Perparing for departure

Good Afternoon Blog Followers!

We are at t-minus 4 days, 18 hours from our departure on our month long summer vacation!  Diana is completing her last day of work for the next month, and the packing, laundry, and cleaning has commenced!  All of the flights, hotels and activities have been booked!  Shopping and packing will be the order of business for the weekend.  It has been a very busy two months with workouts, martial arts class and planning, but all the hard work is done and vacation is ready to start!  Tonight will be dinner out at Pescatore's...a local italian restaurant, complete with celebratory drinks!  I will be looking to blog throughout the entire vacation, sometimes from locations half way around the world!  It is sure to be an adventure for ourselves and my parents as well (who are vacationing with us as well!) 

For those who do not know how this vacation came to be, a little background for you... I have always loved Scuba diving and was certified when I was 18.  I have always dreamed of diving on the Great Barrier Reef.  Well I mentioned this to Diana and I said that when I turned 30, I wanted to do the dives.  Being the supportive Wife, she agreed, and the dreaming and planning of a trip to Australia had begun.  My dive buddy, for all my dives has been my father, and I did not want to make these dives without him.  After some discussions (and a great deal of convincing to fly that far), he and my mother were on board for the trip!  We had decided to stop in San Francisco as well, to break up the long flights to Sydney, and with a suggestion from my father (Who denies he ever suggested it because its "another up and down on a plane") we added Hawaii to our Itinerary, and the trip of the summer was born!  We had set out a trip itinerary, but with the release of the Phillies Schedule, we altered our itinerary so we end our trip in San Francisco, seeing our Phillies play the Giants.  And so, after a year of planning, we are ready to roll, with just the packing left to do!  My sister will be joining us in San Francisco for the last part of the trip since we are missing her birthday  :(  So We bought her a plane ticket for her birthday and she is excited too!!!

We hope you enjoy the blog and please feel free to comment as well.  This will be the best (and cheapest)way to keep in touch with everyone (International Phone Data plans are INSANE!) so we are excited to have you come along, even virtually, on our vacation with us!

Love
Stacy and Diana