We're Flip Floppers

Whew! I can't tell you how much better I feel. It's so good to have come out of the closet on thinking about the end of our fulltiming adventures.

I want to remind you dear readers, we're just thinking about it at this point. We still have many miles ahead of us in this journey. Heck, we have tentative travel plans well into next year. And, along the way we will continue to think about and look for that place where we want to land and establish our home base. From that place, wherever it may be, we will continue to travel -- sometimes for months on end -- and continue to enjoy this amazing lifestyle. As so many of our commenting readers alluded to, that will be the time when we will enjoy the best of both worlds. We can't wait. But, we will.

As we search for our perfect landing spot, we know we will have our challenges. Chief among them is this simple fact: We're flip floppers.

(Thank God we're not running for office!)

But, it's true. We are. We will fall in love with a place in a heartbeat. We'll convince ourselves "this" is the place for us. Then, in a nanosecond, we'll talk ourselves out of it. We move down the road and find another spot with which we fall in love. It's a vicious, but really fun, cycle.

This flip flopping is most obvious while we're here in our native Kansas City. It would be a piece of cake for us to settle here. The fact that the area is filled with friends and family and we know our way around practically with our eyes closed makes the idea of settling here a real no brainer.

Then, in the same breath, we can talk ourselves out of it. It's too easy. It's not really our favorite place. It's too big. Too familiar. Too hot. Too humid. Too cold in the Winter. We want to be somewhere different.

See how we flip flop?

See how this process of finding our home base might take us awhile?

Today we had the great pleasure of spending some time in a town that's at, or near, the top of our potential home base list. Lawrence, Kansas sits just 45 miles - and a few light years - away from Kansas City. This quaint little college town on the banks of the Kansas river is home to our alma mater, The University of Kansas. It serves up a heap of history with a nice side of modern conveniences. It's town and country. It's business and academia. It's the best of everything.

Yep. We love it.

One of our hundred nieces and nephews (O.K., it's really not that many!) has expressed a passionate interest in attending the KU School of Journalism. Even though this particular niece still has a couple of years of high school left, as a couple of proud alums, we jumped at the chance to show her around.

We spent the day in our favorite college town. As we hiked around campus, we poked in stately buildings that were familiar and new. At one point in the day, we enjoyed a 360-degree panorama from our 10-story perch on top of the hill. As we took in the sweeping views of the university, the town, the surrounding neighborhoods and not-too-distant farms, we sighed in unison.

"We could live here!"

Oh, yes! We could.

As we left the Lawrence city limits, our niece was dreaming of her future as a Jayhawk. And, we were talking ourselves out of our love fest for the town. You see, we have other places to see and explore. It's too soon for us to declare our old college town our new hometown.

And so we flip flop.

When it comes to finding our new home base, we know we'll know it when we see it. It might be a brand new town, or familiar stomping grounds. Who knows?

For now, these flip floppers will just keep looking.