For months, Abigail and I have been talking about starting a blog – someplace where we can collect our family’s stories and share them with friends and extended family. And I’m finally writing our first post.

Progress!

I’m not sure exactly how/where to start with our most recent family developments, so I’m just going to jump in. About nine months ago, Abigail and I decided to try something a little crazy. We decided to sell our house, put our things in storage, and move to Spain for a year. Our plan was to move in July, put our kids in a Spanish school in September, learn the language, learn about the culture, and take a year just to focus on experiencing something new together as a family.

Things didn’t quite go as planned. After spending months of preparation (and more money than I am comfortable disclosing), our Spanish visa wasn’t approved. Without a visa, we wouldn’t be able to stay in Spain for longer than three months. We wrote to the Spanish consulate and appealed the decision. Our appeal was denied too.

This was a big setback for us, both logistically and emotionally. Abigail had put a ton of time and effort into the visa application (we may share more about that process in a future post, because it’s all a very interesting process). And it was tough to stomach the possibility of spending even more time, money, and energy into another application without any guarantee that we would we be accepted. Plus the time it would take to reapply would most likely put our arrival in Spain after the start of school.

Oh, and by the time we heard back about our visa status, we had already sold our house. So there’s that, too.

Let me say before continuing that we remain pretty positive about the whole experience thus far. By sharing this, I’m not complaining. I would rather it had gone differently, of course. At our core, though, Abigail and I still feel that applying for the visa and selling our house were the right thing for us. Things have changed now. And we’re excited for those changes.

So where does this leave us right now? We are still planning to travel to Spain for a shorter period of time, probably starting in late fall or early winter. In the meantime, we’re experiencing several smaller adventures with family and friends. And we want to share some of those adventures with you.

That’s it for now. We will share more details, pictures, stories, etc. later.