Hi, there! Remember me?

It's been a long while since the last time I wrote anything around here. To be honest, life caught me. And caught me hard. Having three kids with so much different needs, and different levels of development plus a full time job and some other passions was just too much. The things I was doing started feeling more like being obliged to do them than feeling pleasure from doing them. Besides, after a long day at work, then an afternoon with the kids (schoolwork, play time, cooking, bath time and anything else you might want to add to the list), I didn't feel like spending the evening sitting in front of the screen trying to be any kind of creative. Taking this long hiatus from blogging was what I really needed. And even though I treat this blog more like a diary, a solid collection of the places we visited combined with our memories, adventures and things we (dis)liked in various places, I wanted to feel excited, happy, passionate when writing the posts. So that when I read them a few months or years later, I still enjoy what I'm reading and not feel the pain I felt writing them.

That being said, a lot of things changed this year. 2020 hit us with so many various things. The obvious one being the pandemic and spending most of our times at home. Getting familiar with online schooling. Getting to know each other in ways we didn't know each other before.I am among the happy ones who can leave their homes every morning and go to work. It's especially important for my mental health, and I'm very much aware of it. Plus, I left my job of almost ten years basically overnight at the beginning of January. I decided it was time to leave. Although I very much appreciate the last year at my work and all the things we managed to organise, all the goals we reached, tasks we fulfilled, our team broke into pieces. And nothing was even remotely similar. Nothing more could be done. That was it for me. Getting back to the previous standards was no longer an option once I tried something else. So, now, I'm doing something totally different, working a new job, getting new skills. It's all so fascinating, so new. New people, new tasks, new responsibilities. No commute! since we have our office ten-minute-walk away from our home, which is awesome (I used to spend about 3 hours in a car going to and from work, so that's a huge change).

Both our older kids are already at school and the youngest is in preschool. Ok, that's what it should look like. For now, the older two are online schooling, though holidays start in less than two weeks. And they're already going to spend the last week of school (next week that is) with their grandparents away from home. Or in their second home, as they actually see it. The youngest got back to preschool last week after a long break caused by coronavirus. We're trying as we can to get back to normal, if that is still possible. We'll see how far we can get in the nearest future.

For the upcoming posts, I'm going to take you back in time. At least mostly. I'll probably try to sneak in some present day comments or short get aways, but for now, I mostly want to make up for the places we visited some time ago. Just to keep it in some kind of chronological order. At least for most part. Our trip through Slovenia from 2018 ain't over yet, so say the least. I barely started that one. And during that trip we also managed to spend three days in Croatia and 3-4 days in Italy. So there's still a lot to tell. How we got totally cold in Croatia in mid-August. How we got lost in Venice. How we got to Sirmione and had no idea what we missed. Yeah, there's still a few stories to tell. 2019, on the other hand, took us to the western end of the European continent. We spent most of our time in France, but not entirely. As usual, we tend to spend 1-2 nights in a given place and then move forward.

We still don't know what we're going to do this year. On one hand, it's so tempting to continue travelling our way. Through Europe. On the other, as most people this year, we'll probably stick to our own country. Poland has a lot to offer and there are still many places in our own country that we haven't seen yet (be it separately or together). For now, we're trying some day trips around our area (ok, we had one. The second one didn't make it due to family issues, but that's a whole other story, not really for the blog. Next ones will happen, I'm sure of that).

Ok, so that's basically it as for a quick catch up after this long pause.I hope I will manage to stick to what I have planned for myself ;)