Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

Our blog title winner has been chosen by our esteemed panel of Lanser Daughters.  We've been keeping it top secret for the past few days, mostly because I just haven't gotten around to the blog.  In an amazing effort of both quantity and quality, the Aukema family became our lucky winners with their entry of:

LANSERS GET LOST! 

(or is it "Lansers, get lost!"?)

The girls have also declared that our blog format is boring, so watch soon for a roll out of our new and improved Lansers Get Lost blog (don't worry, Grandma--you won't have to do anything different to keep receiving it!)

Aukemas--keep an eye out for an amazing gift, which will be arriving shortly!

A Contest (for prizes)!

OK, so "Lanser Travels" is boring.  Global trip? Worldwide adventure?  Boring...boring.  But we know we have some creative friends, so we're asking you to come up with a name for our adventure. The girls will be voting on their favorite and we'll determine just the perfect prize for our winner. You have until Tuesday night!

And on a different note, a little chat about prayers:

Part of my delay in writing a second entry is that the last couple of days have been extremely stressful with lots of changes and glitches--showing me how much I need to depend on God through each step of this, and also showing me how poorly I'm doing at that :)

I want to really emphasize that we understand what a gift it is to be able to do this trip--we have the health, job, and resources to attempt it.  That makes me feel kind of guilty asking for prayers.  BUT, the ability to do this and the excitement about it in no way diminishes the fear and stress and hugeness of this all.  So it would mean the world to me (pun intended!) if I knew you were praying for us each time you think of us or each time you read this blog.  Thanks!

The blog is live!

Starting this was harder than I thought.  This is what I stare at every day:

And then I wake up in the middle of the night with this fear that the route won't work and spend an hour mentally reworking everything.  So then, by the time I sit down to try to write about it, this is how I feel:



But we'll give it a go!

Probably the easiest way to introduce this is with the 5 Ws.

WHO:  All 6 of us (seems pretty obvious, but I did have someone ask if we were taking the girls along!)

WHAT:  A year long worldwide adventure, combining some business stops and a learning sabbatical for Mike with some dedicated family time and recreation.

WHERE:  We'll first be heading south and east to chase the warm weather.  First stops are in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka.  From there we'll continue to SE Asia and Australia/NewZealand.  In the spring, we'll head up to China and then start working our way west.

WHY:  Lots of different whys which I'll write more about in another post, but basically to experience and grow in our understanding of a variety of places and cultures.

WHEN:  Shooting for January 5, but it'd sure be nice to have a plane ticket so we know!  We're finally getting close but still haven't pulled the trigger.

So there's the nutshell.  I'll try to expand on each of these in the next few posts.  If you're interested in following along, feel free to subscribe on the left.  I'm so proud of myself for figuring out this technical detail, so I would love it if you used it!

Now that I've finally gotten over the hump of entry #1, I'll try to write a little more consistently!