Pack lightly and hold the ones you love close.

We left home 4 weeks ago but funnily enough, we never left home at all. We have travelled from our adopted home, to the motherland - Africa, home to all mankind but less dramatically, homeland to my husband and me. Currently we call California home, but by now we have racked up homes in a number of places: Cape Town, New York City & Marin County and a few more.

For our children however, home currently is the place we left behind with their beds, toys dogs and friends. We have moved a lot over the past 30 days, changing locations numerous times, being embraced by two different families as well as fellow countrymen and countrywomen that our boys didn't know they had. Our youngest got a bit shaky at one point, yearning for his bedroom back in Marin. We were standing in a 130 year old stable that had been converted into a bedroom, it was freezing cold outside and cozy in an adventurous kind of way. We gathered the boys close, in a family hug-huddle of sorts and broke the news that it would be a long time until we would be back in our own home and beds. Along with that news came the number one lesson for those with gypsies for parents - the four walls we live in and all of our "stuff" isn't in fact that important and might very often stand in the way of a grand adventure. Pack lightly, hold the ones you love close and step out the door to see what wonder awaits.