Our little travel blog is one year old!
It’s been a wonderful year filled with adventures around the world and at home here in Minnesota. We visited new and exciting destinations that opened our eyes. And we said goodbye to familiar and sentimental places that meant so much to us.
We boldly skied down real mountains in Utah. We cheered on the Tokyo Yakult Swallows at a Japanese baseball game. We listened to carolers in a quaint little German Christmas Market. We packed as many experiences into every day as we possibly could.
Sunny and Raining is about finding beauty in the unexpected and cultivating joy right where you are. And we sure found that in so many places this year. Not only in what we saw — but in the people we met.
In May, we took a little tour through Tuscany. There were about a dozen or so people in our group — from Mexico, England, Italy, Arizona and South Carolina. We sat down for supper together that evening, bonding over our love of Italian food and talking for hours about our lives and our adventures. It didn’t matter where we’d been or where we were planning to go. It didn’t matter what we thought about this or about that. We weren’t all that different. We were just people sitting down for a meal together.
I’ve always enjoyed talking with people and hearing their stories, but I don’t think I realized the true magnitude of that opportunity on these trips. When we first started flying standby, we’d fly places to see beautiful mountains or eat incredible food. And that was wonderful. But over the past few years, some of my favorite moments have been conversations with people about what it’s like to live within those stunning mountains or how they actually cook that delicious food. That single moment of conversation can have such a lasting impact.
We feel so fortunate and blessed for this opportunity to travel to visit family, friends and new places around the world. This blog contains only a small handful of our stories so far, and we can’t wait to keep documenting these adventures.
It means the world to us to have these stories written down. It’s even more special to be able to share them.
