, for the most part, asleep. Venice was exhausting in all the best ways, just like parenting.

Today starts our actual real vacation. No working (except those emails I sent, shhh) in the sabbatical, just sabbatical. And I was feeling peevish as the weather in Hallstatt, the most charmingest place ever, was forecast to be nothing less than the worst. All rain. Relentless.

And it was living up to it last night. We pep talked as a family. Game day! Snuggles! Fun! And I went to sleep being ok with how much we’d spend on a place to stay near beautiful things we’d have to sprint and dash to see if we saw them at all.
We awoke to rain, gobs of it, and grinned and said it would be ok. But maybe we’d try to do a few things? Fast googling and layering of clothes and maybe Brett brought a trash bag to use as a poncho.

These two make me want to give the impossible a shot. And then the best day unfolded. With a few spritzes but main moody, lovely clouds and a nice breeze and a salt mine and gorgeous intersections of human beauty and natural beauty. So at dinner I confessed how much I wanted today to work out. And it did.

Over on the @forthchicago blog I shared about how we manage workspaces, motivation, time zones and client expectations while on our working sabbaticals.
As we wrap up our month in Vienna this week, it’s so dang nice to be able to say it’s been our most successful trip to date in terms of proactively managing our work lives.

This year Loie’s worked along side me in the mornings journaling as I work through administrative stuff and checking off to-dos. (Night time here is for calls and Slack and stuff.) Next week I’ll be sharing more about tools we use and how we plan financially.
If you’ve been curious how we do it, go check out the post and leave a question, I’ll try to answer all that I can!

You can, if you try like I try, to plan and micromanage every second of a trip, especially one with kids. It feels comforting. Lunch will be here. Play time will be there. And then they sleep! It is in my nature to schedule the heck out of our trips (ahem, and lives). Not over schedule in the sense of having too much to do but schedule in the sense of knowing what we “should” be doing at any one moment. Being married to Brett and being mom to Lo have interjected some much needed interference to my typical Type A-edness. We call the serendipitous moments that happen when you let go of the plan The Cloud. ☁️☁️Today, The Cloud brought us to a Lindy Hop dance party in Letná. I had picked the place for the Metronome and a beer+playground combo. And fate or the universe or the cloud reminded me to make space for something that would be far more impressive, impactful and incredible for our kiddo. Thanks, universe, for reminding me to check myself before I wreck myself. Planning has its place. So does serendipity.

This weekend I may have hit peak pastry and maximum gelato. A recap of our two days in Budapest, which was non-stop seeing + snacking is up on the blog! Link in bio.

What Happens Next: Napier

Aug 3 What Happens Next: Napier

Day Trip: Arthur’s Pass

Jul 25 Day Trip: Arthur’s Pass