Scotland

Anyone who loves us knows how much we love to travel. Clearly we do a LOT of camping and road trips, but we've been itching to go overseas. For years. Our last international trip was to Costa Rica in 2010. (I feel justified not counting the cottage in Ontario. When your husband is Canadian, good old Canada just doesn't feel like a "real" international trip anymore.)

Traveling with a family of four is obviously no small feat, so we've been saving for a long time. Every so often we revise our list of "top picks": Morocco, African safari, New Zealand, India, Patagonia, Italy, Greek isles. I know, I know, we like to dream small.

But then, in May, we found out that some of our dearest friends on the planet, Michael and Asanuo, would be moving back to Edinburgh in late June and staying for just a few months. These two are even crazier than we are. He grew up as an MK in Nicaragua, she's from Kohima, Nagaland (province in northeast India--look it up on a map for kicks). They met in Nagaland, fell in love, got married, and moved to Quito, Ecuador. (We missed each other by a few years.) At some point they moved to Ardmore, PA, and that's where our paths crossed.

We invited them over for dinner and I cooked up a storm. Daniel and Michael hit it off right away, diving into philosophical musing spiked with laughter. Turns out Asanuo, who walked in looking like a petite fashion model, also loves to cook. I found out later it was high praise indeed that she didn't feel the need to secretly spike the food with her stash of Naga hot pepper. After dinner she asked to hold Owen, then just a few months old. He looked impossibly huge on her slender five-foot frame. Even though she was practically panting for breath rocking my giant baby, she happily carried him for a long time. We laughed our heads off about who knows what, and got right down to it with some heart-felt conversation. That's the moment I knew we were going to be great friends.

They visited us in Denver soon after we moved here, their firstborn son Tristan in tow, and we had a fantastic time. We were together for Thanksgiving at my parents' house a few years back. But other than that it's been years since we've seen each other. Michael started a PhD in anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, so they were in Scotland for a few years, and then they moved back to Nagaland to be near Asanuo's family and for Mike to do his field work. (He's studying her tribe.) A year ago they had another son, Salvador.

When we heard they'd be back in Edinburgh for a few months, Scotland rocketed to the top of our list. Daniel got his first real bonus in five years and suddenly, giddily, we went from dreaming to actual planning. We sketched out an itinerary: a few days in Edinburgh followed by a Highlands road trip. By some small miracle, we were able to tack on a few days with family on either end of the trip. Hey, we had to break the journey on the east coast anyway, so why not stop at the cottage on the way out and Emerald Isle on the way back?

Late one night, after confirming the dates and details at least twenty times, we emptied out our savings account and bought a lot of plane tickets. Afterwards we stared at each other in shock. Scotland, here we come!