Roman with the Goetzes: July 2009

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Pictures are available!

So I'm obviously not on top of my game as far as posting about the trip goes, but we now have a slideshow available with a bunch of pictures....I will try to get the most current descriptions up soon. Until then, enjoy the pictures (thanks to Jessica!!!)....I just have to add...the kids are sooooo cute!

Trip Background

Welcome to Roman with the Goetzes (to be read…..Roamin’ with the Goetzes ☺)!! We hope you are able to follow along with us during our trip and enjoy our updates. This introduction will provide you with a high level overview of our upcoming trip.

Who is going? The entire Goetz family will be going on the trip – Bridget, Jason, Liam (turning 9 in Italy), Kathryn (7), Maggie (5), Rebecca (3), Noah (2), and Nathan (4 mos.). In addition, a good friend of the family named Jessica Schlener will be going with us. For those of you that don’t know her, Jessica babysat for us regularly when she was in high school. When her parents became missionaries in Portugal, Jessica lived with us on her breaks and during the summers throughout college. She just graduated from Cedarville University and will be enjoying the time in Europe before beginning her career in nursing.

What is this for? I (Jason) have been very blessed with a great career at Adobe. Not only is it an enjoyable place to work, but Adobe is also one of the few companies that still offers a sabbatical. After completing five years of service this past March, I earned a 3-week sabbatical. When combined with three weeks of my vacation, I will be taking off a total of six weeks. The first week will be to complete our final preparations and we’ll be spending the remaining five weeks in Europe. I will be turning off my phone, email, blackberry, etc and plan to remain disconnected for the duration of the vacation.

Where are we going? When we were dating, Bridget and I came up with a list of places that we had the greatest desire to visit. The top three were Ireland, Italy, and Germany. After knocking off the first one during our honeymoon, we still had two places to go. We have rented a home outside of Florence for the first four weeks and plan to take three side trips – Rome, the island of Elba, and Milan/Lake Como. During the final week, we will be visiting Venice, Neuschwanstein Castle, Munich, and the ‘Romantic Road’. I know what you’re thinking…..6 screaming kids in a car isn’t my idea of romance ☺!

When are we going? In summary, we will be gone from mid-June to mid-July. For those of you need more detail, we leave on Thursday, June 11 in the morning and have an overnight layover in London. After staying right by the airport, we’ll take two quick flights to get us into Florence (London -> Zurich & Zurich -> Florence). We’ll be staying one night in downtown Florence and then checking into out rental villa on Saturday, June 13. Other than the three side excursions, we’ll be staying in our villa until Saturday, July 11th. We’ll then be off to the other places listed above. We have a direct flight back to Dulles from Frankfurt on Friday, July 17th. This trip coincides with the 4th of July holiday, Liam’s ninth birthday, and our 10-year anniversary.

Why are we going? It was an added bonus that our trip overlapped with our 10th Anniversary and we got to visit our most sought after destinations, but this was not the primary purpose of the trip. One driving factor was our desire to disconnect from the busy lifestyle that we have in Northern Virginia and to slow down a bit. Everything that we heard and read about the Tuscany Region of Italy made it sound like a perfect contrast to our normal pace of life. But most importantly, Bridget and I thought that this would be the perfect place to spend some quality time with God, each other, and our children (ranked in order ☺). During this extended time away, we hope to be both inactive and active. We hope to be inactive by being disconnected from work and our normal responsibilities at home. We hope to be active in our faithfulness to Jesus Christ – by spending time in His holy Word, dedicating time for prayer, and seeking His direction for our lives. For those of you that may be praying for us on our trip, these are our requests.

A special thanks to: all of you that helped us to plan our trip (Bruce, Charlie, Alex, Greg, Charles, etc.), those of you that are covering for me a work (Maria, Melissa, Charles, & Pat), those of you who took care of the children so we could acutally pack (Jenny and Jack, Kris, Cindy) and the newlyweds Christie & Dave for watching our house. And finally, thank you for your desire to learn more about our trip and we hope you can follow along to go Roman with the Goetzes!!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Pictures are available!

The Gang

J & I