Team Carta: Belated Christmas Letter

“And you may find yourself

Living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself

In another part of the world

And you may find yourself

Behind the wheel

of a large automobile

And you may find yourself

in a beautiful house

With a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself,

well - how did I get here?”

Sometimes life seems like a Talking Heads song - and “Once in a Lifetime” was certainly appropriate for 2019. This has been a year of transitions and travel and most of all, adventuring. We started the year off by clearing our frequent flyer miles reserves to purchase six one-way tickets to Europe for September 2019. We had no real plan, but dreams and an idea or two for how we would bring them to fruition.

While Dave worked on how he might help expand his business in Europe, Christine finished off her eighth year of co-op preschool with Adam and both she and Adam graduated from the program. Sam enjoyed competing with the debate team at school and participating with the robotics club. His passions continue to include Pokemon cards and every board game ever invented. Andrew was a frequent patron of the library and loved to max out his library card in pursuit of reading all the books ever written by Rick Riordan and the entire Wings of Fire series. He’s a proud member of the school crossing guard patrol and is perfecting his own comic book character, Power Pencil, in his spare time. There is always time for him to sneak in a good doodle. Thomas began to read with gusto in the first grade and enjoyed seasons with the soccer and cross country teams. He enjoys running about and climbing in general and developing endless imaginary worlds with intricate story lines that he and Adam act out with their toy figures. Adam learned to read and swim independently this year and was very proud to have graduated from preschool. He enjoys drawing, building with Legos and chatting up a storm with anybody nearby.

By the time our school year wound down in June, we had enacted a plan to pull all four children out of the Catholic school where they would have enrolled in the Fall and enroll with a charter homeschool for the 2019-2020 school year. Through this homeschool we could travel, choose our curriculum and complete our teacher meeting requirements via Skype. At the end of July we received our long-term stay visas through France, which allowed us to stay a full nine months in the EU. Game on!

We spent the summer preparing to live abroad and enjoying time with family and friends. We enjoyed hosting the Flores family at Lake Tahoe and also hiking, eating, and kayaking with the Ducut-Sigala family.

In July we had a family reunion with Christine's parents, brothers and their families on the “Alaska boat,” as Adam called it, to celebrate her father’s 80th birthday. From our small cruise ship exploring the Inside Passage way, we were able to bushwhack, kayak, and look at sea life and glaciers up close. We returned to San Diego for a short time to prepare our house for rental to our good friends, the Harveys, and found a long term renter for our Airbnb.

We sold our family van to friends - thanks for twelve good years, mean green jelly-bean! And Dave even sold his '66 Mustang to a father/son who were interested in updating and fully restoring it. Lastly, we slimmed down our possessions to better fit in storage and figured out which 10 games we could easily pack with us for our journey.

We waved goodbye to San Diego early one morning in August and flew up to Sacramento for a swim party/family reunion with Christine’s cousins and aunts and uncles. Then on to Lake Tahoe for a final vacation and then a flight from San Francisco to Paris to begin our European adventures!

Add Our European destinations through the end of 2019.
It will be interesting to see what the map looks like when we return in May 2020.

Europe has been quite a ride - but a bit too much to share here. We’ve been blogging if you want to find out more about our experiences in Europe - link and QR code below.

https://teamcarta.blogspot.com/

We closed out the year in Strasbourg, France, celebrating with Christine's French family, including her sister and generations of French cousins. Spending this time with our family and getting to really know some who we haven't had the opportunity to spend time with before has certainly been one of the major highlights of the trip so far.

We hope the season of the birth of Christ found you healthy and happy as well, surrounded by those you love.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Carta family