Difficult Days....

I promised on my last post, 13 days ago, that I would mention the changes that were taking place in our lives. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to find the right words to explain our situation.

My emotions have run the full spectrum these past two weeks.....and here's why.

Our son, Rob, who after finishing college and pursuing brief careers in several of this countries larger cities, including Minneapolis, St. Louis, Nashville and New York City, decided to return to Grafton and help us bring our photography studio into the 'digital era'.

Not trained in either cameras or computers, Rob immersed himself into available information on both fields, attending seminars, reading books and manuals and spending countless hours on the Internet, digesting a virtual wealth of shared knowledge on both topics.

He helped transform Steve Larson Studio from the limitations of a film based business to the exciting, unconfined world of digital technology. Our clients have been the biggest benefactors of Rob's new found knowledge and creative talents. However, good things don't always last forever.


About a year ago, Rob let us know that he was planning on pursuing a dream of extensive travel to various parts of the world to 'see what's out there'.


After months of intense mental, physical and organizational preparation, Rob was ready to embark on his journey and we dropped him off at the Minneapolis airport on Tuesday, September 4th. His destination was Bali, Indonesia.

It was difficult to say goodbye, but our sadness was tempered with our happiness for Rob and for what he would be seeing and experiencing in his travels. His plans are to record his journey through photographs and writing on his blog site www.roamingrob.com .


He will also serve as a valuable resource, as we expand our travel-ography.com trips to destinations other than the US and Canada. Rob's first two weeks have already been filled with unexpected adventure, as he has encountered difficulty posting to his blog and even emailing in an area of Indonesia that is somewhat 'information challenged'.

In fact, after three days of deep concern for him, as we followed news reports of several serious earthquakes in Indonesia this week, we finally heard from him yesterday and were relieved to learn that, not only was he OK, but he wasn't even aware of the earthquakes that had taken place.

As if Rob's adventure isn't enough to occupy our minds and prayers, we now prepare to drive our daughter, Abby, to Minneapolis this weekend, as she leaves for Spain on Monday. After spending the past year working in Maple Grove, near Minneapolis, she applied for and was offered a position teaching English to Spanish speaking students in Logrono, Spain.

I'll have more on Abby's journey in a later post.

After all this, Duluth seems like a relaxing destination. We're looking forward to our first travel-ography.com adventure on the 28th, 29th and 30th of this month.

Steve

PS...We'll be able to keep up with both Rob and Abby's adventures by following their blogs. www.abbyinspain.com and www.roamingrob.com