2 deaths, 1 illness, 6 months, 7 countries, 2 kids, 1 hubby and a hippo

"Caroline? You had better sit down. Joe* was found dead last night, looks like he took his own life".
He had worked for/with me, a troubled man with a young family. I was a real estate agent and managing a small office, with a smaller team. I can't say I knew him well, but I tried to help him. I tried to see that he got back at least close to the rails if not on them.

I rang Dave and told him. I didn't feel responsible, but I did feel a little neglectful, like I had washed my hands of him, and now  a while down the track, this was the result. This was only a month or so after another man we knew through our work had died in a tragic accident, again leaving a young family behind.

"Wow, thats terrible, I found out today that Matthew* is really sick, he's only in his thirties! Fuck it life is too short for this! I think we should just bloody do it!" shouted Dave.

For about two days we had been talking about IT. You know the dream that you talk about animatedly with your significant other after a couple of glasses. For the first and probably the only time in our lives we had the borrowing capacity to pull IT off. You thought I was going to say, we had the money.... trust me.... we will never have the savings for a huge trip, let alone IT, but we had the potential to pull it off. The incentive? A good deal of "Lets get the fuck out of here" followed with a smidge of "We will probably never be close to being able to do this again".

So we did. 6 months of travel with our kids (two gorgeous girl firecrackers aged 7 and 8) to all the dream destinations we could think of.

Once the decision was made, and the bank paid up, next came the fight. Dave wanted to leave yesterday, now, immediately. I, on the other hand was working through the logistics, we had to clean up our house and find some people to rent it. Organise some sort of schooling for the girls. Give notice to work, pack, put the rest of our stuff in storage... plan, book and pay, break the news to my parents and friends. I thought we needed at least three months to get our selves organised. I put my foot down! 2 weeks later we were on the tarmac and that is how it all started.