Second summer abroad

I eagerly anticipated our summer plans for months, and now they’re all in the rearview mirror. As I look back on the summer, I am grateful for all the friends and family we spent time with, especially those we hadn’t seen in several years.

Since we first moved to Philadelphia in May of 2013, we have continually prioritized making plans with people regardless of how far away they were. Whether it’s a short weekend getaway or a weeklong adventure in a new country, Jason and I always want to let people know they’re important to us. We love hosting and we love traveling to spend time with those we care about.

In many ways it almost became easier to do when we first moved overseas in 2016 because we’d spend up to five weeks at a time in the US and could visit people throughout the States at Christmastime or in the summer. And then Covid hit, and we didn’t travel anywhere for what felt like years but was only 18 months. But until we moved to Ireland, we had taken very few trips between January 2020 and February 2024; most were a drive from our home in California or a flight to visit family, not a bigger vacation like we had done in the past.

Perhaps we’re making up for lost time now, then, because we jammed quite a few trips into summer 2025. We spent a week in Poland as a family of four, touring Warsaw where I have family and Wroclaw where my husband has a factory. We made a last-minute trip to Lisbon to meet up with friends we hadn’t seen since 2022, and Portugal is now #1 on my list of places I’d like to revisit sometime soon. One day after we returned from Portugal, our friends from California landed in Dublin and we spent almost a week with them, touring around Dublin and then heading out West to the Dingle Peninsula for a few days of the best weather I’ve ever experienced in Ireland.

And then one day after we returned from Dingle, we were off again for a four-week trip around the United States. We spent two weeks with family, traveling around Minnesota and experiencing the largest civil aviation airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Then we were off to see family friends in Breckenridge, Colorado, for a few days of nonstop outdoors activities: downhill biking, ATV exploring, hiking, and the boys’ first time on a horse. A magical few days in the mountains.

Rounding out our time in the States, we visited our very good friends who just packed up and moved from San Diego to Michigan. It was so glorious to spend time with them again after not being together for the past year. Adult friendships are hard to come by, and I cherish the people who have stuck with me through our latest move and adjusting to long-distance friendship when we used to see each other nearly every day.

And finally, we landed in Massachusetts for time with my parents and friends from our old ‘hood. We left Boston on a warm, sunny summer day and it was a weird feeling to know we probably won’t touch down again in the US for another year.

Travel is a blessing and having my husband with us 95% of the time this summer was a huge bonus. Our boys were ecstatic to see their cousins, their grandparents, reconnect with old friends and make new ones, too. Every city and person hold a special place in our hearts, and we even managed to plan two vacations for next summer because of the friends we saw last month. Living in Europe is temporary for us, so while we’re here we want to make the very best of the time we have.

It’s so easy to get complacent when you live somewhere, you think “oh I’ll have time to do that [insert activity] another day.” But then years go by, and you never really see what you thought you would. We made that mistake in California and I don’t want to do that again here.

In just a few days the boys will start at a new international school here in Dublin. They will have to make new friends (again) and go back to being in a strange environment for a little while. Routines will take time to adjust to, and there’s a lot of fear of losing the friends they had at their old Dublin school. Hopefully through our actions this summer they can see that even when you don’t see a friend every day, if you make the effort the person will stay in your life for much longer than you previously thought.

I hope your summer was just as fun as ours! Tell me where you think we should check out next!