THE Trip.

We just landed in Portugal. Not permanently (yet) but for our holiday. We are going for three weeks. Usually it's three weeks of devil may care trips to the beach or historic sights. Leisurely lunches and dinners, and enough ice cream and bolinas (a type of donut sold on the beach) as there are grains of sand.

This trip feels different, is different. This is the last trip before we move there next summer. Before we actually live there. It will have elements of devil may care of course, but it will also have school tours, architect, accounting, and immigration meetings. We will see historic sights, but will also visit properties, and then time the one day school runs.

Outside of the logistics of these things I feel a pressure emanating from this trip that I have not felt before.

I know I love Portugal. We wouldn't be this far down this road if I didn't think it had a 99% chance at absolute bliss. But there's a completely irrational part of me that worries that I won't like it there on this trip and that means I won't like it there when we move. When I type or say it out loud I know it's ridiculous. But the feeling is there all the same.

The same holds true for the kids. I feel so keenly that the trip needs to go perfectly for them. They already have trepidations about going (of course!). So if their experience there is anything less than wonderful, it will be the yardstick by which they measure what our Portugal life will be.

So as we taxi down the runway, I can only reassure myself and them that nothing is perfect. Not trips, not life, and judging by the baby screaming in the aisle over, not flights. But it's not supposed to be.

It is supposed the be a little messy in places, places that then show us where our gratitude lies (like noise cancelling headphones) and where we can learn what we are made of. That mindset and embracing life for what it is, not what it's supposed to be is where perfection lies.