On the Brink!!!

More or less...

 Well, it's kind of strange to say, but we are less than 24 hours from takeoff of our one-way flight to Reykjavik, then on to Paris.  It's a very weird feeling to finally be this close, after over a year of planning, scheming, saving, sacrificing, working, researching, and dreaming.  For the last few weeks it hasn't really felt real, like we were just taking a few weeks off for a summer vacation, but that has all started to change in the last few days.  I've now begun to be kept up at night thinking about things like "we don't speak Icelandic" and "what do we do if Greece implodes before we can see it" and (mostly) "mmmm... we are going to eat SO much gelatto ALL the time."

Melanie, on the other hand, and I should have expected, is cool as a cucumber.

Melanie, taken this afternoon

 This is the same girl who wasn't nervous at all to jump out of an airplane when we went skydiving while dating, so why should this stress her at all.  Amazing.

There has been a flurry of last-minute "to-do's" over the last few days, but overall we feel confident and ready for this.  So surreal after all this time to be able to pull this off, and so gratifying and awesome to see it come to life from the crazed recesses of my mind.  Gonna be a "trip of a lifetime!"